I Had been often told, since I arrived in England, that in Edinburgh, I should see the finest city I ever saw.  I confess that I did not feel quite sure of this, but it required scarcely more than a single look to show me that it was perfectly true.  It is hardly possible to imagine a nobler site for a town than that of Edinburgh, and it is built as nobly.  You stand on the edge of the deep gulf which separates the old and the new town, and before you on the opposite bank rise the picturesque buildings of the ancient city—­

  “Piled deep and massy, close and high,”

looking, in their venerable and enduring aspect, as if they were parts of the steep bank on which they stand, an original growth of the rocks; as if, when the vast beds of stone crystallized from the waters, or cooled from their fusion by fire, they formed themselves by some freak of nature into this fantastic resemblance of the habitations of men.  To the right your eyes rest upon a crag crowned with a grand old castle of the middle ages, on which guards are marching to and fro; and near you to the left, rises the rocky summit of Carlton Hill, with its monuments of the great men of Scotland.  Behind you stretch the broad streets of the new town, overlooked by massive structures, built of the stone of the Edinburgh quarries, which have the look of palaces.

  “Streets of palaces and walks of slate,”

form the new town.  Not a house of brick or wood exists in Edinburgh; all are constructed of the excellent and lasting stone which the earth supplies almost close to their foundations.  High and solid bridges of this material, with broad arches, connect the old town with the new, and cross the deep ravine of the Cowgate in the old town, at the bottom of which you see a street between prodigiously high buildings, swarming with the poorer population of Edinburgh.

From almost any of the eminences of the town you see spread below you its magnificent bay, the Frith of Forth, with its rocky islands; and close to the old town rise the lofty summits of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crag, a solitary, silent, mountainous district, without habitations or inclosures, grazed by flocks of sheep.  To the west flows Leith-water in its deep valley, spanned by a noble bridge, and the winds of this chilly climate that strike the stately buildings of the new town, along the cliffs that border this glen, come from the very clouds.  Beyond the Frith lie the hills of Fifeshire; a glimpse of the blue Grampian ridges is seen where the Frith contracts in the northwest to a narrow channel, and to the southwest lie the Pentland hills, whose springs supply Edinburgh with water.  All around you are places the names of which are familiar names of history, poetry, and romance.