`Aweel! the day's just aboot the ord'nar', an' I wouldna won'er if

we saw the sun afore nicht!'
But what loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and

where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to
the sombre beauty of that old grey town of the North? `Grey! why,

it is grey or grey and gold, or grey and gold and blue, or grey and
gold and blue and green, or grey and gold and blue and green and

purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground!
But take it when it is most sombrely grey, where is another such

grey city?'
So says one of her lovers, and so the great army of lovers would

say, had they the same gift of language; for
`Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be, . . .

Yea, an imperial city that might hold
Five time a hundred noble towns in fee. . . .

Thus should her towers be raised; with vicinage
Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets,

As if to indicate, `mid choicest seats
Of Art, abiding Nature's majesty.'

We ate a hasty breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out
for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps the most pleasurable

sensation in the world. Francesca was ready first, and, having
mentioned the fact several times ostentatiously, she went into the

drawing-room to wait and read the Scotsman. When we went thither a
few minutes later we found that she had disappeared.

"She is below, of course," said Salemina. "She fancies that we
shall feel more ashamed at our tardiness if we find her sitting on

the hall bench in silent martyrdom."
There was no one in the hall, however, save Susanna, who inquired if

we would see the cook before going out.
"We have no time now, Susanna," I remarked. "We are anxious to have

a walk before the weather changes, if possible, but we shall be out
for luncheon and in for dinner, and Mrs. M'Collop may give us

anything she pleases. Do you know where Miss Francesca is?"
"I cudna s---"

"Certainly, of course you couldn't; but I wonder if Mrs. M'Collop
saw her?"

Mrs. M'Collop appeared from the basement, and vouchsafed the
information that she had seen `the young leddy rinnin' after the

regiment.'
"Running after the regiment!" repeated Salemina automatically.

"What a reversal of the laws of nature? Why, in Berlin, it was
always the regiment that used to run after her!"

We learned in what direction the soldiers had gone, and pursuing the
same path found the young lady on the corner of a street near by.

She was quite unabashed. "You don't know what you have missed!" she
said excitedly. "Let us get into this tram, and possibly we can

head them off somewhere. They may be going into battle, and if so,
my heart's blood is at their service. It is one of those

experiences that come only once in a lifetime. There were pipes and
there were kilts! (I didn't suppose they ever really wore them

outside of the theatre!) When you have seen the kilts swinging,
Salemina, you will never be the same woman afterwards! You never

expected to see the Olympian gods walking, did you? Perhaps you
thought they always sat on practicable rocks and made stiff

gestures, from the elbow, as they do in the Wagner operas? Well,
these gods walked, if you can call the inspired gait a walk! If

there is a single spinster left in Scotland, it is because none of
these ever asked her to marry him. Ah, how grateful I ought to be

that I am free to say `yes', if a kilt ever asks me to be his! Poor
Penelope, yoked to your commonplace trousered Beresford! (I wish

the tram would go faster!) You must capture one of them, by fair
means or foul, Penelope, and Salemina and I will hold him down while

you paint him,--there they are, they are there somewhere, don't you
hear them?"

There they were indeed, filing down the grassy slopes of the
Gardens, swinging across one of the stone bridges, and winding up

the Castlehill to the Esplanade like a long glittering snake; the
streamers of their Highland bonnets waving, their arms glistening in

the sun, and the bagpipes playing `The March of the Cameron Men.'
The pipers themselves were mercifully hidden from us on that first

occasion, and it was well, for we could never have borne another
feather's weight of ecstasy.

It was in Princes Street that we had alighted,--named thus for the
prince who afterwards became George IV.--and I hope he was, and is,

properly grateful. It ought never to be called a street, this most
magnificent of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that

interdict of the Court of Session in 1774 which prevented the
Gradgrinds of the day from erecting buildings along its south side,-

-a sordidscheme that would have been the very superfluity of
naughtiness.

It was an envious Glasgow body who said grudgingly, as he came out
of Waverley Station, and gazed along its splendid length for the

first time, "Weel, wi' a' their haverin', it's but half a street
onyway!"--which always reminded me of the Western farmer who came

from his native plains to the beautiful Berkshire hills. "I've
always heard o' this scenery," he said. "Blamed if I can find any

scenery; but if there was, nobody could see it, there's so much high
ground in the way!"

To think that not so much more than a hundred years ago Princes
Street was nought but a straight country road, the `Lang Dykes' and

the `Lang Gait,' as it was called.
We looked down over the grassy chasm that separates the New from the

Old Town; looked our first on Arthur's Seat, that crouching lion of
a mountain; saw the Corstorphine Hill, and Calton heights, and

Salisbury Crags, and finally that stupendous bluff of rock that
culminates so majestically in Edinburgh Castle. There is something

else which, like Susanna Crum's name, is absolutely and ideally
right! Stevenson calls it one of the most satisfactory crags in

nature--a Bass rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden, shaken by
passing trains, carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and

describing its warlike shadow over the liveliest and brightest
thoroughfare of the new town. It dominates the whole countryside

from water and land. The men who would have the courage to build
such a castle in such a spot are all dead; all dead, and the world

is infinitely more comfortable without them. They are all gone, and
no more like unto them will ever be born, and we can most of us

count upon dying safely in our beds, of diseases bred of modern
civilisation. But I am glad that those old barbarians, those

rudimentary creatures working their way up into the divine likeness,
when they were not hanging, drawing, quartering, torturing, and

chopping their neighbours, and using their heads in conventional
patterns on the tops of gate-posts, did devote their leisure

intervals to rearing fortresses like this. Edinburgh Castle could
not be conceived, much less built, nowadays, when all our energy is

consumed in bettering the condition of the `submerged tenth'! What
did they care about the `masses,' that `regal race that is now no

more,' when they were hewing those blocks of rugged rock and piling
them against the sky-line on the top of that great stone mountain!

It amuses me to think how much more picturesque they left the world,
and how much better we shall leave it; though if an artist were

requested to distribute individual awards to different generations,
you could never persuade him to give first prizes to the centuries

that produced steam laundries, trolleys, X rays, and sanitary
plumbing.

What did they reck of Peace Congresses and bloodless arbitrations
when they lighted the beacon-fires, flaming out to the gudeman and