Notwithstanding all this, there are few places that boast more of their improvements than the Athens; and not many in which the people have been made to pay more upon that score. But either there has been a total want of skill in the projectors, or a total want of economy in those who had the execution,--if indeed there has not been both. I was told repeatedly, that every scheme and measure to which the Athenian authorities give the name of a public improvement, is uniformly a job for the benefit, not of the public, but of some party or individual; and really, comparing what is said to have been expended with what has actually been done, I can find no other theory that will sufficiently explain the facts. The bell-rope of the Tron-Kirk appears not to have been the only case in which a hundred pounds’ expense has been incurred for the purpose of saving a shilling. Even in her public buildings, the Athens has little of which she can boast. All the places of worship belonging to the established Kirk are tasteless; and the most modern ones are the most so. St. Giles’ Cathedral is a black, shapeless, and ruinous mass, stuck round with booths and police-officers; and when one has said, that the portion of it set apart for public worship as the High Kirk, has a handsome old roof spoiled by tasteless painting, and a square tower with an imperial crown, which looks well at a distance, and not absolutely ill when one is close to it,--one has about summed up the whole of its merits. Respecting most of the other Presbyterian churches, the less that is said the better; the Grey-Friars, situate south of the Castle, has an interest with the more devout people of Scotland, from the tombs of the martyrs that are in the adjoining burial-ground; and St. George’s Church, which terminates the street of the same name, westward, is perhaps the most expensive and unseemly abortion of modern architecture. Public monuments in the Athens there are none, except Nelson’s (formerly mentioned) on the Calton-Hill, and Lord Melville’s column in St. Andrew’s Square; and it is not the fashion of the Athens to consider her burying-grounds as sacred, or to set up memorials for the illustrious dead. If her plan gives her as much trouble as this would do, it is trouble of a different kind: she keeps down, as much as she can, all those who are not either illustrious already, or have not something to confer, as long as they are alive; and when they are dead, she gives herself no more trouble about them.