delighted surprise, that the written descriptions of Edinburgh take the novice's knowledge of its peculiarities rather too much for granted.

The history of Scotia is bound up with that of Edinburgh, and the city's story is largely that of the castle. One glance at the great fortress demonstrates why Edinburgh was built here, near to but not on the sea; now having Leith, two miles away, for its seaport, as Athens had the Piræus, and connected with it by continuous streets instead of long walls. Perth, however, an actual seaport, was Scotland's capital until during the reign of the English King Henry VI. It was the Northumbrian King Edwin who built this citadel thirteen hundred years ago; and the borough that grew up around it was Edwin's Burgh. The Saxon name held, even when Scots or Celts captured it three hundred years after, and for a time called it in their language Dun-edin, or the Hill of Edwin. It is no mere fancy that styles it the Modern Athens, for intellectuality conspires with nature to make the title appropriate. Manufactures are singularly absent; and chief among the great trades here entrenched have long been those of printing and publishing; while world-wide renown crowns its splendid

university and the whole system of its widespread education. With such attractions as these, steeped in the romance of a checkered career on which play all the swiftly-changing lights of Scottish character and history, few will dispute the claim of the Queen of the North to be unique.

Edinburgh is indeed "beautiful for situation," and the joy of every Scotchman's heart. The new town is regularly laid out with broad and handsome avenues, and adorned with squares and statues. But, attractive as it is, it is to the old town that we must turn for those sharp alternations of picturesque effectiveness which are a prime factor in its charm. Looked at from Princes Street, one knows not how sufficiently to admire the grandeur of its foreground, the old gray granite buildings clinging to the steep hillside, their bold irregularities massed into wonderful harmony, and their serrated summits making so lofty a sky-line, with the great fortress standing as sentinel over all. But its history has made it to be a city of contrasts as well. The poorer quarters are very poor; and ill conditions have affixed here their ineffaceable stamp. Strange "closes" and "wynds," narrow winding passages be

tween high stone houses, burrow to right and left from the Canongate and other old streets, and lose themselves in the forlorn quarters of the poverty-stricken, imperfectly pointing the way beneath overhanging penthouses to steep stairways leading Heaven knows where. The highways are rough here, and over much of this part hangs a flavor of potations and an atmosphere of smoke and soot from ancient chimneys which has given to the city the Scot's favorite cognomen of Auld Reekie. There is little hint of disorder, however, among the classes whose progenitors made life unpleasant in the Grassmarket in the days of the Porteous mob. Excitement kindles slowly in the Caledonian breast, and your true Scotchman is by nature as staid as he is canny.

Our first morning there was a Sunday morning, and the fact could not have been more apparent had it been proclaimed by a muezzin from the housetops. Neither omnibuses nor tramcars running, a rural quiet reigning in the streets, and scarce a cab to be seen till after the luncheon hour! Our Liverpool friend had told us of the presence in garrison at the castle of the queen's crack regiment, the "Black Watch," once the Forty-Second High

landers. And at half-past nine we made our way to historic St. Giles's,-whose lantern-tower, in shape of a crown, stands in the High Street, — to attend the preaching service of the famous regiment. It is sometimes called the cathedral, but is really a parish church of the Established Church of Scotland, and the oldest in Edinburgh. The present Gothic building, though on an immemorial site, is itself but five centuries old, yet has seen strange vicissitudes. It was robbed and defaced at the Reformation, and its interior effect, though restored, is still bare. The Marquis of Montrose and the assassinated Regent Moray lie in the crypt. The royal pew and the King's Pillar bearing the arms of James II. are in the chancel. From the Reformation down to our own day, the great building was grievously injured by partitions for the use of four separate congregations, until the influence and purse of the great publisher, William Chambers, removed them. This is the church which was for a brief space the Cathedral of Edinburgh, when Charles I. sought to re-establish the Scottish Episcopal Church; and within its walls Jenny Geddes expressed her disapproval of the liturgy at that time to the extent of