University of Virginia Library

123. LETTER CXXIII.

Almost giddy with the many pleasures and occupations
of London, I had outstayed the last fashionable
lingerer; and, on appearing again, after a fortnight's
confinement with the epidemic of the season,
I found myself almost without an acquaintance, and
was driven to follow the world. A preponderance of
letters and friends determined my route toward Scotland.

One realizes the immensity of London when he is
compelled to measure its length on a single errand. I
took a cab at my lodgings at nine in the evening, and
drove six miles through one succession of crowded and
blazing streets to the East India Docks, and with the
single misfortune of being robbed on the way of a
valuable cloak, secured a birth in the Monarch steamer,
bound presently for Edinburgh.

I found the drawing-room cabin quite crowded,
cold supper on the two long tables, everybody very
busy with knife and fork, and whiskey-and-water and
broad Scotch circulating merrily. All the world seemed
acquainted, and each man talked to his neighbor,
and it was as unlike a ship's company of dumb English
as could easily be conceived. I had dined too
late to attack the solids, but imitating my neighbor's
potation of whiskey and hot water, I crowded in between
two good-humored Scotchmen, and took the
happy color of the spirits of the company. A small
centre-table was occupied by a party who afforded
considerable amusement. An excessively fat old woman,
with a tall scraggy daughter and a stubby little
old fellow, whom they called “pa;” and a singular
man, a Major Somebody, who seemed showing them
up, composed the quartette. Noisier women I never
saw, nor more hideous. They bullied the waiter,
were facetious with the steward, and talked down all
the united buzz of the cabin. Opposite me sat a pale,
severe-looking Scotchman, who had addressed one or
two remarks to me; and, upon an uncommon burst
of uproariousness, he laughed with the rest, and remarked
that the ladies were excusable, for they were
doubtless Americans, and knew no better.

“It strikes me,” said I, “that both in manners and
accent they are particularly Scotch.”

“Sir!” said the pale gentleman.

“Sir!” said several of my neighbors on the right
and left.

I repeated the remark.

“Have you ever been in Scotland?” asked the
pale gentleman, with rather a ferocious air.

“No, sir! Have you ever been in America?”

“No, sir! but I have read Mrs. Trollope.”

“And I have read Cyril Thornton; and the manners
delineated in Mrs. Trollope, I must say, are
rather elegant in comparison.”

I particularized the descriptions I alluded to, which
will occur immediately to those who have read the
novel I have named; and then confessing I was an
American, and withdrawing my illiberal remark, which
I had only made to show the gentleman the injustice
and absurdity of his own, we called for another tass
of whiskey, and became very good friends. Heaven
knows I have no prejudice against the Scotch, or any
other nation—but it is extraordinary how universal the
feeling seems to be against America. A half hour incog,
in any mixed company in England I should think
would satisfy the most rose-colored doubter on the
subject.

We got under way at eleven o'clock, and the passengers
turned in. The next morning was Sunday.
It was fortunately of a “Sabbath stillness;” and the
open sea through which we were driving, with an easy
south wind in our favor, graciously permitted us to do
honor to as substantial a breakfast as ever was set before
a traveller, even in America. (Why we should
be ridiculed for our breakfasts I do not know.)

The “Monarch” is a superb boat, and, with the
aid of sails and a wind right aft, we made twelve miles
in the hour easily. I was pleased to see an observance
of the Sabbath which had not crossed my path before
in three years' travel. Half the passengers at least
took their bibles after breakfast, and devoted an hour
or two evidently to grave religious reading and reflection.
With this exception, I have not seen a person
with the Bible in his hand, in travelling over half the
world.

The weather continued fine, and smooth water
tempted us up to breakfast again on Monday. The
wash-room was full of half-clad men, but the week-day
manners of the passengers were perceptibly gayer.
The captain honored us by taking the head of the table,
which he had not done on the day previous, and
his appearance was hailed by three general cheers.
When the meats were removed, a gentleman rose, and,
after a very long and parliamentary speech, proposed
the health of the captain. The company stood up,
ladies and all, and it was drank with a tremendous
“hip-hip-hurrah,” in bumpers of whiskey. They
don't do that on the Mississippi, I reckon. If they
did, the travellers would be down upon us, “I guess,”
out-Hamiltoning Hamilton.

We rounded St. Abb's head into the Forth, at five,
in the afternoon, and soon dropped anchor off Leith.
The view of Edinburgh, from the water, is, I think,
second only to that of Constantinople. The singular
resemblance, in one or two features, to the view of
Athens, as you approach from the Piræus, seems to
have struck other eyes than mine, and an imitation
Acropolis is commenced on the Calton-hill, and has
already, in its half-finished state, much the effect of
the Parthenon. Hymettus is rather loftier than the
Pentland-hills, and Pentelicus farther off and grander
than Arthur's seat, but the old castle of Edinburgh is
a noble and peculiar feature of its own, and soars up
against the sky, with its pinnacle-placed turrets, superbly
magnificent. The Forth has a high shore on
either side, and, with the island of Inchkeith in its
broad bosom, it looks more like a lake than an arm of
the sea.

It is odd what strange links of acquaintance will
develop between people thrown together in the most
casual manner, and in the most out-of-the-way places.
I have never entered a steamboat in my life without
finding, if not an acquaintance, some one who should
have been an acquaintance from mutual knowledge of
friends. I thought, through the first day, that the
Monarch would be an exception. On the second
morning, however, a gentleman came up and called
me by name. He was an American, and had seen me
in Boston. Soon after, another gentleman addressed
some remark to me, and, in a few minutes, we discovered
that we were members of the same club in
London, and bound to the same hospitable roof in
Scotland. We went on, talking together, and I happened
to mention having lately been in Greece, when
one of a large party of ladies, overhearing the remark,
turned, and asked me, if I had met Lady — in my
travels. I had met her at Athens, and this was her
sister. I found I had many interesting particulars of
the delightful person in question which were new to
them, and, sequitur, a friendship struck up immediately
between me and a party of six. You would
have never dreamed, to have seen the adieux on the
landing, that we had been unaware of each other's existence
forty-four hours previous.

Leith is a mile or more from the town, and we drove
into the new side of Edinburgh—a splendid city of
stone—and, with my English friend, I was soon installed
in a comfortable parlor at Douglas's—an hotel
to which the Tremont, in Boston, is the only parallel.
It is built of the same stone and is smaller, but it has
a better situation than the Tremont, standing in a
magnificent square, with a column and statue to Lord
Melville in the centre, and a perspective of a noble
street stretching through the city from the opposite
side.

We dined upon grouse, to begin Scotland fairly,
and nailed down our sherry with a tass o' Glenlivet,
and then we had still an hour of daylight for a ramble