Librarian in Edinburgh Available to Purchase

Edinburgh has been so “well spoken of” by travellers that her citizens, lulled by the homage, have not always cared to enrich Nature's endowment of her, or even to follow her eighteenth century town planners adventurously, in their stride. Despite bungaltowns and tenement blocks of sullen demeanour, she still is a city of much beauty, with more character than charm. Indeed her charm is fitful and fleeting. On a day of sunny and breezy sparkle her grim grey and black stones are lighted with retiring pastel colours; and how often, early on winter evenings, in wind or before rain, have I paused under the Black Watch Highlander on the Mound to gaze on a jewelled city of long files and festoons of light. Then her beauty is plain to the dullest observer.