The Ayrshire Legatees

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

sound of a ballad-singer, or a Highland piper, varies and enriches the

discords; but here, a multitudinous assemblage of harsh alarms, of

selfish contentions, and of furious carriages, driven by a fierce and

insolent race, shatter the very hearing, till you partake of the activity

with which all seem as much possessed as if a general apprehension

prevailed, that the great clock of Time would strike the doom-hour before

their tasks were done. But I must stop, for the postman with his bell,

like the betherel of some ancient "borough's town" summoning to a burial,

is in the street, and warns me to conclude.--Yours, ANDREW PRINGLE.