of Byron--the Sabbath of Grahame to the Robbers of Schiller. In the
approach to Edinburgh, leisure and cheerfulness are on the road;
large spaces of rural and pastoral nature are spread openly around,
and mountains, and seas, and headlands, and vessels passing beyond
them, going like those that die, we know not whither, while the sun
is bright on their sails, and hope with them; but, in coming to this
Babylon, there is an eager haste and a hurrying on from all
quarters, towards that stupendous pile of gloom, through which no
eye can penetrate; an unceasing sound, like the enginery of an
earthquake at work, rolls from the heart of that profound and
indefinable obscurity--sometimes a faint and yellow beam of the sun
strikes here and there on the vast expanse of edifices; and
churches, and holy asylums, are dimly seen lifting up their
countless steeples and spires, like so many lightning rods to avert
the wrath of Heaven.

The entrance to Edinburgh also awakens feelings of a more pleasing
character. The rugged veteran aspect of the Old Town is agreeably
contrasted with the bright smooth forehead of the New, and there is
not such an overwhelming torrent of animal life, as to make you
pause before venturing to stem it; the noises are not so deafening,
and the occasional sound of a ballad-singer, or a Highland piper,
varies and enriches the discords; but here, a multitudinous
assemblage of harsh alarms, of selfish contentions, and of furious
carriages, driven by a fierce and insolent race, shatter the very
hearing, till you partake of the activity with which all seem as
much possessed as if a general apprehension prevailed, that the
great clock of Time would strike the doom-hour before their tasks
were done. But I must stop, for the postman with his bell, like the
betherel of some ancient "borough's town" summoning to a burial, is