living and enjoying, if he sighs for the smoky chimney, with its unblessed wealth, we will not grieve for his departure for a scene more worthy of his genius. But though we go along with Lord Cockburn, and if we possessed his eloquence, would be disposed almost to go beyond him, in what he has said of the matchless beauty of our city, we are far from joining with him in thinking that we must quietly sit down and reconcile ourselves to the fact, that to this, and to this alone, we not only do, but ever must, owe our social importance. That if we refrain from "spoiling" our natural advantages, or at most if we avail ourselves of them by such moderate architectural and artistical embellishments as may be within the reach of a community never likely to be greatly distinguished for its wealth, we shall have done all that is in our power to render our little metropolis attractive to strangers, and agreeable to ourselves. That we have little trade, and "mercifully almost no manufactures," are facts to which we have as little difficulty in reconciling ourselves as the learned Lord. The presence of such things would imply the destruction of almost all that we value in Edinburgh now; but is there no avenue to prosperity and importance, except through the crowded marketplace, no portal to dignity and grandeur which does not lead through the smoke of manufacturing chimneys? "There must be cities of refuge," says his Lordship, happily. Refuge for whom? we would ask; and our past history and our present position, serve to answer the question with little hesitation. Lord Cockburn tells us that "we have supplied a greater number of eminent men to literature, to science, and the arts, than any other town in the empire, with the single exception of London;" that "we have a college of still maintained celebrity;" and, lastly, that we have an "art, of which the brilliant rise within these last thirty years is the most striking circumstance in the modern progress of Scotland." Our refugees, then, it would seem, in his Lordship's opinion, must be men "of literature, of science, and the arts;" and we only regret that he did not find it convenient to dwell at greater length on an idea which, by one felicitous expression, he has thus, perhaps, almost accidentally stirred. It must be pretty plain to those who have paid any serious attention to the position which Edinburgh holds among the cities of this country, that her real importance depends on her becoming the abode of those who pave the way for action, rather than of those who | act-of those who sketch out the campaign of the future from a study of the past, rather than of those who work in the trenches of the present. For the man of action we neither have, nor can create, a field; in this sense our city is not, and never again can become a metropolis. A few lawyers may find a sphere of reasonable activity in doing the public business of the country, and in their case the rewards of a successful performance of their duties may satisfy a moderate ambition. They may become respectable in the highest degree, but their profession, or the practice of it at all events, can bring them little glory beyond the limits of their native town-it leads to none of the higher state preferments, and the very possibility of attaining to a peerage (that ultimate goal of an English lawyer's ambition) by its means, is very unfairly, as it seems to us, cut off. For the politician there is no field whatever, beyond what every town of equal size in the empire presents. Even for the mere animal activity of the sporting man, our city offers no fitting arena. We are not rash enough to ride with him, nor rich enough to bet with him, and the very narration of his exploits we are frequently uncivil enough to treat as a bore. With the man of trade and commerce we have already, almost eagerly, consented to part company. But if thus we must take leave of the paxrixos in all his departments, and must even, reluctantly it may be, bid adieu to the rouros, with a friendly shake of the hand and a bon voyage, it is only in order that we may clasp the swpnrixis more warmly in our embrace. Do we murmur against fate? We believe, on the contrary, that what she seems thus to dictate, is nothing more than what every Edinburgh man of the better sort has already a thousand times done in his heart. We wish nothing but success and prosperity to those whose pursuits are different from our own; nay, the immediate consequence of a recognition of our special department, as a thinking rather than an acting community, will be a heightening of our good-will, since it necessarily removes those feelings of rivalry which must have existed, had our objects of ambition been identical with those of our fellow-subjects of Glasgow or Birmingham. Nor is even sympathy cut off by the distinction for which we contend, for though dissimilar, our pursuits are by no means antagonistic. The political philosopher, the moralist, and the man of science, are indebted, one and all of them, in this country, chiefly to the trading and manufacturing communities, for the data from which they proceed and the tests to which they appeal. Were it not for this constant reference to experience and experiment, their labors must speedily terminate in a vague, as they would have arisen in an objectless theorizing. If the whole world had resembled the society in which its author moved, the "Wealth of Nations" could not have been written. But even those pursuits which react most immediately on each other, are often by no means most successfully pursued, either by the same individual, or in the same circumstances. The quietest nook of a Cambridge cloister is a fitting retreat for an abstract mathematician, whilst the practical engineer, who is to test the value of his labors, finds a more congenial abode amid the cyclopean forges of Birmingham and Sheffield. Whilst we acknowledge our dependence upon, and profess our sympathy with, the operative portion of the community, we must, at the same time, recognize the distinction which exists between their function and our own. We must not be forever affecting a desire ourselves to enter upon a career of enterprise at variance at once with our history, our opportunities, and our tastes. It is not less important for communities than for individuals that the tentative period of life should have