Having thus learnt from experience, that the scheme would not do, either as a party and political measure among themselves, or as a clerico-politico-religious one in the hands of the ministers of the kirk, they took up new ground altogether, and addressed themselves to a much more active and promising principle, the vanity of the Athens. They began with a long and learned parallel between the overthrow of Bonaparte and that of Darius and Xerxes; and then, coming gradually a little nearer home, they hinted, that, in his encouragement of the arts, Lord Melville was the express image of Pericles. This brought them to the marrow of the subject: Edinburgh was very much like Athens,--it was, in fact, the Modern Athens, or the Athens Restored; the Calton Hill was a far finer thing than the Acropolis; the freestone of Craigleith excelled in beauty and durability the marble of Pentelicus; the Firth of Forth outstretched and outshone the Egean or the Hellespont; the kingdom of Fife beat beyond all comparison Ionia and the Troad; Ida and Athos were mere mole-hills compared with North Berwick Law and the Lomonds; Platæa and Marathon had nothing in them at all comparable with Pinkie and Preston Pans; Sir George Mackenzie of Coull, excelled both Æschylus and Aristophanes; Macvey Napier was an Aristotle; Lord Hermand a Diogenes; Macqueen of Braxfield had been a Draco; the Lord President was a Solon; a Demosthenes could be found any where; and Lord Macconachie was even more than a Plato. Then, to make the parallel perfect, and indeed to make the Modern Athens every way outstrip the Athens of old, only one thing was wanting, and that was, that there should be erected upon the top of the Calton Hill, a copy of the Temple of Minerva Parthenon, to be called the national monument of Scotland, as that had been called the national monument of Greece; and that the independence of the modern city and the modern land should survive the building of the monument as long as that of the old had done. The proposal took amazingly; for, in an instant, every quill was up to the feather in ink, every tongue was eloquent, and every lady and gentleman took an Athenian _nom de guerre_--Alcibiades there, Aspasia here, till they had Athenized the whole city. Still, however, fine as the situation was, and fond as they were of it, a Parthenon in speech was a cheaper thing than a Parthenon in stone; and so, though Edinburgh had, beyond all doubt or dispute, become the Modern Athens, it still wanted the temple of Minerva upon the Calton Hill as the national monument of Scotland.