After seeing what the castle had to show, which is but little except itself, its rocks, and its old dwellings of princes and prisoners, we came down through the High Street, inquiring for John Knox's house. It is a strange-looking edifice, with gables on high, projecting far, and some sculpture, and inscriptions referring to Knox. There is a tobacconist's shop in the basement story, where I learned that the house used to be shown to visitors till within three months, but it is now closed, for some reason or other. Thence we crossed a bridge into the new town, and came back through Prince's Street to the hotel, and had a good dinner, as preparatory to fresh wearinesses; for there is no other weariness at all to be compared to that of sight-seeing.
In mid afternoon we took a cab and drove to Holyrood Palace, which I have already described, as well as the chapel, and do not mean to meddle with either of them again. We looked at our faces in the old mirrors that Queen Mary brought from France with her, and which had often reflected her own lovely face and figure; and I went up the winding stair through which the conspirators ascended. This, I think, was not accessible at my former visit. Before leaving the palace, one of the attendants advised us to see some pictures in the apartments occupied by the Marquis of Breadalbane during the queen's residence here. We found some fine old portraits and other paintings by Vandyke, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and a strange head by Rubens, amid all which I walked wearily, wishing that there were nothing worth looking at in the whole world. My wife differs altogether from me in this matter; . . . . but we agreed, on this occasion, in being tired to death. Just as we got through with the pictures, I became convinced of what I had been dimly suspecting all the while, namely, that at my last visit to the palace I had seen these selfsame pictures, and listened to the selfsame woman's civil answers, in just the selfsame miserable weariness of mood.
We left the palace, and toiled up through the dirty Canongate, looking vainly for a fly, and employing our time, as well as we could, in looking at the squalid mob of Edinburgh, and peeping down the horrible vistas of the closes, which were swarming with dirty life, as some mouldy and half-decayed substance might swarm with insects,—vistas down alleys where sin, sorrow, poverty, drunkenness, all manner of sombre and sordid earthly circumstances, had imbued the stone, brick, and wood of the habitations for hundreds of years. And such a multitude of children too; that was a most striking feature.
After tea I went down into the valley between the old town and the new, which is now laid out as an ornamental garden, with grass, shrubbery, flowers, gravelled walks, and frequent seats. Here the sun was setting, and gilded the old town with its parting rays, making it absolutely the most picturesque scene possible to be seen. The mass of tall, ancient houses, heaped densely together, looked like a Gothic dream; for there seemed to be towers and all sorts of stately architecture, and spires ascended out of the mass; and above the whole was the castle, with a diadem of gold on its topmost turret. It wanted less than a quarter of nine when the last gleam faded from the windows of the old town, and left the crowd of buildings dim and indistinguishable, to reappear on the morrow in squalor, lifting their meanness skyward, the home of layer upon layer of unfortunate humanity. The change symbolized the difference between a poet's imagination of life in the past—or in a state which he looks at through a colored and illuminated medium—and the sad reality.
This morning we took a cab, and set forth between ten and eleven to see Edinburgh and its environs; driving past the University, and other noticeable objects in the old town, and thence out to Arthur's Seat. Salisbury Crags are a very singular feature of the outskirts. From the heights, beneath Arthur's Seat, we had a fine prospect of the sea, with Leith and Portobello in the distance, and of a fertile plain at the foot of the hill. In the course of our drive our cabman pointed out Dumbiedikes' house; also the cottage of Jeanie Deans,—at least, the spot where it formerly stood; and Muschat's Cairn, of which a small heap of stones is yet remaining. Near this latter object are the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, a roofless gable, and other remains, standing on the abrupt hillside. We drove homeward past a parade-ground on which a body of cavalry was exercising, and we met a company of infantry on their route thither. Then we drove near Calton Hill, which seems to be not a burial-ground, although the site of stately monuments. In fine, we passed through the Grass-Market, where we saw the cross in the pavement in the street, marking the spot, as I recorded before, where Porteous was executed. Thence we passed through the Cowgate, all the latter part of our drive being amongst the tall, quaint edifices of the old town, alike venerable and squalid. From the Grass-Market the rock of the castle looks more precipitous than as we had hitherto seen it, and its prisons, palaces, and barracks approach close to its headlong verge, and form one steep line with its descent. We drove quite round the Castle Hill, and returned down Prince's Street to our hotel. There can be no other city in the world that affords more splendid scenery, both natural and architectural, than Edinburgh.
