Seeing far above us the hotel to which we wished to go we walked up skyward toward it. At the top of the stairs, turning to look, we were at once “carried to Paradise on the stairways of surprise.” One of those moments in life, never to be forgotten, as when one beholds for the first time Niagara, or has his initial view of the ocean, or stands in presence of a monarch, was ours, as we gazed over toward the old city and the cloud-lands of history. We had known that Edinburgh was handsome, historic, and renowned, but had not dreamed that it was so imposing, so magnificent, so unique in all Europe. Beneath us lay the long, deep ravine, now threaded with the glittering metal bands of the railway and planted with parks and gardens brilliant with flowers. High on the opposite bank, and sweeping up toward the summit, lay the old city. Its lofty irregular masses of stone buildings and towers, with the castle crowning all, seemed like a mirage, so weird and unearthly was this unexpected appearance of “the city set upon a hill.” We gazed long at the enchanting sight and then turned to visit the chief avenue of the new city, Princes Street--a perfect glory of attractive homes, with broad spaces rich in gardens and statuary, the whole effect suggesting taste and refinement. This we believe, despite Ruskin’s fiery anathema of modern taste. [Illustration: EDINBURGH] A splendid monument to Sir Walter Scott, three hundred feet high and costing $90,000, stands in the centre of the space opposite our hotel. Though in richest Gothic style and a gem of art, it was built by a self-taught architect. Not far away, Professor Wilson, Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, and other sons of Scotland repose in bronze or marble dignity. Indeed, the new city is particularly rich in monuments of every description and quality. Edinburgh’s parks and open spaces are unusually numerous. Even the cemeteries are full of beauty and charm, for it is a pleasure to read the names of old friends, unseen, indeed, but whom we learned to love so long ago through their books. To-day the American greets in bronze his country’s second father, whose ancestors once dwelt on the coin, or colony on the Lind; whence Father Abraham’s family name, Lincoln. How we boys, in the Union army in 1863, used to sing, “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong”! How in 1916, the men of the four nations of the United Kingdom, who have formed Kitchener’s army, sang their merry response to duty’s call, in the same music and spirit, and in much the same words!