THE STEAM Ex-FELLOW PASSENGERS.

375

One realizes the immensity of London when he is compelled to measure its length on a single errand. I took a cab at my lodgings at nine in the evening, and drove six miles through one succession of crowded and blazing streets to the East-India Docks, and, with the single misfortune of being robbed on the way of a valuable cloak, secured a birth in the Monarch steamer, bound presently for Edinburgh.

I found the drawing-room cabin quite crowded, cold supper on the two long tables, everybody very busy with knife and fork, and whiskey-and-water and broad Scotch circulating merrily. All the world seemed acquainted, and each man talked to his neighbour, and it was as unlike a ship's company of dumb English as could easily be conceived. I had dined too late to attack the solids, but imitating my neighbour's potation of whiskey and hot water, I crowded in between two good-humoured Scotchmen, and took the happy colour of the spirits of the company. A small centre table was occupied by a party who afforded considerable amusement. An excessively fat old woman, with a tall scraggy daughter and a stubby little old fellow, whom they called "Pa ;" and a singular man, a Major Somebody, who seemed showing them up, composed the quartette. Noisier women I never saw, nor more hideous. They bullied the waiter, were facetious with the steward, and talked down all the united buzz of the cabin. Opposite me sat a pale, severe-looking Scotchman, who had addressed one or two remarks to me; and, upon an uncommon burst of uproariousnesss, he laughed with the rest, and remarked that the ladies were excusable, for they were doubtless Americans, and knew no better.

"It strikes me," said I, "that both in manners and accent they are particularly Scotch."

"Sir!" said the pale gentleman.

"Sir!" said several of my neighbours on the right and left.

I repeated the remark.

"Have you ever been in Scotland? gentleman, with rather a ferocious air.

"No, sir! Have you ever been in America?" "No, sir! but I have read Mrs. Trollope."

"And I have read Cyril Thornton; and the manners delineated in Mrs. Trollope, I must say, are rather elegant in comparison."

I particularized the descriptions I alluded to, which will occur immediately to those who have read the novel I have named; and then confessing I was an American, and withdrawing my illiberal remark, which I had only made to show the gentleman the injustice and absurdity of his own, we called for another tass of whiskey, and became very good friends. Heaven knows I have no prejudice against the Scotch, or any other nation-but it is extraordinary how universal the feeling seems to be against America. A half hour incog. in any mixed company in England I should think would satisfy the most rose-coloured doubter on the subject.

turned in.

We got under weigh at eleven o'clock, and the passengers The next morning was Sunday. It was fortunately of a "Sabbath stillness;" and the open sea through which we were driving, with an easy south wind in our favour, graciously permitted us to do honour to as substantial a breakfast as ever was set before a traveller, even in America. (Why we should be ridiculed for our breakfasts, I do not know.)

The "Monarch" is a superb boat, and, with the aid of sails, and a wind right aft, we made twelve miles in the hour easily. I was pleased to see an observance of the Sabbath, which had not crossed my path before in three years' travel Half the passengers at least took their Bibles after breakfast, and devoted an hour or two evidently to grave religious reading and reflection. With this exception, I have not seen a person with the Bible in his hand, in travelling over half the world.

The weather continued fine, and smooth water tempted us up to breakfast again on Monday. The wash-room was full of half-clad men, but the week-day manners of the passengers were perceptibly gayer. The captain honoured us by taking the head of the table, which he had not done on the day previous, and his appearance was hailed by three general cheers. When the meats were removed, a gentleman rose, and, after a very long and parliamentary speech proposed the health of Captain B- The company stood

up, ladies and all, and it was drunk with a tremendous "hip-hip-hurrah," in bumpers of whiskey!

We rounded St. Abb's Head into the Forth at five in the afternoon, and soon dropped anchor off Leith. The view of Edinburgh, from the water, is, I think, second only to that of Constantinople. The singular resemblance, in one or two features, to the view of Athens as you approach from the Piræus, seems to have struck other eyes than mine; and an imitation Acropolis is commenced on the Calton-Hill, and has already, in its half-finished state, much the effect of the Parthenon. Hymettus is rather loftier than the Pentland-hills, and Pentelicus farther off and grander than Arthur's seat; but the Old Castle of Edinburgh is a noble and peculiar feature of its own, and soars up against the sky, with its pinnacle-placed turrets, superbly magnificent. The Forth has a high shore on either side, and, with the island of Inchkeith in its broad bosom, it looks more like a lake than an arm of the sea.

