the Tower of Babel or Babylon, did indeed give us pause—­but ere we had leisure to ruminate on the shortness of human life, we broke through between the leaders and the wheels with a crash of leathern breeching, dismounted collars, riven harness, and tumbling of enormous horses that was perilous to hear; when, as Sin and Satan would have it—­would you believe it?—­there, twenty kilts deep at the least, was the same accursed Highland regiment, the forty-second, with fixed bayonets, and all its pipers in the van, the pibroch yelling, squeaking, squealing, grunting, growling, roaring, as if it had only that very instant broken out—­so, suddenly to the right—­about went the bag-pipe-haunted mare, and away up the Mound, past the pictures of Irish Giants—­Female Dwarfs—­Albinos—­an Elephant endorsed with towers—­Tigers and Lions of all sorts—­and a large wooden building, like a pyramid, in which there was the thundering of cannon—­for the battle, we rather think, of Camperdown was going on—­the Bank of Scotland seemed to sink into the NorLoch—­one gleam through the window of the eyes of the Director-General—­and to be sure how we did make the street-stalls of the Lawn-market spin!  The man in St. Giles’s steeple was playing his one o’clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our career—­in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by—­and down through one long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the King’s-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their hands and cried, Hurra—­hurra—­hurra—­without stop or stay, up the rocky way that leads to St. Anthony’s Well and Chapel—­and now it was manifest that we were bound for the summit of Arthur’s Seat.  We hope that we were sufficiently thankful that a direction was not taken towards Salisbury Crags, where we should have been dashed into many million pieces.  Free now from even the slightest suburban impediment, obstacle, or interruption, we began to eye our gradually rising situation in life—­and looking over our shoulder, the sight of city and sea was indeed magnificent.  There in the distance rose North Berwick Law—­but though we have plenty of time now for description, we had scant time then for beholding perhaps the noblest scenery in Scotland.  Up with us—­up with us into the clouds—­and just as St. Giles’s bells ceased to jingle, and both girths broke, we crowned the summit, and sat on horseback like king Arthur himself, eight hundred feet above the level of the sea!

Blackwood’s Magazine.

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Select Biography

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No.  LVIII.

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LELAND.