Penelopes Experiences in Scotland | Page 9

weight of
ecstasy.
It was in Princes Street that we had alighted,--named thus for the prince
who afterwards became George IV.--and I hope he was, and is,
properly grateful. It ought never to be called a street, this most
magnificent of terraces, and the world has cause to bless that interdict
of the Court of Session in 1774 which prevented the Gradgrinds of the
day from erecting buildings along its south side,- -a sordid scheme that
would have been the very superfluity of naughtiness.
It was an envious Glasgow body who said grudgingly, as he came out
of Waverley Station, and gazed along its splendid length for the first
time, "Weel, wi' a' their haverin', it's but half a street onyway!"--which
always reminded me of the Western farmer who came from his native
plains to the beautiful Berkshire hills. "I've always heard o' this
scenery," he said. "Blamed if I can find any scenery; but if there was,
nobody could see it, there's so much high ground in the way!"
To think that not so much more than a hundred years ago Princes Street
was nought but a straight country road, the `Lang Dykes' and the `Lang
Gait,' as it was called.
We looked down over the grassy chasm that separates the New from
the Old Town; looked our first on Arthur's Seat, that crouching lion of a
mountain; saw the Corstorphine Hill, and Calton heights, and Salisbury
Crags, and finally that stupendous bluff of rock that culminates so
majestically in Edinburgh Castle. There is something else which, like
Susanna Crum's name, is absolutely and ideally right! Stevenson calls it

one of the most satisfactory crags in nature--a Bass rock upon dry land,
rooted in a garden, shaken by passing trains, carrying a crown of
battlements and turrets, and describing its warlike shadow over the
liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the new town. It dominates the
whole countryside from water and land. The men who would have the
courage to build such a castle in such a spot are all dead; all dead, and
the world is infinitely more comfortable without them. They are all
gone, and no more like unto them will ever be born, and we can most
of us count upon dying safely in our beds, of diseases bred of modern
civilisation. But I am glad that those old barbarians, those rudimentary
creatures working their way up into the divine likeness, when they were
not hanging, drawing, quartering, torturing, and chopping their
neighbours, and using their heads in conventional patterns on the tops
of gate-posts, did devote their leisure intervals to rearing fortresses like
this. Edinburgh Castle could not be conceived, much less built,
nowadays, when all our energy is consumed in bettering the condition
of the `submerged tenth'! What did they care about the `masses,' that
`regal race that is now no more,' when they were hewing those blocks
of rugged rock and piling them against the sky-line on the top of that
great stone mountain! It amuses me to think how much more
picturesque they left the world, and how much better we shall leave it;
though if an artist were requested to distribute individual awards to
different generations, you could never persuade him to give first prizes
to the centuries that produced steam laundries, trolleys, X rays, and
sanitary plumbing.
What did they reck of Peace Congresses and bloodless arbitrations
when they lighted the beacon-fires, flaming out to the gudeman and his
sons ploughing or sowing in the Lang Dykes the news that their
`ancient enemies of England had crossed the Tweed'!
I am the most peaceful person in the world, but the Castle was too
much for my imagination. I was mounted and off and away from the
first moment I gazed upon its embattled towers, heard the pipers in the
distance, and saw the Black Watch swinging up the green steps where
the huge fortress `holds its state.' The modern world had vanished, and
my steed was galloping, galloping, galloping back into the

place-of-the-things-that-are-past, traversing centuries at every leap.
`To arms! Let every banner in Scotland float defiance to the breeze!'
(So I heard my new-born imaginary spirit say to my real one.) `Yes,
and let the Deacon Convener unfurl the sacred Blue Blanket, under
which every liege burgher of the kingdom is bound to answer summons!
The bale-fires are gleaming, giving alarm to Hume, Haddington,
Dunbar, Dalkeith, and Eggerhope. Rise, Stirling, Fife, and the North!
All Scotland will be under arms in two hours. One bale-fire: the
English are in motion! Two: they are advancing! Four in a row: they
are of great strength! All men in arms west of Edinburgh muster there!
All eastward, at Haddington! And every Englishman caught in Scotland
is lawfully the prisoner of whoever takes him!' (What am