Chapter I
Introductory
The ancient and famous metropolis1 of the North sits overlooking a windy estuary2 from the slope and summit of three hills. No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects3. From her tall precipice4 and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch at sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth expands into the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi.
But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest5 climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched6 with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland7 hills. The weather is raw and boisterous8 in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory9 in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor10, among bleak11 winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted12 to envy them their fate. For all who love shelter and the blessings13 of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting14 against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing15 place of residence. Many such aspire16 angrily after that Somewhere-else of the imagination, where all troubles are supposed to end. They lean over the great bridge which joins the New Town with the Old — that windiest spot, or high altar, in this northern temple of the winds — and watch the trains smoking out from under them and vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. Happy the passengers who shake off the dust of Edinburgh, and have heard for the last time the cry of the east wind among her chimney-tops! And yet the place establishes an interest in people’s hearts; go where they will, they find no city of the same distinction; go where they will, they take a pride in their old home.
Venice, it has been said, differs from another cities in the sentiment which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; she only, a famous fair one, counts lovers in her train. And, indeed, even by her kindest friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These like her for many reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. They like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso18 dotes upon his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of the term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting. She is pre-eminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set herself off with some Greek airs, and erected19 classic temples on her crags. In a word, and above all, she is a curiosity. The Palace of Holyrood has been left aside in the growth of Edinburgh, and stands grey and silent in a workman’s quarter and among breweries20 and gas works. It is a house of many memories. Great people of yore, kings and queens, buffoons21 and grave ambassadors, played their stately farce23 for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has lasted deep into the night, — murder has been done in its chambers24. There Prince Charlie held his phantom25 levees, and in a very gallant26 manner represented a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things of clay are mingled27 with the dust, the king’s crown itself is shown for sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these charges. For fifty weeks together, it is no more than a show for tourists and a museum of old furniture; but on the fifty-first, behold28 the palace reawakened and mimicking29 its past. The Lord Commissioner30, a kind of stage sovereign, sits among stage courtiers; a coach and six and clattering31 escort come and go before the gate; at night, the windows are lighted up, and its near neighbours, the 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 abdicated32, and still wears, in parody33, her metropolitan34 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 Isles35, it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are armed men and cannon36 in the citadel37 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 laggard38 winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles39. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by in the High Street perhaps the trumpets40 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 trudging41 in the mud among unsympathetic by-standers. The grooms42 of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a better presence. And yet these are the Heralds43 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 men singing a psalm44 in unison45 from a church on one side of the old High Street; and a little after, or perhaps a little before, the sound of many men singing a psalm in unison from another church on the opposite side of the way. There will be something in the words above the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to see brethren dwelling46 together in unity47. And the late folk will tell themselves that all this singing denotes the conclusion of two yearly ecclesiastical parliaments — the parliaments of Churches which are brothers in many admirable virtues48, but not specially49 like brothers in this particular of a tolerant and peaceful life.
Again, meditative50 people will find a charm in a certain consonancy between the aspect of the city and its odd and stirring history. Few places, if any, offer a more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye. In the very midst stands one of the most satisfactory crags in nature — a Bass22 Rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden shaken by passing trains, carrying a crown of battlements and turrets51, and describing its war-like shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the new town. From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, the unwashed look down upon the open squares and gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning themselves along Princes Street, with its mile of commercial palaces all beflagged upon some great occasion, see, across a gardened valley set with statues, where the washings of the Old Town flutter in the breeze at its high windows. And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of architecture! In this one valley, where the life of the town goes most busily forward, there may be seen, shown one above and behind another by the accidents of the ground, buildings in almost every style upon the globe. Egyptian and Greek temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires17, are huddled53 one over another in a most admired disorder54; while, above all, the brute55 mass of the Castle and the summit of Arthur’s Seat look down upon these imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works of Nature may look down the monuments of Art. But Nature is a more indiscriminate patroness than we imagine, and in no way frightened of a strong effect. The birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere and daylight clothe the eternal rock and yesterday’s imitation portico56; and as the soft northern sunshine throws out everything into a glorified57 distinctness — or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to burn in the high windows across the valley — the feeling grows upon you that this also is a piece of nature in the most intimate sense; that this profusion58 of eccentricities59, this dream in masonry60 and living rock, is not a drop-scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality, connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all the capitals of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep ledgers61, and attend church, and have sold their immortal62 portion to a daily paper. By all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half deserted63 and leaning towards decay; birds we might admit in profusion, the play of the sun and winds, and a few gipsies encamped in the chief thoroughfare; but these citizens with their cabs and tramways, their trains and posters, are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque64 sites with a grand human indifference65. To see them thronging66 by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges67 on the absurd, is not the least striking feature of the place. 1
1 These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my native town, and a proportionable pleasure to our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news caused me both pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for wounded fellow-townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accusations68? Small blame to them if they keep ledgers: ’tis an excellent business habit. Churchgoing is not, that ever I heard, a subject of reproach; decency69 of linen70 is a mark of prosperous affairs, and conscious moral rectitude one of the tokens of good living. It is not their fault it the city calls for something more specious71 by way of inhabitants. A man in a frock-coat looks out of place upon an Alp or Pyramid, although he has the virtues of a Peabody and the talents of a Bentham. And let them console themselves — they do as well as anybody else; the population of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure on the same romantic stage. To the Glasgow people I would say only one word, but that is of gold; I Have Not Yet Written a Book About Glasgow.
