Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Europe -- Description and travel
The view from Craigmiller is beautiful--Auld Reekie, Arthur's Seat,
Salisbury Crags, and far down the Frith of Forth, where we can just
dimly see the Bass Hock, celebrated as a prison, where the Covenanters
were immured.
It was this fortress that Habakkuk Mucklewrath speaks of in his ravings,
when he says, "Am not I Habakkuk Mucklewrath, whose name is changed to
Magor-Missabib, because I am made a terror unto myself, and unto all
that are around me? I heard it: when did I hear it? Was it not in the
tower of the Bass, that overhangeth the wide, wild sea? and it howled in
the winds, and it roared in the billows, and it screamed, and it
whistled, and it clanged, with the screams, and the clang, and the
whistle of the sea birds, as they floated, and flew, and dropped, and
dived, on the bosom of the waters."
These Salisbury Crags, which overlook Edinburgh, have a very peculiar
outline; they resemble an immense elephant crouching down. We passed
Mushats Cairn, where Jeanie Deans met Robertson; and saw Liberton, where
Reuben Butler was a schoolmaster. Nobody doubts, I hope, the historical
accuracy of these points.
Thursday, 21st. We took cars for Aberdeen. The appropriation of old
historical names to railroad stations often reminds me of Hood's
whimsical lines on a possible railroad in the Holy Land. Think of having
Bannockburn shouted by the station master, as the train runs whistling
up to a small station house. Nothing to be seen there but broad, silent
meadows, through which the burn wimples its way. Here was the very
Marathon of Scotland. I suppose we know more about it from the "Scots
wha ha' wi' Wallace bled," than we do from history; yet the real scene,
as narrated by the historian, has a moral grandeur in it.
The chronicler tells us, that when on this occasion the Scots formed
their line of battle, and a venerable abbot passed along, holding up the
cross before them, the whole army fell upon their knees.
"These Scots will not fight," said Edward, who was reconnoitring at a
distance. "See! they are all on their knees now to beg for mercy."
"They kneel," said a lord who stood by, "but it is to God alone; trust
me, those men will win or die."
The bold lyric of Burns is but an inspired kind of version of the real
address which Bruce is said to have made to his followers; and whoever
reads it will see that its power lies not in appeal to brute force, but
to the highest elements of our nature, the love of justice, the sense of
honor, and to disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, courage unto death.
These things will live and form high and imperishable elements of our
nature, when mankind have learned to develop them in other spheres than
that of physical force. Burns's lyric, therefore, has in it an element
which may rouse the heart to noble endurance and devotion, even when the
world shall learn war no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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