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 5 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 10 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 tessellated with sheets and blankets 15 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 20 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 inclose the view, except to the farthest east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies the road to 25 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. 330 “O lang, lang, may the ladies sit, Wi' their fans into their hand, These are the main features of the scene roughly sketched. How they are all tilted by the inclination of the ground, how each stands out in delicate relief against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person on the spot, and turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in one comprehensive look. It is the character 5 of such a prospect to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a hedge row, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see 10 children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of 15 roofs. At one of the innumerable windows, you watch a figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs, you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a bird goes 20 dipping evenly over the housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here you are in the meantime, on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked upon by monumental buildings. Return thither on some clear, dark, moonless night, 25 with a ring of frost in the air, and only a star or two set sparsely in the vault of heaven; and you will find a sight as stimulating as the hoariest summit of the Alps. The solitude seems perfect; the patient astronomer, flat on his back under the Observatory dome and spying heaven's 30 secrets, is your only neighbor; and yet from all round you there comes up the dull hum of the city, the tramp of countless people marching out of time, the rattle of carriages and the continuous jingle of the tramway bells. An hour or so before, the gas was turned on; lamplighters scoured the city; in every house, from kitchen to attic, the windows kindled and gleamed forth into the dusk. And so now, although the town lies blue and darkling on her hills, 5 innumerable spots of the bright element shine far and near along the pavements and upon the high façades. Moving lights of the railway pass and repass below the stationary lights upon the bridge. Lights burn in the Jail. Lights burn high up on the Castle turrets; they 10 burn low down in Greenside or along the Park. They run out, one beyond the other, into the dark country. They walk in a procession down to Leith, and shine singly far along Leith pier. Thus the plan of the city and her suburbs is mapped out upon the ground of blackness, as 15 when a child pricks a drawing full of pin holes and exposes it before a candle; not the darkest night of winter can conceal her high station and fanciful design; every evening in the year she proceeds to illuminate herself in honor of her own beauty; and as if to complete the scheme or 20 rather as if some prodigal Pharaoh were beginning to extend to the adjacent sea and country-half-way over to Fife, there is an outpost of light upon Inchkeith, and far to seaward, yet another on the May. And while you are looking, across upon the Castle 25 Hill, the drums and bugles begin to recall the scattered garrison; the air thrills with the sound; the bugles sing aloud; and the last rising flourish mounts and melts into the darkness like a star: a martial swan-song, fitly rounding in the labors of the day. Is SUGGESTIONS: This sketch of Stevenson's is a strikingly clear description of a very difficult and complex scene. the point of view consistently maintained? What devices are employed to keep it constantly in the reader's mind? What characteristic of the description is indicated in Stevenson's remark, "The picture is a matter for a person on the spot, and turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind together in one comprehensive look." Test the psychological accuracy of the passage immediately following this sentence the one beginning "It is the character of such a prospect, etc." ADAPTED SUBJECTS Describe, from a stationary point of view, a landscape with which you are familiar. Describe the panorama from a high dome or tower. Describe a city, from a point of view on a "sky-scraper." EDINBURGH, FROM THE BALLOON A. T. QUILLER-COUCH (From Chap. 33 of St. Ives,* by Robert Louis Stevenson. This story, unfinished by Stevenson, was completed by Mr. Quiller-Couch, whose work begins at Chap. 31.) [Note: The Vicomte de Saint-Yves, who is flying from the sheriff's officers, has taken refuge in a balloon which is about to ascend from a fair at Edinburgh.] I TURNED to scan the earth we were leaving—I had not guessed how rapidly. We contemplated it from the height of six hundred feet, or so Byfield asserted after consulting his barometer. He added that this was a mere nothing; the wonder was that 5 the balloon had risen at all with one-half the total folly of Edinburgh clinging to the car. I passed the possible inaccuracy and certain ill-temper of this calculation. He had (he explained) made jettison of at least a hundredweight of sand ballast. I could only hope it had fallen 10 on my cousin. To me, six hundred feet appeared a very respectable eminence. And the view was ravishing. *Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1897. pp. 372-3, 379-80. The Lunardi mounting through a stagnant calm in a line almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a heaven of exquisite blue. Below us, by some trick of eyesight, the country had 5 grown concave, its horizons curving up like the rim of a shallow bowl—a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with seafog, but to our eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow. Upon it the traveling shadow of the balloon became no shadow but a stain; an amethyst 10 (you might call it) purged of all grosser properties than color and lucency. At times thrilled by no perceptible wind, rather by the pulse of the sun's rays, the froth shook and parted; and then behold, deep in the crevasses, vignetted and shining, an acre or two of the earth of 15 man's business and fret-tilled slopes of the Lothians, ships dotted on the Forth, the capital like a hive that some child had smoked-the ear of fancy could almost hear it buzzing. I snatched the glass from Byfield, and brought it to 20 focus upon one of these peepshow rifts: and lo! at the foot of the shaft, imaged, as it were, far down in a luminous well, a green hillside and three figures standing. A white speck fluttered; and fluttered until the rift closed again. Flora's handkerchief! Blessings on the brave 25 hand that waved it!—at a moment when (as I have since heard and knew without need of hearing) her heart was down in her shoes, or, to speak accurately, in the milkmaid Janet's. Singular in many things, she was at one with the rest of her sex in its native and incurable distrust 30 of man's inventions. I am bound to say that my own faith in aërostatics was a plant—a sensitive plant of extremely tender growth. But to my unspeakable relief the Lunardi floated upward, and continued to float, almost without a tremor. |