Giles's, that she had gone away; but she rejoined us between four and
five o'clock at our hotel, where the next thing we did was to dine.
Again after dinner we walked out, looking at the shop-windows of
jewellers, where ornaments made of cairngorm pebbles are the most
peculiar attraction. As it was our wedding-day, . . . . I gave S----- a
golden and amethyst-bodied cairngorm beetle with a ruby head; and after
sitting awhile in Prince's Street Gardens, we came home.
July 10th.--Last evening I walked round the castle rock, and through the
Grass-Market, where I stood on the inlaid cross in the pavement, thence
down the High Street beyond John Knox's house. The throng in that part
of the town was very great. There is a strange fascination in these old
streets, and in the peeps down the closes; but it doubtless would be a
great blessing were a fire to sweep through the whole of ancient
Edinburgh. This system of living on flats, up to I know not what story,
must be most unfavorable to cleanliness, since they have to fetch their
water all that distance towards heaven, and how they get rid of their
rubbish is best known to themselves.
My wife has gone to Roslin this morning, and since her departure it has
been drizzly, so that J----- and I, after a walk through the new part of
the town, are imprisoned in our parlor with little resource except to
look across the valley to the castle, where Mons Meg is plainly visible
on the upper platform, and the lower ramparts, zigzagging about the edge
of the precipice, which nearly in front of us is concealed or softened by
a great deal of shrubbery, but farther off descends steeply down to the
grass below.
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