workmen, may dance in their own houses to the palace
music. And in this the palace is typical. There is a
spark among the embers; from time to time the old volcano
smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still
wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a
capital and half a country town, the whole city leads a
double existence; it has long trances of the one and
flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles,
it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are
armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see
the troops marshalled on the high parade; and at night
after the early winter even-fall, and in the morning
before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad
over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave
judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of
imperial deliberations. Close by in the High Street
perhaps the trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon;
and you see a troop of citizens in tawdry masquerade;
tabard above, heather-mixture trowser below, and the men
themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic by-
standers. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread
the streets with a better presence. And yet these are
the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who are about to
proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom before two-score
boys, and thieves, and hackney-coachmen. Meanwhile every
hour the bell of the University rings out over the hum of
the streets, and every hour a double tide of students,
coming and going, fills the deep archways. And lastly,
one night in the springtime - or say one morning rather,
at the peep of day - late folk may hear voices of many