an end. "Male vivunt qui semper vivere incipiunt." We must read the past and interpret the present, and manfully and resolutely abide by the results. But our readers may here meet us with the objection, that the only practical result of our reasoning is that matters should be left pretty much as they are. What guarantee, they may ask, do you give us, that we shall succeed in making Edinburgh a literary and scientific more than a mercantile and a manufacturing metropolis? To some extent, it may be admitted that she partakes at present of the one character rather than of the other, but where is our assurance that we shall succeed in advancing her in the former course rather than in the latter? We reply, 1st, That generally, no guarantee for the future can be stronger than that which is derived from the history of the past, and that, in the case of our own city, every effort in the one direction has been successful, whereas all that has been attempted in the other has failed. We are not now writing an historical article, and to Edinburgh men, to whom we chiefly address these pages, it would be tedious that we should furnish them with a demonstration which their own recollections can so thoroughly supply. We pass then, at once, from the consideration of our historical to that of our present position, and we assert, 2d, That every tendency of Edinburgh life is in the one direction, not in the other. When we speak of Edinburgh as having ceased to hold out, to the man of action, the inducements of a capital, we must not be understood as saying that it has forfeited all claim to that character. Nothing can be more erroneous than to liken it to such places as Bath, or Cheltenham, or any of the mere pleasure-towns of England, where such portions of the boundless leisure of the inhabitants as the daily newspapers and the latest novels are not sufficient to consume, are usually divided between yawning and whist, except where, by a still more felicitous arrangement, these latter amusements are combined. Edinburgh, after her quiet fashion, is a busy place enough, and, London excepted, unquestionably fulfills the idea of a capital more than any other city in this country. She has nothing of that air of a proconsular residence, which, while it confers on Dublin a certain external splendor, unfortunately renders her more like to Calcutta, or Montreal, than to the capital of any European country, however small. There is no foreign ruling class in Edinburgh; what she has is Scotch, and what Scotland has is hers. From her, as from the heart of the land, the life-blood of Scotland issues forth, and to her it returns freely again. Every Scotchman finds in her a common centre for his sympathies. The inhabitants of Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Perth, have no bond of union, other than as the inhabitants of a common country; but every man of them feels that he is a tie to Edinburgh. It is to her that he looks for his news, his praise, his influence, his justice, and his learning; and with reference to this latter circumstance, it is very important for the present branch of our subject, that we should keep in view one very marked distinction between this country and England. In England, the learned class is the clergy; with us, partly in consequence of our Church holding out no direct inducements to recondite learning, either in the shape of affluent leisure, or of high preferments, attainable by its means, but most of all, we believe, for the much better reason of the clergy devoting almost their whole energies to the discharge of the strictly ministerial duties of their sacred calling, such is not the case, and the function thus abandoned by the Church has, in a great measure, been discharged by the But whether the extra-professional activity of the Bar is to be ascribed to the heterogeneous elements of which it is composed, or to other circumstances coming, either accidentally from without, or springing necessarily from within, the fact is certain, that here in our own city, we have, within the pale of one single profession, not only as great a number of men who exercise an intellectual influence as is to be found in any other society of equal size, but what is more to our present purpose, nearly the whole intellectual activity of Scotland. We can scarcely doubt that a movement in the direction we have suggested would be in harmony with the wishes, as it certainly would be with the interests, of these men ; and the question then comes to be, ought we, the citizens, rashly to throw to the winds the aid that they may possibly afford us in advancing our prosperity and increasing our importance? If we follow an opposite course, if we strive after a trading and commercial development, we must lay our account with dispensing not only with their assistance, but also with the residence of many of them among us. If legal customs and habits have become indispensable to them, it is as easy to belong to the English as the Scotch Bar; most of the enterprising publishers are unhappily even now resident in London, and the formation of a Scotch Literary Colony in that city is by no means an impossible, and if we provoke it, perhaps not even an improbable event. Bar. We offer no opinion as to whether | ally together, scarcely any one is thus perthis is or is not as it ought to be, we simply mitted to slumber quietly on in his own opinstate it as a fact, not unimportant in consid-ion, or sluggishly to take refuge behind a ering the present aspect and tendencies of bulwark of authority. society in Edinburgh. In Scotland, for centuries, the Bar has been a caste rather than a profession-a species of secular priesthood, if we may use the expression, to which, from the peculiar development of society among us, men of letters, and even of science, as well as practical lawyers, have found it convenient to belong. It may be regarded as the great intellectual club of our country; and latterly, since its political importance as a profession has diminished, and the clergy have withdrawn themselves more entirely from secular avocations, it has partaken of this character even more than formerly. As an illustration of the extent to which this is now the case, we may mention, that in the University of Edinburgh, at the present moment, the whole of the Chairs in the Faculty of Arts, excepting those of Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, are filled by members of the Bar, they being thus in the proportion to all other professions, of six to three, whilst there is not a single Scotch clergyman, and only one churchman of any kind, the professor of mathematics, who, we understand, is in English orders. In the neighboring University of St. Andrews the case is similar; and even the far distant Aberdeen has not escaped their influence. But not only has the higher teaching of the country fallen thus to the share of a class of men resident in our city, but nearly all the higher periodical literature of Scotland is also in their hands, and we suspect no inconsiderable portion of that of England to boot. The Edinburgh Review, long the most powerful critical organ in Europe, is well known to have emanated from their body, and is still almost entirely conducted by them. Blackwood was, and is, so far as we know, in pari casu; and the Quarterly is understood to be under the superintendence of a Scotch advocate. One great cause of the remarkable and varied activity of this class of our citizens, is to be found, we believe, in the singular diversity of their training. From the passion for travel which has at all times characterized the Scotch, and the custom, still existing among them, of finishing their education in foreign countries, we find amongst those belonging to the profession of the law in Edinburgh, men partaking of the intellectual peculiarities of almost every European nation; and leading as they do an eminently public life, and mingling continu But though we have spoken of the Bar as a prominent example of the present tendencies and capabilities of Edinburgh society, it is not to it only that we are to trust, or from it alone that we would draw our augury. We believe that among all the professional classes, there is a remarkable unanimity on this subject. The other branches of the legal profession, though seldom actively engaged in literary occupations, usually manifest no inconsiderable sympathy with those who are; and as regards the medical profession, the high position which our school has always held, and the celebrity of many of our practitioners of the present time, are sufficient guarantees for the liberal views and tastes of its members. Nor are the interests of the medical profession, as might at first sight appear, at war with their feelings in this matter. An increased population, of whatever kind, would no doubt widen the range of medical practice; but our medical men are usually of such a class as to appreciate the advantage which, to those whose pride and whose pleasure it is to cultivate their profession as a science, arises from their being resident in a city which is the seat of a great medical school. For all the purposes of a school, Edinburgh is already sufficiently large, and if it were swollen to the proportions of Glasgow, or even London, though the number of practitioners who should gain a subsistence might be greater, it is by no means likely that their character, either for science or skill, would be raised. But apart from the professional classes altogether, we are persuaded that the feelings of the great body of the people are in harmony with the views which we have indicated. We believe that the pride with which an intelligent Edinburgh tradesman regards his native city, has quite as much to do with its former and present literary celebrity, as with any other circumstance connected with it. When he looks on the monuments which our gratitude has raised to the benefactors of our city in former times, he finds that, with scarcely a single exception, they commemorate the labors of men of letters; and he remembers that these men have not only earned for themselves, but have conferred upon us a celebrity lasting beyond what the most successful career of mercantile speculation could have secured. He reflects that in the case of an individual, real grandeur consists less in what is possessed or enjoyed, than in what is left behind; that the case of a community is similar; and that with us the man of letters alone has a sphere which enables him to lay hold of the future, either on his own behalf or on ours. Of him alone, then, can we safely pride ourselves in the present, for to him alone can belong, and through him alone can come to us, the longevity of fame. If the place of their birth is to be an inheritance to our children, it must be as the birthplace also of those whose laurels the gratitude of men will not suffer to wither. But we can twine no wreath for a conqueror, we have no field for a ruler, and the thinker is their only peer. part of the population of Edinburgh. These persons, we believe, are attracted to our city for the most part by one or other of these causes. First, and chiefly it may be, as Lord Cockburn asserts, by the beauty of the place. Second, By the excellence and cheapness of the education which they can here procure for their families; and Third, By the prospect which Edinburgh society holds out of their being here able to gratify those refined and cultivated tastes which they may have elsewhere formed. can see no That their residence among us is desirable for all classes of the indigenous population, but particularly for our tradesmen, to whom their presence annually brings a large accession of business, cannot be doubted; and in order to secure their continuance, or to increase their numbers, whichever of the above-mentioned causes may have formed their original inducement, we line of conduct more effectual than that which we here recommend. Nor is it unreasonable to hope that so long as our endeavor is thus to gather within our city, to a still greater extent, those attractions which have already marked it out in their eyes as a suitable place of residence, their sympathies will not be confined to such an expression of good-will as their continued residence would afford. measure 3d, We have already in some anticipated our third reason for the view which we have here taken of the possible future of our city-that, viz., which arises from the peculiar character of the place itself. We have said that it is a capital to the extent of containing the springs both of action and thought, so far as Scotland is concerned, and that there is life enough circulating in it still to preclude the appearance of those fungous