If Baltimore is the monumental city of the United States, Edinburgh may surely be called the monumental city of the United Kingdom. The majority of its public buildings, of freestone or granite, are noble structures standing on hills in the heart of the city, and for their situation alone would command admiration—the old Castle, Nelson monument, the city prison, the National Gallery, the Bank of Scotland, etc. No bank in the world occupies a more commandiug site than the one just named. Owing to the peculiar natural formation of the land upon which the city is built, an observer may stand in one spot in Edinburgh (say the Waverly Gardens) and see a greater number of splendid buildings at a glance than may be seen simultaneously from the level in any other city.
Not among the largest by any means but among the most interesting must be reckoned the Burns monument, which occupies a high position near its still higher neighbor, the Nelson monument, on Calton Hill. The Burns monument was built in 1830 for the purpose of containing a marble statue of the poet by Flaxman. The building, of freestone, is a circular temple on a quadrangular basement surrounded by a peristyle of twelve Corinthian columns which support an entablature and cornice. Over this is a cupola, a restoration of the monument of Lysicrates at Athens. The whole is surmounted by a tripod supported by winged griffins. The extreme height of the structure is fifty feet, the twelve outside columns are fourteen feet high and the twelve inside columns are ten feet high. The latter are of freestone painted to represent variegated marble. The cost of the monument and statue was three thousand three hundred pounds sterling (about sixteen thousand five hundred dollars)—not a large sum considering the result attained.
Besides the statue of the poet, the monument holds a number of relics—letters written by or to Burns, the worm-eaten three legged stool upon which the poet sat in 1786 and ’87 while correcting the proofs of his poems, and other things of interest. One of the most interesting letters is that subjoined. As is well known, the poet spelled his name Burness (his family name) until the publication of his poems in 1786. The letter is thus addressed:
To
Mr. James Burness,
Writer, Montrose.
My Dear Cousin:
When you offered me money assistance, little did I think I should want it so soon. A rascal of a haberdasher to whom I owe a considerable bill, taking into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process against me and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. Will you be so good as to accommodate me, and that by return of post, with ten pounds. O, James, did you know the pride of my heart you would feel doubly for me. Alas, I am not used to beg. The worse of it is my health was coming about finely, you know, and my physician assures me that melancholy and low spirits are half my disease. Guess then my horrors since this business began. If I had it settled I would be, I think, quite well in a manner. O, do not disappoint me.
Among other relics preserved in frames and hung on the walls is the printed newspaper report of Burns’s death. This occurred at Dumfries, July 21, 1796, and the report appeared in the London Herald of July 27—nearly one week after. The London Herald of that day was a very small sheet, about fifteen inches long and only four columns wide, price fourpence halfpenny a copy. The obituary notice is unique and is worth reproducing to-day:
DEATH OF MR. ROBERT BURNS,
THE CELEBRATED POET.