Then we went to St. Giles's Cathedral, which I shall not describe, it having been kirkified into three interior divisions by the Covenanters; and I left my wife to take drawings, while J——- and I went to Short's Observatory, near the entrance of the castle. Here we saw a camera-obscura, which brought before us, without our stirring a step, almost all the striking objects which we had been wandering to and fro to see. We also saw the mites in cheese, gigantically magnified by a solar microscope; likewise some dioramic views, with all which I was mightily pleased, and for myself, being tired to death of sights, I would as lief see them as anything else. We found, on calling for mamma at St. Giles's, that she had gone away; but she rejoined us between four and five o'clock at our hotel, where the next thing we did was to dine. Again after dinner we walked out, looking at the shop-windows of jewellers, where ornaments made of cairngorm pebbles are the most peculiar attraction. As it was our wedding-day, . . . . I gave S——- a golden and amethyst-bodied cairngorm beetle with a ruby head; and after sitting awhile in Prince's Street Gardens, we came home.
July 10th.—Last evening I walked round the castle rock, and through the Grass-Market, where I stood on the inlaid cross in the pavement, thence down the High Street beyond John Knox's house. The throng in that part of the town was very great. There is a strange fascination in these old streets, and in the peeps down the closes; but it doubtless would be a great blessing were a fire to sweep through the whole of ancient Edinburgh. This system of living on flats, up to I know not what story, must be most unfavorable to cleanliness, since they have to fetch their water all that distance towards heaven, and how they get rid of their rubbish is best known to themselves.
My wife has gone to Roslin this morning, and since her departure it has been drizzly, so that J——- and I, after a walk through the new part of the town, are imprisoned in our parlor with little resource except to look across the valley to the castle, where Mons Meg is plainly visible on the upper platform, and the lower ramparts, zigzagging about the edge of the precipice, which nearly in front of us is concealed or softened by a great deal of shrubbery, but farther off descends steeply down to the grass below. Somewhere on this side of the rock was the point where Claverhouse, on quitting Edinburgh before the battle of Killiecrankie, clambered up to hold an interview with the Duke of Gordon. What an excellent thing it is to have such striking and indestructible landmarks and time-marks that they serve to affix historical incidents to, and thus, as it were, nail down the Past for the benefit of all future ages!
The old town of Edinburgh appears to be situated, in its densest part, on the broad back of a ridge, which rises gradually to its termination in the precipitous rock, on which stands the castle. Between the old town and the new is the valley, which runs along at the base of this ridge, and which, in its natural state, was probably rough and broken, like any mountain gorge. The lower part of the valley, adjacent to the Canongate, is now a broad hollow space, fitted up with dwellings, shops, or manufactories; the next portion, between two bridges, is converted into an ornamental garden free to the public, and contains Scott's beautiful monument,—a canopy of Gothic arches and a fantastic spire, beneath which he sits, thoughtful and observant of what passes in the contiguous street; the third portion of the valley, above the last bridge, is another ornamental garden, open only to those who have pass-keys. It is an admirable garden, with a great variety of surface, and extends far round the castle rock, with paths that lead up to its very base, among leafy depths of shrubbery, and winds beneath the sheer, black precipice. J——- and I walked there this forenoon, and took refuge from a shower beneath an overhanging jut of the rock, where a bench had been placed, and where a curtain of hanging ivy helped to shelter us. On our return to the hotel, we found mamma just alighting from a cab. She had had very bad fortune in her excursion to Roslin, having had to walk a long distance to the chapel, and being caught in the rain; and, after all, she could only spend seven minutes in viewing the beautiful Roslin architecture.