The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-17 00:00:00

ANTIQUITIES OF EDINBURGH.

Edinburgh has grown out of three old towns or hamlets.
She had her military centre in the grand old Castle, whose
first ages are lost in the obscurity of the pre-historic periods ;
her ecclesiastical centre in Holyrood, with its attendant vil-
lage of Abbey Hill, and burgh of Canongate ; and her com-
mercial centre, of at least five centuries standing, ~11 the port
of Leith. It is more than probable that the Castle Hill has
formed the site of a stronghold ever since man took posses-
sion of the island. Its fortifications would have at first
consisted of a few grassy mounds, topped, like
the hillforts of New Zealand only an age ago,
by lines of palisades ; it would then possibly take the
second form of fortress, known in Scotland as that
of the vitrified fort ; and then Walls and towers
would encircle it, and a town would grow, up on the sloping
tales, almost under its shadow, to share in the protection
which it afforded. Every succeeding age would witness
new changes ; there would be changes in the towers and
y g
ramparts, and changes in the gradually growing city below.
In the year 1600 Edinburgh
Was littlemore
in length by little more than a quarter of a mile in breadth.
It has since become what we now see it—a great metro-
polis, for which man has done much, but nature more.
The ecclesiastical portion of the place grew up long after
its than half a mile
military position. At the distance of about three quar-
ters of a mile from the hamlet under the battlements, there
rose far adown the sloping talus, as early as the year 1200,
a second hamlet, separated from the first by open fields and
thickets of brushwood, and which had grown around the
ecclesiastical centre of the place. The old chapel of Holy-
rood was founded, in fulfilment of a vow by David 1., on
the spot which he narrowly escaped being destroyed by a
furious hart at bay. On the third day after the celebration
of the mass, the King, yielding to the solicitations of his
young nobles, set forth from the Castle, it is, said to hunt,
notwithstanding the earnest dissuasions of a holy canon.
" At last, quhen, he was comyn throw the vail that lies to
the eist fra the said Castell, quhere now lyes the Cannon-
gait, the staill past threw the wood with sic noyis and di,n,
of buyillis, that all the bestes were raisit fra their dorms..
The King, separated from his train, was thrown from hie
horse, and about to be gored by a hart " with awfalan
braid tyndis," when a cross slipt into his hands, at the sightd
of which the hart fledaway. And the King was admonished
in a vision to build the Abbey on the spot.
"astra:ted within
glimpse of the city at that early poriod,
is
• contracted
Hugh
curious," remarks Mr. Daniel Wilson.
ifs narrow limits, and encircled by a wild
Miller's I.liNtory of Edinburgh.
"The
fining a

HEAR Iliii !—" If I have a fault," says Pi ince
Napoleon—and we compliment his Imperial High-
ness, says the Telegraph, upon the modesty which can
suggest the admission of such a possibility—" it is that of
extreme frankness." This particular foible is not one of
which ho has been generally accused; in fact, its existence
had scarcely been suspected until it was thus candidly con-
fessed.

HIGP. WATER. AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DA:lN—Morning, 9h. 50m.—Afternoon, 10h. 34m.
ro-m0R8074 „morning, 1112. 12m.—Afternoon, 1111. 52m.