the modern athens 17

the modern athens 17

Of all the objects of Athenian detestation, the greatest, however, seem

to be decently laid out pleasure-grounds, and trees. Strangers used

to say that the rustic Scotch cut down all sorts of bushes, because

ghosts and spirits whistled in them on windy nights; and really, when I

looked at the many fine situations in and about the Athens, which the

Athenians have taken particular care neither to improve nor to plant,

I could not help thinking that this superstition, now banished from

every province in Scotland, has taken up its abode in the Scottish

metropolis. True, they have a public walk round the Calton-Hill, but

that is merely a thing of yesterday; and though they have placed upon

the top of it a monument to Lord Nelson, modelled exactly after a Dutch

skipper’s spy-glass, or a butter churn; an astronomical observatory,

tasteful enough in its design, but not much bigger than a decent

rat-trap, or a twelfth-cake at the Mansion-House; and are to build “the

National Monument;” yet they have never thought of planting so much

as a thistle, but have left the summit of the hill in all its native

bleakness, and allowed it to be so much infested by lazy black-guards

and bare-footed washerwomen, as to be unsafe for respectable females

even at noon-day;--while after dusk this, the most fashionable

promenade of the Athens, is habitually the scene of so much and so

wanton vice, that instead of an ornament to the city, as it might

easily be made, it is a nuisance and a disgrace.

 

The royal precinct of the Holyrood, which occupies a piece of rich

level ground about the palace, and which stretches a considerable way

up the romantic heights to the south, is, one would think, a chosen

place for taste to display itself upon; and when there are taken

into the account the boast of the Athenians that their Holyrood is

the finest royal palace in Britain, and that other boast which is so

habitual with them that there is no need of repeating it, one would

imagine that among all their boasted improvements the royal precinct

would not have been overlooked; but all that they appear to have done

for it has been to make it as dirty and as desolate as ever they could.

The whole filth of the old town (and that is no small commodity) is

collected in cesspools within a few yards of the palace; and lest

that should not be grateful enough to the Athenian olfactories, a

considerable portion of the adjoining ground is set apart for the

collection of manure from all places. Upon the other parts of the

royal domain, about half a dozen of scraggy and withered trees, and

an old thorn-hedge, more than half of which was when I viewed it

reposing in the lap of its neighbour ditch, are the only attempts at

landscape-gardening; and the grand-children of those by whom they were

planted must, by this time, be in their graves or their dotage.

 

Salisbury Crags, again, are a natural object which the people of a

less classical city would not only adore, but adorn by every means in

their power. The Athenians act differently; their rulers hew down the

picturesque masses of basalt, sell them at so much a cart-load, for

paving the streets and Mac-Adamizing the highways, and put the proceeds

into that bottomless box called the “common gude.” About midway up

that bold front of these cliffs which looks towards the city, there

is what may be termed an accidental public walk. It has been formed

by the cutting away of the rock above for the purposes of gain, and

the tumbling down of the smaller fragments which were not saleable.

When the Athenian authorities were alarmed at the Radicals, and

bestirred themselves in getting a general subscription for the relief

of those whom the changes consequent upon the late war had thrown out

of employment, a few labourers were set to work on the middle of this

walk; but they had no plan and no superintendant, and the funds were

exhausted before it could be made accessible at either end; while the

whole face of the Crags, instead of being tufted with brushwood and

festooned with creeping plants, as might have been done at very little

expense, is as naked as--the shame of those who let it remain in its

present condition.

 

The meadows southward of the city, and the adjoining common called

“Bruntsfield-links,” are not in much better condition. At some period,

indeed, a walk or two had been formed in the meadows, and some hedges

and trees planted, but neither the one nor the other have been attended

to; while the grass is in so marshy a state that the cows, to which

it is almost exclusively assigned, can with difficulty make their way

across it. The whole extent of the North Loch, too, was till very

lately, and great part of it is still, a putrid and pestilent marsh,

at once offensive to the eye, and injurious to the health; and indeed,

throughout the whole compass of the Athens, there is scarcely a tree

or any thing green, except grass in the melancholy streets towards the

meadows, and moss upon the dank walls of several of the more low and

squalid dwelling-houses.

 

Notwithstanding all this, there are few places that boast more of their

improvements than the Athens; and not many in which the people have

been made to pay more upon that score. But either there has been a

total want of skill in the projectors, or a total want of economy in

those who had the execution,--if indeed there has not been both. I was

told repeatedly, that every scheme and measure to which the Athenian

authorities give the name of a public improvement, is uniformly a job

for the benefit, not of the public, but of some party or individual;

and really, comparing what is said to have been expended with what has

actually been done, I can find no other theory that will sufficiently

explain the facts. The bell-rope of the Tron-Kirk appears not to have

been the only case in which a hundred pounds’ expense has been incurred

for the purpose of saving a shilling.

