Dr. Johnson named Edinburgh as "a city too well known to admit description." That judgment was proclaimed more than a hundred years ago,--before yet Caledonia had bewitched the world's heart as the haunted land of Robert Burns and Walter Scott,--and if it were true then it is all the more true now. But while the reverent pilgrim along the ancient highways of history may not wisely attempt description, which would be superfluous, he perhaps may usefully indulge in brief chronicle and impression,--for these sometimes prove suggestive to minds that are kindred with his own. Hundreds of travellers visit Edinburgh, but it is one thing to visit and another thing to see; and every suggestion, surely, is of value that helps to clarify our vision. This capital is not learned by driving about in a cab; for Edinburgh to be truly seen and comprehended must be seen and comprehended as an exponent of the colossal individuality of the Scottish character; and therefore it must be observed with thought. Here is no echo and no imitation. Many another provincial city of Britain is a miniature copy of London; but the quality of Edinburgh is her own. Portions of her architecture do indeed denote a reverence for ancient Italian models, while certain other portions reveal the influence of the semi-classical taste that prevailed in the time of the Regent, afterwards George the Fourth. The democratic tendency of this period,--expressing itself here precisely as it does everywhere else, in button-making pettiness and vulgar commonplace,--is likewise sufficiently obvious. Nevertheless, in every important detail of Edinburgh and of its life, the reticent, resolute, formidable, impetuous, passionate character of the Scottish race is conspicuous and predominant. Much has been said against the Scottish spirit,--the tide of cavil purling on from Dr. Johnson to Sydney Smith. Dignity has been denied to it, and so has magnanimity, and so has humour; but there is no audience more quick than the Scottish audience to respond either to pathos or to mirth; there is no literature in the world so musically, tenderly, and weirdly poetical as the Scottish literature; there is no place on earth where the imaginative instinct of the national mind has resisted, as it has resisted in Scotland, the encroachment of utility upon the domain of romance; there is no people whose history has excelled that of Scotland in the display of heroic, intellectual, and moral purpose, combined with passionate sensibility; and no city could surpass the physical fact of Edinburgh as a manifestation of broad ideas, unstinted opulence, and grim and rugged grandeur. Whichever way you turn, and whatever object you behold, that consciousness is always present to your thought,--the consciousness of a race of beings intensely original, individual, passionate, authoritative, and magnificent. [Illustration: _Scott's House in Edinburgh._]