The meadows southward of the city, and the adjoining common called “Bruntsfield-links,” are not in much better condition. At some period, indeed, a walk or two had been formed in the meadows, and some hedges and trees planted, but neither the one nor the other have been attended to; while the grass is in so marshy a state that the cows, to which it is almost exclusively assigned, can with difficulty make their way across it. The whole extent of the North Loch, too, was till very lately, and great part of it is still, a putrid and pestilent marsh, at once offensive to the eye, and injurious to the health; and indeed, throughout the whole compass of the Athens, there is scarcely a tree or any thing green, except grass in the melancholy streets towards the meadows, and moss upon the dank walls of several of the more low and squalid dwelling-houses.
Notwithstanding all this, there are few places that boast more of their improvements than the Athens; and not many in which the people have been made to pay more upon that score. But either there has been a total want of skill in the projectors, or a total want of economy in those who had the execution,—if indeed there has not been both. I was told repeatedly, that every scheme and measure to which the Athenian authorities give the name of a public improvement, is uniformly a job for the benefit, not of the public, but of some party or individual; and really, comparing what is said to have been expended with what has actually been done, I can find no other theory that will sufficiently explain the facts. The bell-rope of the Tron-Kirk appears not to have been the only case in which a hundred pounds’ expense has been incurred for the purpose of saving a shilling.
Even in her public buildings, the Athens has little of which she can boast. All the places of worship belonging to the established Kirk are tasteless; and the most modern ones are the most so. St. Giles’ Cathedral is a black, shapeless, and ruinous mass, stuck round with booths and police-officers; and when one has said, that the portion of it set apart for public worship as the High Kirk, has a handsome old roof spoiled by tasteless painting, and a square tower with an imperial crown, which looks well at a distance, and not absolutely ill when one is close to it,—one has about summed up the whole of its merits. Respecting most of the other Presbyterian churches, the less that is said the better; the Grey-Friars, situate south of the Castle, has an interest with the more devout people of Scotland, from the tombs of the martyrs that are in the adjoining burial-ground; and St. George’s Church, which terminates the street of the same name, westward, is perhaps the most expensive and unseemly abortion of modern architecture. Public monuments in the Athens there are none, except Nelson’s (formerly mentioned) on the Calton-Hill, and Lord Melville’s column in St. Andrew’s Square; and it is not the fashion of the Athens to consider her burying-grounds as sacred, or to set up memorials for the illustrious dead. If her plan gives her as much trouble as this would do, it is trouble of a different kind: she keeps down, as much as she can, all those who are not either illustrious already, or have not something to confer, as long as they are alive; and when they are dead, she gives herself no more trouble about them.
Of her other public buildings, the College is the largest; but as the plan was far beyond her means, it stood a ruin for a very considerable period, and will ultimately be a piece of patchwork in consequence of a deviation from the original design. Still, however, if it could be seen, the entrance front is majestic; and the opposite square (especially the whole façade in which the Museum is, and the rooms for the Museum itself) is singularly chaste and beautiful. The Register-House is a neat building, and seen to considerable advantage; but there is something trifling in the whole air of it.
That frost-work style of architecture, which out-Goths all the Goths that ever existed, has visited the Athens, in some of its most tawdry and fantastic specimens,—the chief of which are an episcopal chapel near the west end of Princes’ Street, and another near the east end of Queen Street, of which it would puzzle a conjuror to point out the most ridiculous.
Even the Castle has suffered the infliction of the modern Athenian taste, by the erection of two or three piles within its ramparts which have every appearance of being cotton manufactories. So much for the still life of the modern Athens.
To give a general idea of the Athenian people, is by no means so easy a matter. They take their character from a number of circumstances; and the circumstances cannot be properly explained without an allusion to the character, nor the character rightly appreciated without a reference to the circumstances. If one dwell upon the general subject, one is forced to assert without any means of proving; and if one take up a single particular, although the proof be perfect in as far as that is concerned, it is difficult to establish the connexion, and point out the effect, with regard to the whole. To examine society with a view to determine the general spirit and character of those who compose it, is like examining an animal with a view to a knowledge of the nature and operation of the living principle. If we examine it while alive and in the performance of its functions, we see the results without being able to understand the machinery; and if we dissect and separate the different parts, we have the machinery without the results; nor does it appear that there are any means by which we can obtain a contemporaneous view of both.
Thus, I found the character of the Athenians different from that of the inhabitants of any other city; and I also found many of the circumstances under which they are placed to be peculiar; but still I am not prepared to say, that the one set of peculiarities are altogether to be set down as causes, and the other as effects. The Athens has, doubtless, stamped upon her people much of their character, and they have requited her by service of the same kind; so that any pretension to be profoundly philosophic in the matter would be as impossible as for my purpose it is unnecessary.
The leading characteristic of the Athenians, of all ranks, all degrees of understanding, all measures of taste, all shades of party, and both sexes, is to esteem their own idols in preference to the idols of every other people on the face of the earth. Their own situation is the finest that can possibly be found; and their own mode of improving it is superior to any that could be suggested. Their men, taken on the average, excel all others in wisdom, and nothing can any way compare with the brilliance of their women. In their manners they are never vulgar; and in their tastes and judgments they do not make half the slips and blunders which are made by the rest of the world. The songs of their poets (when they happen to have any) are transcendent for sublimity and sweetness; and the theories of their philosophers (of which they are never without a reasonable portion) are ever the most agreeable to nature, and the most nicely put together. Upon the latter point they are somewhat amusing; for in no place whatever have philosophic theories been so often changed, as among the sages of the succession of schools which, shining from the Athens, have dazzled and illuminated mankind; and yet, while each of these theories has been the object of Athenian adoration, it, and none but it, has been the true one. In politics they have not, at least for a long time, been agreed in their doctrines, or unanimous in their worship; for in politics, interest has generally much more to do than principle; and, being by much the stronger of the two, and pulling opposite ways with different parties, it has produced among the Athenians, divisions which are as remarkable as their union of self-adoration in most other things.
Whence, it may be asked, does this self-adoration arise? To which I would answer, in the true Athenian manner, by asking where the affections of a widowed and childless woman, who has no hope and no chance of being courted by another, are centred. The Athens is a widowed metropolis: she stands registered in the pages of history as having been the seat of kings,—she has her walls of a palace, her name of a royal household, and her gewgaws of a crown and sceptre; but the satisfying, the fattening, the satiating,—or perhaps, as some would call it, the stultifying presence and influence of the monarch is not there; neither is there any vice-roy, or other kingly vice-gerent set high enough in its stead, to attract the attention, and invite or command the worship of the people. Thus, she is in herself not only the capital of Scotland, but all that Scotland has localized as an apology for a king; and therefore, besides assuming the consequence due to a royal seat, she puts on the airs of royalty itself, and worships her own shadow in the mirror of the passing time. She is the only city in the British islands which is so situated; and this alone would be sufficient to give her a peculiarity of character, and to make that peculiarity an inordinate pride.