 

Even in her public buildings, the Athens has little of which she can

boast. All the places of worship belonging to the established Kirk

are tasteless; and the most modern ones are the most so. St. Giles’

Cathedral is a black, shapeless, and ruinous mass, stuck round with

booths and police-officers; and when one has said, that the portion

of it set apart for public worship as the High Kirk, has a handsome

old roof spoiled by tasteless painting, and a square tower with an

imperial crown, which looks well at a distance, and not absolutely

ill when one is close to it,--one has about summed up the whole of

its merits. Respecting most of the other Presbyterian churches, the

less that is said the better; the Grey-Friars, situate south of the

Castle, has an interest with the more devout people of Scotland, from

the tombs of the martyrs that are in the adjoining burial-ground; and

St. George’s Church, which terminates the street of the same name,

westward, is perhaps the most expensive and unseemly abortion of modern

architecture. Public monuments in the Athens there are none, except

Nelson’s (formerly mentioned) on the Calton-Hill, and Lord Melville’s

column in St. Andrew’s Square; and it is not the fashion of the Athens

to consider her burying-grounds as sacred, or to set up memorials for

the illustrious dead. If her plan gives her as much trouble as this

would do, it is trouble of a different kind: she keeps down, as much as

she can, all those who are not either illustrious already, or have not

something to confer, as long as they are alive; and when they are dead,

she gives herself no more trouble about them.

 

Of her other public buildings, the College is the largest; but

as the plan was far beyond her means, it stood a ruin for a very

considerable period, and will ultimately be a piece of patchwork in

consequence of a deviation from the original design. Still, however,

if it could be seen, the entrance front is majestic; and the opposite

square (especially the whole façade in which the Museum is, and the

rooms for the Museum itself) is singularly chaste and beautiful. The

Register-House is a neat building, and seen to considerable advantage;

but there is something trifling in the whole air of it.

 

That frost-work style of architecture, which out-Goths all the Goths

that ever existed, has visited the Athens, in some of its most tawdry

and fantastic specimens,--the chief of which are an episcopal chapel

near the west end of Princes’ Street, and another near the east end of

Queen Street, of which it would puzzle a conjuror to point out the most

ridiculous.

 

Even the Castle has suffered the infliction of the modern Athenian

taste, by the erection of two or three piles within its ramparts which

have every appearance of being cotton manufactories. So much for the

still life of the modern Athens.

 

To give a general idea of the Athenian people, is by no means so easy

a matter. They take their character from a number of circumstances;

and the circumstances cannot be properly explained without an allusion

to the character, nor the character rightly appreciated without a

reference to the circumstances. If one dwell upon the general subject,

one is forced to assert without any means of proving; and if one take

up a single particular, although the proof be perfect in as far as that

is concerned, it is difficult to establish the connexion, and point out

the effect, with regard to the whole. To examine society with a view to

determine the general spirit and character of those who compose it,

is like examining an animal with a view to a knowledge of the nature

and operation of the living principle. If we examine it while alive

and in the performance of its functions, we see the results without

being able to understand the machinery; and if we dissect and separate

the different parts, we have the machinery without the results; nor

does it appear that there are any means by which we can obtain a

contemporaneous view of both.

 

Thus, I found the character of the Athenians different from that

of the inhabitants of any other city; and I also found many of the

circumstances under which they are placed to be peculiar; but still

I am not prepared to say, that the one set of peculiarities are

altogether to be set down as causes, and the other as effects. The

Athens has, doubtless, stamped upon her people much of their character,

and they have requited her by service of the same kind; so that any

pretension to be profoundly philosophic in the matter would be as

impossible as for my purpose it is unnecessary.

 

The leading characteristic of the Athenians, of all ranks, all degrees

of understanding, all measures of taste, all shades of party, and both

sexes, is to esteem their own idols in preference to the idols of every

other people on the face of the earth. Their own situation is the

finest that can possibly be found; and their own mode of improving

it is superior to any that could be suggested. Their men, taken on

the average, excel all others in wisdom, and nothing can any way

compare with the brilliance of their women. In their manners they are

never vulgar; and in their tastes and judgments they do not make half

the slips and blunders which are made by the rest of the world. The

songs of their poets (when they happen to have any) are transcendent

for sublimity and sweetness; and the theories of their philosophers

(of which they are never without a reasonable portion) are ever the

most agreeable to nature, and the most nicely put together. Upon the

latter point they are somewhat amusing; for in no place whatever have

philosophic theories been so often changed, as among the sages of the

succession of schools which, shining from the Athens, have dazzled and

illuminated mankind; and yet, while each of these theories has been the

object of Athenian adoration, it, and none but it, has been the true

one. In politics they have not, at least for a long time, been agreed

in their doctrines, or unanimous in their worship; for in politics,

interest has generally much more to do than principle; and, being by

much the stronger of the two, and pulling opposite ways with different

parties, it has produced among the Athenians, divisions which are as

remarkable as their union of self-adoration in most other things.