their accomplices would be driven to work, like the Jews
of yore, with the trowel in one hand and the defensive
cutlass in the other; and as soon as one of these masonic
wonders had been consummated, right-minded iconoclasts
should fall thereon and make an end of it at once.

Possibly these words may meet the eye of a builder
or two. It is no use asking them to employ an architect;
for that would be to touch them in a delicate quarter,
and its use would largely depend on what architect they
were minded to call in. But let them get any architect
in the world to point out any reasonably well-
proportioned villa, not his own design; and let them
reproduce that model to satiety.


CHAPTER VIII.
THE CALTON HILL.


THE east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy
hill, of no great elevation, which the town embraces.
The old London road runs on one side of it; while the New
Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes the
circuit. You mount by stairs in a cutting of the rock to
find yourself in a field of monuments. Dugald Stewart
has the honours of situation and architecture; Burns is
memorialised lower down upon a spur; Lord Nelson, as
befits a sailor, gives his name to the top-gallant of the
Calton Hill. This latter erection has been differently