(From Marmion, Canto IV.)
'Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd,
For fairer scene he ne'er surveyed.
When sated with the martial show
That peopled all the plain below,
The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendour red;
For on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,
The morning beams were shed,
And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder-cloud.
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height
Where the huge Castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!'
CONTENTS
Edinburgh in 1773—General Features of the Old City—Its Site and Plan—Flodden Wall—Nor' Loch—'Meadows'—Old Suburbs—Canongate—Portsburgh—'Mine own romantic Town'—College Wynd, Birthplace of Scott—Improvements in the Old Town
The Scotts in George Square—Walter's Lameness—Sandyknowe—Bath—Edinburgh—Changes in the City, 1763-1783—Migrations to the New Town—The Mound—New Manufactures and Trades—The first Umbrella
School-days—The High School—Old Methods of Teaching—Luke Fraser—Tone of the School—Brutal Masters—Schoolboy's Dress—Boyish Ideas—Scott's Pride of Birth—The 'Harden' Family—'Beardie'—The Dryburgh Lands