Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/137

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EDINBURGH.

��THE beauty of Edinburgh, in itself, and in its envi rons, and the intellectual atmosphere that enwraps it, are eulogized by all. We entered it with high antici pations, yet they were more than realized. Every day revealed something new, and supplied an unwearied strength to visit and to admire.

It seems, more than other cities, to fasten on the im agination, from the nature of its scenery, the strange events which History has embodied here, and the high native genius which has immortalized all. The con trast between the Old and New Town is most striking ; one so fresh, bold, and beautiful, the other with its dark, stifling wynds and closes, its gloomy, twelve- storied houses, quaking to their very foundations at their own loftiness, the abode of mysterious legends, or spectral imagery. To pass from the classic domes on Calton Hill, or the princely mansions in Moray Place, and look into the abysses of the Cowgate and Canon- gate, just when the earliest glimmering lamps begin to make visible their filth, poverty, and misery, is like a sudden rush from the Elysian fields to the dominions of Pluto.

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