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From Penrith we were whirled away over the rails to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is certainly a wonder—a wonder of historic interest, a wonder of curious old buildings, and a wonder of magnificent new ones. Here we were in the very place that Walter Scott has made us long and long to see, and were to visit the scenes that were sung in his matchless minstrelsy, and painted in his graphic romances. Here was the city where Knox, the Reformer, preached, and Mary, Queen of Scots, held her brief and stormy reign. Here we were to see Holyrood, Edinburgh Castle, and a hundred scenes identified with Scottish history, the very names of which served to help the melodious flow of the rhythm of Scott's entrancing poems. With what wondrous charms does the poet and novelist invest historic scenes! How memory carried us back to the days when the Tales of a Grandfather held us chained to their pages, as with a spell! How the Waverley Novels' scenes came thronging into imagination's eye, like the half-forgotten scenes of happy youth, when we read of the bold Scottish champions, the fierce Highlanders, and the silken courtiers, the knights, battles, spearmen, castles, hunts, feasts, and pageants, so vividly described by the Wizard of the North!

Here we are at a hotel on Princes Street, right opposite the Scott Monument, a graceful structure of Gothic arches and pinnacles, and enshrining a figure of Sir Walter and his favorite dog. The view, seen from Princes Street, reminds one very much of the pictures of Athens Restored, with its beautiful public buildings of Grecian architecture. Between Princes Street, which is in the new, and the old city is a deep ravine or valley, as it were, now occupied by the tracks of the railroad, and spanned by great stone-arched bridges. An immense embankment, called the Mound, also connects the old and new city, its slopes descending east and west into beautiful gardens towards the road-bed. Upon the Mound are the Royal Institution, Gallery of Fine Arts, the former a sort of Pantheon-looking building, and both with plenty of space around them, so that they look as if placed there expressly to be seen and admired.

Princes Street, which is one of the finest in Great Britain, runs east and west. It is entirely open upon the south side, and separated only by a railing from the lovely gardens that run down into the hollow I have mentioned, between the old and new town. Looking across the hollow, we see the old city, where the historic steeples of St. Giles and others mingle among the lofty houses in the extended panoramic view, the eastern end of which is completed by the almost impregnable old castle, rich in historic interest, which lifts its battlements from its rocky seat two hundred feet above the surrounding country, and is a grand and picturesque object. The city, both old and new, appears to be built of stone resembling our darkest granite. The old town is built upon a ridge, gradually ascending towards the castle, and is a curious old place, with its lofty eight and ten-story houses, its narrow lanes, called "wynds," or "closes," and swarming population.

The "closes" are curious affairs, being sort of narrow enclosures, running up in between lofty buildings, with only one place of ingress and egress, that could, in old times, be closed by a portcullis, the remains of some of them being still in existence, and were built as defences against incursions of the Highlanders.

Here in the old town are many streets, the names of which will be recognized by all familiar with Scott—the High Street, Grass Market, Cow Gate, and Canon Gate. We went, one afternoon, and stood in the Grass Market, amid a seething mass of humanity that fills it. Lofty old houses rise high about on all sides, every one with a history, and some of them two or three hundred years old—houses the windows of which were oft packed with eager faces to see the criminal executions here. Some of these houses, Scott says in his Heart of Mid-Lothian, were formerly the property of the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John, and still exhibit, on their points and gables, the cross of those orders in iron—houses that looked down on the furious mob that hung Captain Porteous upon the dyer's pole, over the very spot where we stood. Then, walking down towards the other extremity, we entered the Canon Gate, extending down the hill towards Holyrood Palace—Canon Gate, which was the residence of the wealthy canons of the church when Holyrood was an abbey, and after the Reformation the abode of the Scottish aristocracy. At one end of the old city stands Holyrood, at the other the castle rock rears its rugged height.

The new city is beautifully laid out in broad streets and squares, which are adorned with imposing buildings, monuments, and bronze statues of celebrated men; but I am not to give a guide-book description of Edinburgh, although there is so much that interests in its streets and buildings that one is almost tempted to do so.

The very first visit one desires to make is to the lofty old castle that overlooks the city. It is situated on an elevated basaltic rock, and is separated from the town by an esplanade about three hundred feet wide, and three hundred and fifty long. The castle is said to have been founded in the year 617, and contains many curious relics of antiquity, and is fraught with historic interest, having been the scene of so many crimes, romantic adventures, captivities, and sieges, within the past three or four hundred years—scenes that have been the most vivid in the pages of history, and formed an almost inexhaustible theme for the most graphic pictures of the novelist.

Among the most notable captures will be recollected that of the Earl of Randolph, nephew to Robert Bruce. And also, when in the possession of the English King Edward I., thirty brave fellows, guided by a young man called William Frank, who had often climbed up and down the Castle Rock to visit his sweetheart, ventured one night, in their heavy iron armor, with their swords and axes, to scale the most precipitous side overhanging the West Princes Street Gardens, and, succeeding, quickly overcame the garrison. In 1341, when the castle was again held by the English, Sir William Douglas and Sir Simon Fraser took it by stratagem and surprise in broad daylight, having sent in a cart loaded with wine, which was dexterously overturned in the gateway, so that the gate could not be closed when the Scottish soldiers rushed forward to the attack.

The broad esplanade before the castle affords a fine view, and is used as a place for drilling the troops, the castle having accommodations for two thousand men. We passed across this, and by the statue of the Duke of York, son of George III., and uncle of Queen Victoria, and the monumental cross, erected in memory of the officers of the Highland regiment who fell in the years 1857 and 1858, in the Indian Rebellion War. On over the moat and drawbridge, and through the old portcullis gate, over which was the old prison in which the Earl of Argyle, and numerous adherents of the Stuarts, were confined previous to their execution, and after passing beneath this, were fairly within the castle. One point of interest was the old sally-port, up which Dundee climbed to have a conference with the Duke of Gordon, when on his way to raise the Highland clans in favor of King James II., while the convention were assembled in the Parliament House, and were proceeding to settle the crown upon William and Mary.

Dundee, accompanied by only thirty picked men, rode swiftly along a street in the old city, nearly parallel to the present line of Princes Street, while the drums in the town were beating to arms to pursue him; and leaving his men in a by-place, clambered up the steep rock at this point, and urged the duke to accompany him, but without effect. Scott's song of "Bonnie Dundee" tells us,—