their own country, it may be perceived that they do not confine it to very narrow bounds, but extend it through Europe, nay sometimes the whole universe. I know of no city nor town in any part of his Majesty's dominions which may with the least degree of propriety be given the appellation of a city or town of palaces, unless it be the city of Oxford and the town of Cambridge; for, in those places, many of the Colleges and public buildings may be truly said to be palaces, and splendid ones too, with princely endowments to maintain them in their present elegant and unrivalled state. If the buildings in their New Town of Edinburgh, (which is not larger than than some of the villages about London,) composing three or four streets and a very small square, with irregular houses and dirty areas, in which there are bakers, hucksters, and many other miserable shops within the pallisades, which indeed hardly deserve that name, put up in a slovenly manner, with the most indifferent materials; if such streets and such houses, which are inferior to a hundred streets and a hundred thousand houses in London, may assume the name of a city of palaces, it is a piece of national ostentation, making what is little look less. But the common reflection in Scotland is, when speaking of the elegance and splendor of our colleges, "that, if they have not so many fine col leges, leges they have not so many fine blockheads to inhabit them." But dirty envy has always got mud enough about her to bespatter her neighbours, whenever she sees them dressed, or look better than herself. The man or woman, who, from national bigotry, becomes partial to any person or to any thing, is like those, who, while looking through a telescope at any favourite object, are for ever apt to direct the eye to that end of the glass which magnifies; but where partiality or prejudice have got the better of the little mind, let the person be ever so fair, or the object ever so great, they will invert the optical machine, and make use of that end alone, which not only diminishes, but sets the object at a distance. Holy-Rood-House is now a refuge to a royal fugitive, and no doubt but by this time is made to wear a more princely appearance; but it is scarcely in the power of human labour to remove the ordurous exhalations which diffuse themselves around it. The Castle of Edinburgh stands upon a considerable eminence at the top of the old town, which is about a mile in length, being one continued street, with black-looking lofty houses twelve or thirteen stories high, let out in flats, like the apartments in the Adelphi, in London; it may be said to resemble the skeleton of a mackrel or any other fish; the high street serving for the back-bone; the multifarious winds, closes, alleys, or lanes, that open into it may be compared to the the ribbs, and are so thickly inhabited by all description of the natives, that it is said to contain between twenty and thirty thousand souls; not celebrated for their cleanliness. The common sewer of this part of the town is above ground, so that all the filth of the inhabitants is carried by the springs, many of which, being in the high street, hurry down the channels, and the palace lying in the bottom, every thing that is offensive makes its way to the very nostrils of this royal residence; but, as we are told that its present incumbent makes frequent applications to the snuff-box, like to most of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, his plfactory sense may be happy enough to set every nuisance at defiance. The new town of Edinburgh is certainly handsomely built, with a clean |