It is odd what strange links of acquaintance will develope between people thrown together in the most casual manner, and in the most out-of-the-way places. I have never entered a steam boat in my life without finding, if not an acquaintance, some one who should have been an acquaintance from mutual knowledge of friends. I thought, through the first day, that the Monarch would be an exception. On the second morning, however, a gentleman came up and called me by name. He was an American, and had seen me in Boston. Soon after, another gentleman addressed some remark to me, and, in a few minutes, we discovered that we were members of the same club in London, and bound to the same hospitable roof in Scotland. We went on talking together, and I happened to mention having lately been in Greece, when one of a large party of ladies, over-hearing the remark, turned, and asked me, if I had met Ladyin my travels. I had met her at Athens, and this was her sister. I found I had many interesting particulars of the person in question which were new to them, and, sequitur, a friendship struck up immediately between me and a party of six. You would have never dreamed, to have seen the adieux on the landing, that we had been unaware of each other's existence forty-four hours previous. Leith is a mile

or more from the town, and we drove into the new side of Edinburgh-a splendid city of stone-and, with my English friend, I was soon installed in a comfortable parlour at Douglas's-an hotel, to which the Tremont, in Boston, is the only parallel. It is built of the same stone and is smaller, but it has a better situation than the Tremont, standing in a magnificent square, with a column and statue to Lord Melville in the centre, and a perspective of a noble street stretching through the city from the opposite side.

We dined upon grouse, to begin Scotland fairly, and nailed down our sherry with a tass o' Glenlivet, and then we had still an hour of daylight for a ramble.

LETTER XVII.

EDINBURGH.

A SCOTCH BREAKFAST-THE CASTLE-PALACE OF HOLYROODQUEEN MARY-RIZZIO-CHARLES THE TENTH.

SEPT. 1834.

It is an odd place, Edinburgh. The Old Town and the New are separated by a broad and deep ravine, planted with trees and shrubbery; and across this, on a level with the streets on either side, stretches a bridge of a most giddy height, without which all communication would apparently be cut off. "Auld Reekie" itself looks built on the back-bone of a ridgy crag, and towers along on the opposite side of the ravine, running up its twelve-story houses to the sky in an ascending curve, till it terminates in the frowning and battlemented Castle, whose base is literally on a mountaintop in the midst of the city. At the foot of this ridge, in the lap of the valley, lies Holyrood House; and between this and the Castle runs a single street, part of which is the Old Canongate. Princes' Street, the Broadway of the New Town, is built along the opposite edge of the ravine facing the long, many-windowed walls of the Canongate, and from

every part of Edinburgh these singular features are conspicuously visible. A more striking contrast than exists between these two parts of the same city could hardly be imagined. On one side a succession of splendid squares, elegant granite houses, broad and well-paved streets, columns, statues, and clean side-walks, thinly promenaded and by the well-dressed exclusively—a kind of wholly grand and halfdeserted city, which has been built too ambitiously for its population ;—and, on the other, an antique wilderness of streets and "wynds," so narrow and lofty as to shut out much of the light of heaven; a thronging, busy, and particularly dirty population; side-walks almost impassable from children and other respected nuisances: and altogether, between the irregular and massive architecture, and the unintelligible jargon agonizing the air about you, a most outlandish and strange city. Paris is not more unlike Constantinople than one side of Edinburgh is unlike the other. Nature has properly placed "a great gulf" between them.

We toiled up to the Castle to see the sunset. Oh, but it was beautiful! I have no idea of describing it; but Edinburgh, to me, will be a picture seen through an atmosphere of powdered gold, mellow as an eve on the Campagna. We looked down on the surging sea of architecture below us: and whether it was the wavy cloudiness of a myriad of reeking chimneys, or whether it was a fancy, Glenlivetborn, in my eye, the city seemed to me like a troop of war horses rearing into the air with their gallant riders. The singular boldness of the hills on which it is built, and of the crags and mountains which look down upon it, and the impressive lift of its towering architecture into the sky, give it altogether a look of pride and warlikeness that answers peculiarly to the chivalric history of Scotland. And so much for the first look at "Auld Reekie."

My friend had determined to have what he called a flare-up" of a Scotch breakfast, and we were set down the morning after our arrival, at nine, to cold grouse, salmon, cold beef, marmalade, jellies, honey, five kinds of bread, oatmeal cakes, coffee, tea, and toast; and I am by no means sure that this is all. It is a fine country in which one gets so much by the simple order of "breakfast at