CHAPTER XXVII.
Edinburgh—Glasgow's Opinion thereof, and vice versâ.—High Street.—The old Town.—John Knox's House.—The old Parliament House.—Holyrood Palace.—Mary Stuart.—Arthur's Seat.—The University.—The Castle.—Princes Street.—Two Greek Buildings.—The Statues.—Walter Scott.—The inevitable Wellington again.—Calton Hill.—The Athens of the North and the modern Parthenon.—Why did not the Scotch buy the ancient Parthenon of the modern Greeks?—Lord Elgin.—The Acropolis of Edinburgh.—Nelson for a Change.
railway journey of an hour and ten minutes transports you from darkness into light. You leave Glasgow in gloom, wrapped in its eternal winding-sheet of fog and mud, and you arrive at Edinburgh to find clean streets, pure air, and a clear beautiful sky. Such at least was my own experience, six times repeated. The prospect delights the eyes and heart; your lungs begin to do their work easily; you breathe freely once more, and once more feel glad to be alive.
You alight at Waverley Station in the centre of the city. You cannot do better than go straightway and take up your quarters at the Royal Hotel, Princes Street, opposite the gigantic Gothic monument erected to Walter Scott. Ask for a room looking on the street. Take possession of it without delay, and open your window: the sight that will meet your gaze is truly enchanting. At your feet, the most elegant street imaginable. No houses opposite: only large gardens, beautifully kept, sloping gracefully away to the bottom of a valley, whence the ground rises almost perpendicularly, bearing on its summit houses of a prodigious height. It is the old town of Edinburgh, where everything will bring back memories of Mary Stuart and the novels of Scott. On the right the famous castle perched on a sheer rock nearly four hundred feet high; the whole bathed in a blue-grey haze that forms a light veil to soften its colouring and contour. It is impossible to imagine a more romantic sight in the midst of a large modern city.
Whether your tastes be archæological or artistic, you will be able to satisfy them in one of the two towns of Edinburgh, the old city to the south, or the modern town to the north.
The Glasgow folks say there is not much money made in Edinburgh, and speak of the place with a certain contempt, which the Edinburgh people return with interest.
It is always amusing to hear the dwellers in neighbouring towns run each other down: Manchester and Liverpool, Brighton and Hastings. The nearer the rival towns are to each other, the livelier and more diverting is the jealousy. Go and ask a Saint-Malo man what he thinks of Saint-Servan, and vice versâ!
"Ah! you are going to Edinburgh," the Glasgow people say to you; "it is full of snobs, who give themselves airs and are as poor as Job. Ours is a substantial place, sir. We've no time to waste on nonsense here; we go in for commerce and manufactures."