water; just as there are men who must read something, if it
were only 'Bradshaw's Guide.' But there is a romance about
the matter, after all. Probably the table has more
devotees than love; and I am sure that food is much more
generally entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, as
Walt Whitman would say, that you are any the less immortal
for that? The true materialism is to be ashamed of what we
are. To detect the flavour of an olive is no less a piece
of human perfection than to find beauty in the colours of
the sunset.

*

For the country people to see Edinburgh on her hill-tops,
is one thing; it is another for the citizen, from the thick
of his affairs, to overlook the country. It should be a
genial and ameliorating influence in life; it should prompt
good thoughts and remind him of Nature's unconcern: that he
can watch from day to day, as he trots officeward, how the
spring green brightens in the wood, or the field grows
black under a moving ploughshare. I have been tempted, in
this connection, to deplore the slender faculties of the
human race, with its penny-whistle of a voice, its dull
ears, and its narrow range of sight. If you could see as
people are to see in heaven, if you had eyes such as you
can fancy for a superior race, if you could take clear note
of the objects of vision, not only a few yards, but a few
miles from where you stand:--think how agreeably your sight
would be entertained, how pleasantly your thoughts would be
diversified, as you walk the Edinburgh streets! For you