On the higher level above the green slope lies the part of the Gardens fronting Princes Street. The monument gains in height viewed from this lower level. The tower in the distance is that attached to the North British Railway Hotel.
great dead, like the faces of our great living, have gone to London, yet there is now a goodly collection of national portraits in the capital of Scotland. And there must not be forgotten the greatest building of all—if building it can be called—that has been achieved near Edinburgh during yesterday: the Forth Bridge, the highest bridge in the world, finished in 1890, with its monster claws planted firmly on either side of the Firth of Forth, just where Queen Margaret and Malcolm Canmore used to be ferried to and fro on their journeyings between Edinburgh Castle and Dunfermline Palace.
It is not only by the building of new edifices that wealthy citizens have generously endowed Edinburgh; there is another form of patriotism which seeks to restore the old, and two such inestimable benefits have been conferred not only on Edinburgh, but on all who visit her, and who venerate the past. In 1883 the late Mr. William Chambers restored with reverence and taste the Church of St. Giles, which had been half ruined by ruthless vandalism in 1829, and in 1892 the late Mr. Thomas Nelson restored magnificently the splendid old hall of the Castle, the scene of so many banquets and so many Parliaments, and of not a few tragedies.[65]
CHAPTER X
THE HOMES AND HAUNTS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The Tropics vanish; and meseems that I
From Halkerside, from topmost Allermuir
Or steep Caerketton, dreaming gaze again.
Far set in fields and woods, the town I see
Spring gallant from the shadow of her smoke,
Cragged, spired, and turreted, her virgin fort beflagged.
R. L. Stevenson.