fter the early winter evenfall, and in the morning before
the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the
sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once
the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by in the High Street perhaps
the trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of
citizens in tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture trouser
below, and the men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic
bystanders. The grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with
a better presence. And yet these are the Heralds 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 spring-time--or
say one morning rather, at the peep of day--late folk may hear the
voices of many men singing a psalm in unison 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 about
the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to see brethren dwelling
together in unity. 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 virtues, but not specially like brothers in this particular of
a tolerant and peaceful life.

Again, meditative 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
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.
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