Would I be with looking at his crown, especially if
it had jewels in it such as I saw in the regalia at the Tower of
London. Now Edinburgh seems to strike me in very much the same way.
Prince Street is its crown, and whenever I think of this city it will
be of this magnificent street and the things that can be seen from it.
It is a great thing for a street to have one side of it taken away and
sunk out of sight so that there is a clear view far and wide, and
visitors can stand and look at nearly everything that is worth seeing
in the whole town, as if they was in the front seats of the balcony in
a theatre, and looking on the stage. You know I am very fond of the
theatre, madam, but I never saw anything in the way of what they call
spectacular representation that came near Edinburgh as seen from Prince
Street.
But as I said in one of my first letters, I am not going to write about
things and places that you can get much better description of in books,
and so I won't take up any time in telling how we stand at the window
of our room at the Royal Hotel, and look out at the Old Town standing
like a forest of tall houses on the other side of the valley, with the
great castle perched up high above them, and all the hills and towers
and the streets all spread out below us, with Scott's monument right in
front, with everybody he ever wrote about standing on brackets, which
stick out everywhere from the bottom up to the very top of the
monument, which is higher than the tallest house, and looks like a
steeple without a church to it. It is the most beautiful thing of the
kind I ever saw, and I have made out, or think I have, nearly every one
of the figures that's carved on it.
I think I shall like the Scotch people very much, but just now there is
one thing about them that stands up as high above their other good
points as the castle does above the rest of the city, and that is the
feeling they have for anybody who has done anything to make his
fellow-countrymen proud of him. A famous Scotchman cannot die without
being pretty promptly born again in stone or bronze, and put in some
open place with seats convenient for people to sit and look at him. I
like this; glory ought to begin at home.
Letter Number Twenty-one
EDINBURGH
Jone being just as lively on his legs as he ever was in his life,
thanks to the waters of Buxton, and I having the rheumatism now only in
my arm, which I don't need to walk with, we have gone pretty much all
over Edinburgh, and a great place it is to walk in, so far as variety
goes.