excrescences in the body social, which the stagnation of provincial towns is so apt to generate. But to the man of letters its negative are perhaps more important than even its positive advantages. Amongst the chief of these we must reckon the circumstance, that from living in a community where few are idle, he is in a great measure freed from the inroads of gossip. Although eccentricity is unquestionably very But when we have spoken of the profes- often affected by those who, in their occupasional and trading classes, we have by no tions and modes of thinking, differ in nothing means exhausted even the influential portions from the vulgar, it is equally certain that of our community. There is a large body in proportion to the grasp which men have of sojourners within our walls, who compose of the deeper realities of life will their value a fluctuating, but as regards both wealth for what is contingent and conventional and position, by no means an unimportant | diminish, and the consequences will be, par ticularly among the students of abstract truth, whose avocations rarely bring them in contact with the world, a style of living and acting inconsistent with the habits of those who are doing the ordinary business of life. The occupations of such men will almost necessarily give rise to habits which will seem strange to many, though in themselves they may be blameless, and, with reference to the objects for which the individuals live, positively praiseworthy. Those of this description will not only act without reference to effect, but, liberty being the first boon which they ask from society, they will feel seriously constrained and annoyed by any sensation which their irregularities may produce. They will have none of the consolations which, in all cases of annoyance, fall to the share of the pretended eccentric, who, conscious that to glory in the results of any course of conduct can never be his, finds, in the wonder which his mode of life excites, a recompense for the effort which his vanity has imposed upon him. Their eyes being fixed on the end, they ask only for an occasion to employ the means without constraint; but as few men, even of this class, are superior to the influence of opinion, they will feel thoroughly unconstrained only where they can escape observation. We are far from holding out so vain a hope as that Edinburgh can furnish a complete immunity from vulgar annoyance, but we believe it will be felt quite as little here as in any of the numerous circles into which the society of such places as London and Paris is broken up, and infinitely less than in any of the provincial towns of England. less, are unquestionably superior to those of any other British town. There is less of a squalid population than in most places of similar extent; and the lower orders, when not weighed down by poverty, are a good, and, as it strikes us, a handsome Saxon race. Even in the humbler matters which contribute to the every day enjoyment of life, there are few things which either the senses or the imagination can desire, which are not within the reach of the moderately wealthy in Edinburgh. The southron will not find it a land of flowers, for of their culture we are perhaps more neglectful than even the climate warrants; but if the coarser gratifications of the sense of taste will content him, he will have no difficulty in satisfying a rational Epicureanism.* But though it will probably be admitted without much hesitation, that, for the residence of persons of this class, Edinburgh, both in point of natural and accidental advantages, is singularly suited; and though many will also agree with us in thinking that it is to the increase of their numbers that we must look for our advancement both in prosperity and reputation, few perhaps of our fellow-citizens will be willing, at first sight, to recognize the extent to which it seems to us we have hitherto been neglectful of our duty toward them. It will be strange to those who have been accustomed complacently to regard their native city as what Lord Cockburn calls a "city of refuge" for the muses, to be told that there is scarcely a town of equal size in Europe that holds out But in addition to being delivered from something particularly pleasing to the imagination It has always appeared to us that there is the obtrusive curiosity of neighbors, the in the manner in which the article of fish is brought man of cultivated tastes will probably find upon our tables in Edinburgh. From the moment that in Edinburgh he enjoys a comparative when it quits the sea to that in which it touches our relief from other sources of annoyance which we cannot contemplate with pleasure. In palates, there is not a single stage of its progress which elsewhere meet him at every turn. "the pride of the morning," to use a fisherman's There is here, perhaps, as little of that fool- phrase-of a bright morning, we shall suppose, in ish idolatry of mere wealth as is consistent this present month of February, when the sun has with the rudeness of the measure by which scarcely gilded the east beyond the green Inchkeith, the common herd of mankind must ever and the "trailing garments of the night" still cover the western hills, your cod is hauled up glit mete their reverence; and even pedigree, for tering in the dawn, by the hands of brave and the most part, is valued only in so far as it is a honest men. Thence, through the sparkling sea, it guarantee for good manners. But what to is borne to the stone pier at Newhaven, where, inthe fastidious man above all things is valuable, stead of suffering the indignity of the huckster's there are few vulgar sights or sounds which ferred to the shoulders of a strapping and tidy, perhe will be here called upon to encounter. haps pretty wench, who, clothed in a quaint, antique, From the singular felicity of the situation, but very becoming garb, singing and jesting with he can scarcely select a residence from which her "kimmers," as she strides along, bears it to his eye will not be gratified by the sight of your door. There, after a world of chattering, it is purchased, for a sum not greatly exceeding its value, natural beauty; and even the architectural by your own ancilla, who with friendly hands prefeatures of the city, though far from fault-pares it for your board. cart-the fate of fish in all other marts--it is trans |