The National Monument was begun in 1816, the proposition being to erect a structure in imitation of the Parthenon at Athens, as a memorial of soldiers who fell at Waterloo. Thirty thousand dollars were subscribed at the first public meeting. An attempt was made to place the affair under the patronage of George IV., and the interest declined. The foundation was laid in 1822, and remained untouched till 1824,--when, with $67,500 on hand, work was resumed. All the money was expended, as was the case with the New York Court-house in the structure of white marble, the three colossal steps, and the ten columns in front, with the two flanking pillars on each side, together with the architrave, or horizontal stones, upon them. To this day it remains in this condition. The general sentiment seems to be that this unfinished building, mute in its solitary grandeur, is a more appropriate memorial than a completed building could be. There is a monument to Dugald Stewart, the distinguished professor of mathematics, and afterwards of moral philosophy, in Edinburgh University; and another to John Playfair, also a professor of mathematics, well known the civilized world over. The Burns Monument at the base of the hill is a stone structure some forty feet square, surmounted by a circular section surrounded by Corinthian columns, on which is a pedestal, crowned by a low dome and terminated by four griffins. For a small admission fee we were admitted, and were charmed by the relics exposed to view, once the property of the Scottish Bard. It is useless to attempt to name them, but many were linked with a melancholy interest to a poet, whose life, like that of Keats, "was writ in water." Sir Walter Scott's Monument is doubtless the finest in the world. It is built of brown sandstone, in elaborate Gothic architecture, and is two hundred feet high. It was erected in 1844, at an expense of $80,500, from a competitive design furnished by George Meikle Kemp, a young self-taught architect of great promise, who died before the monument's completion, he having been drowned in the Union Canal, when going home one dark night. Beneath the open Gothic rotunda, with its groined arches, is the colossal marble statue of Sir Walter, in a sitting posture, by John Steell. Many of the niches on the exterior are occupied by statues of characters in Scott's romances. At the centre of the great monument, and up 100 feet from the base, is a room in which are relics of the great bard; and near the top, at the height of 175 feet, is a gallery on the outside of the monument, from which are fine views of the city. As one looks down on the busy mass below; when he sees the ruins of this animated map spread out beneath him,--hills, ravine, parks, monuments, princely edifices, as the busy hum of life surges up to him,--he loses sight of "the good time coming," and is satisfied with that which has come already.