DOI Heft:
No. 33 (December, 1895)
DOI Artikel:Armour, Margaret: Edinburgh as a sketching ground: illustrated by W. Brown MacDougall$nElektronische Ressource
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17295#0180
' edinburgh castle
by w. brown macdougall
direct (more polite to you than to his secretary!); have been avenging him ever since. So, if you decide
his only excuse being that he finds it daily harder to follow in W.'s steps, resist the allurements of an
to lay aside the brush for the pen. inn. Track him up to his present abode in one of
To tell the truth, since he settled here he has the University Halls, and get admission, like him,
been as a man possessed. He walks the old as a Resident. You will be well housed, well fed,
streets in a rapture, seizing " effects " at every well amused, and examined in neither Euclid nor
street-corner. And the odd thing is that I, who Horace, while you will be in stimulating touch with
pride myself on moderation, almost more than Professor Geddes, a most enlightened lover of the
share his delight. Fine Arts. You will be, moreover, perched on a
Edinburgh is wonderfully paintable. Its hills height in the historic centre of the town, with a
and hollows bristle with romantic points of picturesque radii of streets diverging to a circum-
view. The High Street, with its irregularly
heaped-up houses, and ancient wynds and
courts, is a peep into the Middle Ages;
while the huge Castle Rock, which to gaze
up to from below Ruskin calls an art edu-
cation, fires to lofty imaginings, and tacitly
reproaches pot-boiling and all things venal
and base.
You, who have known us as lovers of flat
country, and indifferent to mountain and
flood, will wonder at this enthusiasm for
Scotland, but, as a philosopher, you must
have observed how Fate loves to make us
eat our words; and, after all, Edinburgh is
not the Highlands, which, I must own, still
daunt me as an artist.
And now for details of our doings, in
which I place the personal first. The Scots
are accounted a thrifty race, but it is a
quality they discourage in others. You may
have heard of the one in London who com-
plained that he had not been there a day
when "bang went saxpence." Scotch hotels "princes street gardens"' by w. brown macdougall
165
by w. brown macdougall
direct (more polite to you than to his secretary!); have been avenging him ever since. So, if you decide
his only excuse being that he finds it daily harder to follow in W.'s steps, resist the allurements of an
to lay aside the brush for the pen. inn. Track him up to his present abode in one of
To tell the truth, since he settled here he has the University Halls, and get admission, like him,
been as a man possessed. He walks the old as a Resident. You will be well housed, well fed,
streets in a rapture, seizing " effects " at every well amused, and examined in neither Euclid nor
street-corner. And the odd thing is that I, who Horace, while you will be in stimulating touch with
pride myself on moderation, almost more than Professor Geddes, a most enlightened lover of the
share his delight. Fine Arts. You will be, moreover, perched on a
Edinburgh is wonderfully paintable. Its hills height in the historic centre of the town, with a
and hollows bristle with romantic points of picturesque radii of streets diverging to a circum-
view. The High Street, with its irregularly
heaped-up houses, and ancient wynds and
courts, is a peep into the Middle Ages;
while the huge Castle Rock, which to gaze
up to from below Ruskin calls an art edu-
cation, fires to lofty imaginings, and tacitly
reproaches pot-boiling and all things venal
and base.
You, who have known us as lovers of flat
country, and indifferent to mountain and
flood, will wonder at this enthusiasm for
Scotland, but, as a philosopher, you must
have observed how Fate loves to make us
eat our words; and, after all, Edinburgh is
not the Highlands, which, I must own, still
daunt me as an artist.
And now for details of our doings, in
which I place the personal first. The Scots
are accounted a thrifty race, but it is a
quality they discourage in others. You may
have heard of the one in London who com-
plained that he had not been there a day
when "bang went saxpence." Scotch hotels "princes street gardens"' by w. brown macdougall
165