And the story of the town is as eccentric as its appearance. For centuries it was a capital thatched with heather, and more than once, in the evil days of English invasion, it has gone up in flame to heaven, a beacon72 to ships at sea. It was the jousting-ground of jealous nobles, not only on Greenside, or by the King’s Stables, where set tournaments were fought to the sound of trumpets and under the authority of the royal presence, but in every alley52 where there was room to cross swords, and in the main street, where popular tumult73 under the Blue Blanket alternated with the brawls74 of outlandish clansmen and retainers. Down in the palace John Knox reproved his queen in the accents of modern democracy. In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows’ nests among the buttresses75 of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat76, James VI., would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the Castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal77 fanatics78, the Sweet Singers, haggard from long exposure on the moors79, sat day and night with ‘tearful psalmns’ to see Edinburgh consumed with fire from heaven, like another Sodom or Gomorrah. There, in the Grass-market, stiff-necked, covenanting80 heroes, offered up the often unnecessary, but not less honourable81, sacrifice of their lives, and bade eloquent82 farewell to sun, moon, and stars, and earthly friendships, or died silent to the roll of drums. Down by yon outlet83 rode Grahame of Claverhouse and his thirty dragoons, with the town beating to arms behind their horses’ tails — a sorry handful thus riding for their lives, but with a man at the head who was to return in a different temper, make a dash that staggered Scotland to the heart, and die happily in the thick of fight. There Aikenhead was hanged for a piece of boyish incredulity; there, a few years afterwards, David Hume ruined Philosophy and Faith, an undisturbed and well-reputed citizen; and thither84, in yet a few years more, Burns came from the plough-tail, as to an academy of gilt85 unbelief and artificial letters. There, when the great exodus86 was made across the valley, and the New Town began to spread abroad its draughty parallelograms, and rear its long frontage on the opposing hill, there was such a flitting, such a change of domicile and dweller87, as was never excelled in the history of cities: the cobbler succeeded the earl; the beggar ensconced himself by the judge’s chimney; what had been a palace was used as a pauper88 refuge; and great mansions89 were so parcelled out among the least and lowest in society, that the hearthstone of the old proprietor90 was thought large enough to be partitioned off into a bedroom by the new.
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metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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estuary
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| n.河口，江口 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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vilest
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| adj.卑鄙的( vile的最高级 )；可耻的；极坏的；非常讨厌的 | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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highland
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| n.(pl.)高地，山地 | |
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boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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purgatory
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| n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的 | |
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survivor
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| n.生存者，残存者，幸存者 | |
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bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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harassing
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| v.侵扰，骚扰( harass的现在分词 )；不断攻击（敌人） | |
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aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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virtuoso
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| n.精于某种艺术或乐器的专家，行家里手 | |
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ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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breweries
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| 酿造厂，啤酒厂( brewery的名词复数 ) | |
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buffoons
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| n.愚蠢的人( buffoon的名词复数 )；傻瓜；逗乐小丑；滑稽的人 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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mimicking
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| v.（尤指为了逗乐而）模仿( mimic的现在分词 )；酷似 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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abdicated
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| 放弃（职责、权力等）( abdicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 退位，逊位 | |
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parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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laggard
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| n.落后者；adj.缓慢的，落后的 | |
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bugles
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| 妙脆角，一种类似薯片但做成尖角或喇叭状的零食； 号角( bugle的名词复数 )； 喇叭； 匍匐筋骨草； （装饰女服用的）柱状玻璃（或塑料）小珠 | |
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trumpets
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| 喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 )； 小号； 喇叭形物； （尤指）绽开的水仙花 | |
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trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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grooms
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| n.新郎( groom的名词复数 )；马夫v.照料或梳洗（马等）( groom的第三人称单数 )；使做好准备；训练；（给动物）擦洗 | |
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heralds
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| n.使者( herald的名词复数 )；预报者；预兆；传令官v.预示( herald的第三人称单数 )；宣布（好或重要） | |
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psalm
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| n.赞美诗，圣诗 | |
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unison
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| n.步调一致，行动一致 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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meditative
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| adj.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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turrets
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| （六角）转台( turret的名词复数 )； （战舰和坦克等上的）转动炮塔； （摄影机等上的）镜头转台； （旧时攻城用的）塔车 | |
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alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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portico
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| n.柱廊，门廊 | |
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glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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profusion
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| n.挥霍；丰富 | |
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eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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ledgers
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| n.分类账( ledger的名词复数 ) | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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thronging
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的现在分词 ) | |
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verges
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| 边，边缘，界线( verge的名词复数 ) | |
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accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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specious
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| adj.似是而非的；adv.似是而非地 | |
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beacon
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| n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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brawls
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| 吵架，打架( brawl的名词复数 ) | |
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buttresses
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| n.扶壁，扶垛( buttress的名词复数 )v.用扶壁支撑，加固( buttress的第三人称单数 ) | |
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autocrat
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| n.独裁者；专横的人 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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fanatics
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| 狂热者，入迷者( fanatic的名词复数 ) | |
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moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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covenanting
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| v.立约，立誓( covenant的现在分词 ) | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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exodus
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| v.大批离去，成群外出 | |
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dweller
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| n.居住者，住客 | |
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pauper
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| n.贫民，被救济者，穷人 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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