and yet, in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and
a butter-churn; comparisons apart, it ranks among the
vilest of men's handiworks. But the chief feature is an
unfinished range of columns, 'the Modern Ruin' as it has
been called, an imposing object from far and near, and
giving Edinburgh, even from the sea, that false air; of a
Modern Athens which has earned for her so many slighting
speeches. It was meant to be a National Monument; and
its present state is a very suitable monument to certain
national characteristics. The old Observatory - a quaint
brown building on the edge of the steep - and the new
Observatory - a classical edifice with a dome - occupy
the central portion of the summit. All these are
scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some sheep.

The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man's
injustice to the dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather
more handsomely commemorated than Burns. Immediately
below, in the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert
Fergusson, Burns's master in his art, who died insane
while yet a stripling; and if Dugald Stewart has been
somewhat too boisterously acclaimed, the Edinburgh poet,
on the other hand, is most unrighteously forgotten. The
votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all ranks in
Scotland and more remarkable for number than discretion,
eagerly suppress all mention of the lad who handed to him
the poetic impulse and, up to the time when he grew
famous, continued to influence him in his manner and the
choice of subjects. Burns himself not only acknowledged
his debt in a fragment of autobiography, but erected a