The hamlet behind is one of the least considerable of hamlets, and consists of a few cottages on a green beside a burn.  Some of them (a strange thing in Scotland) are models of internal neatness; the beds adorned with patchwork, the shelves arrayed with willow-pattern plates, the floors and tables bright with scrubbing or pipe-clay, and the very kettle polished like silver.  It is the sign of a contented old age in country places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street sights.  Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the cottage interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the housewife folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; the snow and the wind may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant corner in the world.  The city might be a thousand miles away, and yet it was from close by that Mr. Bough painted the distant view of Edinburgh which has been engraved for this collection; and you have only to look at the etching, * to see how near it is at hand.  But hills and hill people are not easily sophisticated; and if you walk out here on a summer Sunday, it is as like as not the shepherd may set his dogs upon you.  But keep an unmoved countenance; they look formidable at the charge, but their hearts are in the right place, and they will only bark and sprawl about you on the grass, unmindful of their master’s excitations.

* One of the illustrations of the First Edition.

Kirk Yetton forms the north-eastern angle of the range; thence, the Pentlands trend off to south and west.  From the summit you look over a great expanse of champaign sloping to the sea, and behold a large variety of distant hills.  There are the hills of Fife, the hills of Peebles, the Lammermoors and the Ochils, more or less mountainous in outline, more or less blue with distance.  Of the Pentlands themselves, you see a field of wild heathery peaks with a pond gleaming in the midst; and to that side the view is as desolate as if you were looking into Galloway or Applecross.  To turn to the other is like a piece of travel.  Far out in the lowlands Edinburgh shows herself, making a great smoke on clear days and spreading her suburbs about her for miles; the Castle rises darkly in the midst, and close by, Arthur’s Seat makes a bold figure in the landscape.  All around, cultivated fields, and woods, and smoking villages, and white country roads, diversify the uneven surface of the land.  Trains crawl slowly abroad upon the railway lines; little ships are tacking in the Firth; the shadow of a mountainous cloud, as large as a parish, travels before the wind; the wind itself ruffles the wood and standing corn, and sends pulses of varying colour across the landscape.  So you sit, like Jupiter upon Olympus, and look down from afar upon men’s life.  The city is as silent as a city of the dead:  from all its humming thoroughfares, not a voice, not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill.