plary modesty of their own character and deportment, in all the relations of private life, may well furnish them with yet better claims to the kindness of their fellow-citizens.

P. M.

326

LETTER XXVII.

TO THE SAME.

*

I SHOULD be very much at a loss, if I were obliged to say positively, either at what hour or from what point of view, the external appearance of this city is productive of the noblest effect. I walk round and round it, and survey it from east, west, north, and south, and everywhere it assumes some new and glorious aspect, which delights me so much at the moment, that I am inclined to think I have at last hit upon the true station from whence to survey its beauties. A few steps bring me to some new eminence, from which some yet wider and more diversified picture of its magnificence opens itself to my eyes, or perhaps to some winding ravine, the dark and precipitous sides of which, while

they shut out much of this imposing expanse of magnitude, form a deep and concentrating framework, in whose centre some one isolated fragment assumes a character of sublimity, that seems almost to throw the wider field of variety and splendour into temporary shade. I have at last given up the attempt; and am contented to let my admiration be as impartial as the charm is universal.

In every point of view, however, the main centre of attraction is the Castle of Edinburgh. From whatever side you approach the citywhether by water or by land-whether your fore ́ground consist of height or of plain, of heath, of trees, or of the buildings of the city itself-this gigantic rock lifts itself high above all that surrounds it, and breaks upon the sky with the same commanding blackness of mingled crags, cliffs, buttresses, and battlements. These, indeed, shift and vary their outlines at every step, but everywhere there is the same unmoved effect of general expression-the same lofty and imposing image, to which the eye turns with the same unquestioning worship. Whether you pass on the southern side, close under the bare and shattered blocks of granite, where the crumbling turrets on the summit seem as if they had

shot out of the kindred rock in some fantastic freak of Nature-and where, amidst the overhanging mass of darkness, you vainly endeavour to descry the track by which Wallace scaled-or whether you look from the north, where the rugged cliffs find room for some scanty patches of moss and broom, to diversify their barren grey-and where the whole mass is softened into beauty by the wild green glen which intervenes between the spectator and its foundations -wherever you are placed, and however it is viewed, you feel at once that here is the eye of the landscape, and the essence of the grandeur.

Neither is it possible to say under what sky or atmosphere all this appears to the greatest advantage. The heavens may put on what aspect they choose, they never fail to adorn it. Changes that elsewhere deform the face of nature, and rob her of half her beauty, seem to pass over this majestic surface only to dress out its majesty in some new apparel of magnificence. If the air is cloudless and serene, what can be finer than the calm reposing dignity of those old towers-every delicate angle of the fissured rock, every loop-hole and every lineament seen clearly and distinctly in all their minuteness? or, if the mist be wreathed around the basis of the rock,

and frowning fragments of the citadel emerge only here and there from out the racking clouds that envelope them, the mystery and the gloom only rivet the eye the faster, and half-baffled Imagination does more than the work of Sight. At times, the whole detail is lost to the eyeone murky tinge of impenetrable brown wraps rock and fortress from the root to the summitall is lost but the outline; but the outline atones abundantly for all that is lost.-The cold glare of the sun, plunging slowly down into a melancholy west beyond them, makes all the broken labyrinth of towers, batteries, and house-tops paint their heavy breadth in tenfold sable magnitude upon that lurid canvass.-At break of day, how beautiful is the freshness with which the venerable pile appears to rouse itself from its sleep, and look up once more with a bright eye into the sharp and dewy air!-At the "grim and sultry hour" of noon, with what languid grandeur the broad flag seems to flap its long weight of folds above the glowing battlements! When the day-light goes down in purple glory, what lines of gold creep along the hoary brow of its antique strength! When the whole heaven is deluged, and the winds are roaring fiercely, and "snow and hail, and stormy vapour," are