The Ayrshire Legatees | Page 7

and
therefore many of his flights and observations must be taken with an
allowance on the score of his youth.
LETTER IV
Andrew Pringle, Esq., Advocate, to the Rev. Charles Snodgrass--
LONDON.
My Dear Friend--We have at last reached London, after a stormy
passage of seven days. The accommodation in the smacks looks
extremely inviting in port, and in fine weather, I doubt not, is

comfortable, even at sea; but in February, and in such visitations of the
powers of the air as we have endured, a balloon must be a far better
vehicle than all the vessels that have been constructed for passengers
since the time of Noah. In the first place, the waves of the atmosphere
cannot be so dangerous as those of the ocean, being but "thin air"; and I
am sure they are not so disagreeable; then the speed of the balloon is so
much greater,--and it would puzzle Professor Leslie to demonstrate that
its motions are more unsteady; besides, who ever heard of sea-sickness
in a balloon? the consideration of which alone would, to any reasonable
person actually suffering under the pains of that calamity, be deemed
more than an equivalent for all the little fractional difference of danger
between the two modes of travelling. I shall henceforth regard it as a
fine characteristic trait of our national prudence, that, in their journies
to France and Flanders, the Scottish witches always went by air on
broom-sticks and benweeds, instead of venturing by water in sieves,
like those of England. But the English are under the influence of a
maritime genius.
When we had got as far up the Thames as Gravesend, the wind and tide
came against us, so that the vessel was obliged to anchor, and I availed
myself of the circumstance, to induce the family to disembark and go to
London by LAND; and I esteem it a fortunate circumstance that we did
so, the day, for the season, being uncommonly fine. After we had taken
some refreshment, I procured places in a stage-coach for my mother
and sister, and, with the Doctor, mounted myself on the outside. My
father's old-fashioned notions boggled a little at first to this
arrangement, which he thought somewhat derogatory to his ministerial
dignity; but his scruples were in the end overruled.
The country in this season is, of course, seen to disadvantage, but still it
exhibits beauty enough to convince us what England must be when in
leaf. The old gentleman's admiration of the increasing signs of what he
called civilisation, as we approached London, became quite eloquent;
but the first view of the city from Blackheath (which, by the bye, is a
fine common, surrounded with villas and handsome houses)
overpowered his faculties, and I shall never forget the impression it
made on myself. The sun was declined towards the horizon; vast

masses of dark low-hung clouds were mingled with the smoky canopy,
and the dome of St. Paul's, like the enormous idol of some terrible deity,
throned amidst the smoke of sacrifices and magnificence, darkness, and
mystery, presented altogether an object of vast sublimity. I felt touched
with reverence, as if I was indeed approaching the city of THE
HUMAN POWERS.
The distant view of Edinburgh is picturesque and romantic, but it
affects a lower class of our associations. It is, compared to that of
London, what the poem of the Seasons is with respect to Paradise
Lost--the castellated descriptions of Walter Scott to the Darkness of
Byron--the Sabbath of Grahame to the Robbers of Schiller. In the
approach to Edinburgh, leisure and cheerfulness are on the road; large
spaces of rural and pastoral nature are spread openly around, and
mountains, and seas, and headlands, and vessels passing beyond them,
going like those that die, we know not whither, while the sun is bright
on their sails, and hope with them; but, in coming to this Babylon, there
is an eager haste and a hurrying on from all quarters, towards that
stupendous pile of gloom, through which no eye can penetrate; an
unceasing sound, like the enginery of an earthquake at work, rolls from
the heart of that profound and indefinable obscurity--sometimes a faint
and yellow beam of the sun strikes here and there on the vast expanse
of edifices; and churches, and holy asylums, are dimly seen lifting up
their countless steeples and spires, like so many lightning rods to avert
the wrath of Heaven.
The entrance to Edinburgh also awakens feelings of a more pleasing
character. The rugged veteran aspect of the Old Town is agreeably
contrasted with the bright smooth forehead of the New, and there is not
such an overwhelming torrent of animal life, as to make you pause
before venturing to stem it; the noises are not so deafening, and the
occasional