IN point of diversity of situation and beauty, and durability of building materials, few cities have the same advantages as the Athens; and I know of no city, of which the general and distant effect, upon what side soever one approaches it, is more picturesque and striking. But, as is the case with most things that look well as wholes, one is miserably disappointed when one comes to examine the details. The ground upon which the Athens is built bears some resemblance to a fort with a ditch and glacis. The Castle and High Street, with the clustered buildings on each side, compose the fort; the Cow-gate on the south, the Grass Market on the west, and the North Loch on the north, form the ditch, which bears some resemblance to a noose thrown round the Castle, and having the ends stretching away eastward by the Holyrood; and beyond this ditch the glacis slopes toward St. Leonard’s, the Loch of Duddingstone, and the Meadows on the south, and toward the water of Leith on the north. The central division, although its situation be very airy, and also very favourable for cleanliness, has nothing to boast of in either of these respects. The houses are so closely huddled together, that, excepting the High Street itself, which is rather spacious, the inhabitants may almost shake hands from the windows of the opposite houses; and they are built to such a height, that scarcely a glimpse of sunshine can find its way within two storeys of the foundations. In all this part of the Athens, there seems to be the greatest dislike to subways and common sewers; and thus, unless when the High Street is washed by a torrent of rain, it is by no means the most pleasant to perambulate. The southern ditch, or Cow-gate, is, throughout its whole extent, as filthy and squalid as can well be imagined; and, with the exception of a few public buildings, and one or two little squares, there is not much to be commended on the glacis beyond. Indeed the whole, southward of the North Loch, which the Athenians style the sublime part of their city, is more remarkable for the sublimation of mephitic effluvia than of any other thing. The new town again, or the portion between the North Loch and the water of Leith, is as dull as the other is dirty. The principal streets consist of long lines of stone building, without any break or ornament except wicket-doors and trap-hole windows, which render the whole very heavy, and induce one to believe that they are constructed with the intention of being as inaccessible and dark as possible. Princes Street, which is a single row, looking across the tasteless and unadorned gulf of the North Loch toward the beetling and shapeless masses of the old town, had originally been intended for private dwelling-houses, at the rate of a whole family per floor. Circumstances have changed, however. The Athenian fashionables (contrary to the natural tendency of the Scotch) have moved northwards; their places have been supplied by drapers from