made their escape and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in white wine to entertain her loveliness.  Behind and overhead, lie the Queen’s Park, from Muschat’s Cairn to Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret’s Loch, and the long wall of Salisbury Crags:  and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipitous slope, the eye rises to the top of Arthur’s Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design.  This upon your left.  Upon the right, the roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one above another to where the citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of bastions on the western sky. — Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon; and at the same instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson’s flagstaff close at hand, and, far away, a puff of smoke followed by a report bursts from the half-moon battery at the Castle.  This is the time-gun by which people set their watches, as far as the sea coast or in hill farms upon the Pentlands. — To complete the view, the eye enfilades Princes Street, black with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley between the Old Town and the New:  here, full of railway trains and stepped over by the high North Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green with trees and gardens.

On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself nor has it so exceptional an outlook; and yet even here it commands a striking prospect.  A gully separates it from the New Town.  This is Greenside, where witches were burned and tournaments held in former days.  Down that almost precipitous bank, Bothwell launched his horse, and so first, as they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary.  It is now tesselated with sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beating carpets is rarely absent.  Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith camps on the seaside with her forest of masts; Leith roads are full of ships at anchor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith Island; the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May; the towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the opposite coast; and the hills enclose the view, except to the farthest east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea.  There lies the road to Norway:  a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour, from whence they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland.

’O lang, lang, may the ladies sit,
Wi’ their fans into their hand,
Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the land!’