Edinburgh and its Associations [pp. 357-363]

EDINBURGH AND ITS ASSOCIATIONS.
secure it. He pockets a bribe as guilelessly as Ben Butler did
spoons; there being in neither case, I think, a conscious violation of propriety. Our conductors —in the South at least —are
generally men of character, upon whom an overture to such
petty knaveries would have hazardous effects. However true
the Walpoleism may be, that every man has his price, I have
yet to know a conductor, whose appraisement of himself came
within the circumference of a half-crown. Your readers are
permitted to determine whether this is explained in the superior
modesty of the "guards," or the superior honesty of the conductors.
In the matter of warming the cars, we also enjoy an apparent advantage over the English. Here, we are compelled to
fight a frosty air with blankets and brandy alone; in America,
we have stoves. Concerning those stoves, however, it is worthy
to be remarked, that the incessant opening and shutting of car
doors obliges them to distribute their favors very partially.
The passengers holding the seats of honor pay for it in a
martyrdom of toasted shins, while their remoter neighbors only
escape the auto-da-fe by freezing. In this way, the average of
two very expensive extremes obtains a comfortable mean temperature, an abstract consideration which, however forcible as
a proposition, carries no sense of comfort to frost-bitten toes or
scorching calves.
I recall but one other trifling difference between the railroad
systems of the two countries. In England, a man gets on the
cars with a reasonable hope in the permanency of his anatomical arrangements; in America, he has not two hours' faith
in his legs, as legs, unless he has visited General Longstreet's
limb-assuring office. Th-ere I drop the railroads, and invite you
to a cursory inspection of the place from which this letter is
dispatched.
In its material physiognomy, Edinburgh is, beyond doubt, the
most striking city I have visited in Europe. The site of the
place itself has a smart touch of the mountainous, while the
adjacent country rolls out into a most aniimated rural panorama. Away in the distance upon one side, the mountains
tower massively up, hedging the landscape with a blue outline;
and away in the distance, on the other side,- a gleaming, phosphoric line marks where the ocean greets the land. It has in
easy reach, then, both of the elements, which are thought necessary to embellish and forcibly characterize landscape. De
Quincey's conception of the picturesque could hardly find a
more congenial embodiment. In addition to this, Scott has
woven the spell of romance around so many places in Edinburgh, that it has grown to be a sort of Mecca to middle-aged
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