Following the castle terrace, we will descend towards the new town, and come out at the west of Princes Street.
We are walking towards the East. On our left, we shall have the shops; on our right, the public gardens, a mixture of Boulevard des Italiens and Champs Elysées. Everything here is in perfect taste. Look at the statues judiciously placed about the public gardens, streets, and squares!
O George Square!
Here is a shop-window full of photographs. Let us stop and look in: they are not portraits of actresses and fashionable beauties, but chiefly of professors of the University, of which Edinburgh is so proud. Remarkable among them is Professor Blackie, his fine head recalling a likeness of Lizst. It was this same Professor Blackie on whom the people of Glasgow made such an attack about two years ago, for having given, one Sunday in Saint Andrew's Hall, a most charming and poetical discourse on the Songs of Scotland.
The sweep of the public gardens on the right is agreeably broken by two specimens of the most elegant Greek architecture: they are the buildings of the Royal Institution and the National Gallery. Nothing could be more graceful, more Attic, than these twin structures. The first contains thousands of national relics, from the pulpit of Knox to the Ribbon of the Garter worn by Prince Charles Stuart. The second is an admirable museum of painting and sculpture.
The most striking monument of Princes Street is the one which was erected to Walter Scott in 1844. It has the form of a Gothic steeple, and is not less than two hundred feet high. It resembles somewhat the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park, but with this difference, that, while designed with ten times as much taste, it cost about a tenth of the money. The novelist's heroes and heroines are gracefully placed in the niches; the author himself is seated in an attitude of contemplation in the midst of his creations. Now for the comic side of the thing. A staircase conducts to the summit of the monument, to which you may mount for the sum of twopence.
On the East of Princes Street are two very fine buildings—the Post Office and the Register Office, or resting-place of the national archives. This latter building has a magnificent flight of steps, in front of which is an equestrian statue—you guess whose, of course: the inevitable, the eternal, the never-to-be-sufficiently-paraded.
What a bore that creature is!
I am quite willing to admit that Wellington did exist, and that he rendered his country service; but is that a reason for turning him into a bore? He is a very nightmare!
Napoleon, surely, was as great a general as Wellington. We have placed him on the top of the Vendome Column, but we had the good taste not to stick him up in every provincial city.