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 Canongo.te ; and her com-
mercial centre, of at least five centuries standing, in the port
of Leith. It is more than probable that the Castle Hill ha at
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 vitr led fort ; and then walls and towers
would encircle it, and a town would grow up on the sloping
talus, almost under its shadow, to share in the
protection
which would witnessn
which it afforded, Every succeeding
new changes ; there would be changes in the towers a
and
rampart 3, and changes in the gradually growin*, city below.
In the year 1600 Edinburgh was little more than half a mile
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 military position. At the distance ofabout 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,
thickets of separated from the first by open fields and
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 threw the veil that lies to
the eist fra the said Castel', quhere now lyes the Cannon-
gait, the staill past threw the wood with sic noyis and din
of buyillis, that all the bastes were raisit fra their dennis."
The King, separated from his train, was thrown from his
horse, end about to be gored by a hart " with awful and
braid tyndis," when a cross slipt into his hands, at the sight
of which the hart fled away. And the King was admonished
in a vision to build the Abbey on the spot. "The account is
curious," remarks Mr. Daniel Wilson. "as affording a
glimpse of the city at that early period, contracted within
its narrow limits, and encircled by a wild forest."---iltigh
!Miller's _History of Edinburgh.

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

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.-
Sole Le.see and Manager, Mr. Geo. Vining.
THIS EVENIN,7;r, PAUL'S RETURN.
After which, HARLEQUIN LITTLE TOM TUCKER;
or The Fine Lady of Banbury Cross, and the Old Woman
who Lived in a Shoe and Had so Many Children she didn't
A:now what to do.