THE ATHENS AND THE ATHENIANS IN GENERAL.

“A city set on an hill, which cannot be hid.”

In point of diversity of situation and beauty, and durability of building materials, few cities have the same advantages as the Athens; and I know of no city, of which the general and distant effect, upon what side soever one approaches it, is more picturesque and striking. But, as is the case with most things that look well as wholes, one is miserably disappointed when one comes to examine the details. The ground upon which the Athens is built bears some resemblance to a fort with a ditch and glacis. The Castle and High Street, with the clustered buildings on each side, compose the fort; the Cow-gate on the south, the Grass Market on the west, and the North Loch on the north, form the ditch, which bears some resemblance to a noose thrown round the Castle, and having the ends stretching away eastward by the Holyrood; and beyond this ditch the glacis slopes toward St. Leonard’s, the Loch of Duddingstone, and the Meadows on the south, and toward the water of Leith on the north. The central division, although its situation be very airy, and also very favourable for cleanliness, has nothing to boast of in either of these respects. The houses are so closely huddled together, that, excepting the High Street itself, which is rather spacious, the inhabitants may almost shake hands from the windows of the opposite houses; and they are built to such a height, that scarcely a glimpse of sunshine can find its way within two storeys of the foundations. In all this part of the Athens, there seems to be the greatest dislike to subways and common sewers; and thus, unless when the High Street is washed by a torrent of rain, it is by no means the most pleasant to perambulate. The southern ditch, or Cow-gate, is, throughout its whole extent, as filthy and squalid as can well be imagined; and, with the exception of a few public buildings, and one or two little squares, there is not much to be commended on the glacis beyond. Indeed the whole, southward of the North Loch, which the Athenians style the sublime part of their city, is more remarkable for the sublimation of mephitic effluvia than of any other thing. The new town again, or the portion between the North Loch and the water of Leith, is as dull as the other is dirty. The principal streets consist of long lines of stone building, without any break or ornament except wicket-doors and trap-hole windows, which render the whole very heavy, and induce one to believe that they are constructed with the intention of being as inaccessible and dark as possible. Princes Street, which is a single row, looking across the tasteless and unadorned gulf of the North Loch toward the beetling and shapeless masses of the old town, had originally been intended for private dwelling-houses, at the rate of a whole family per floor. Circumstances have changed, however. The Athenian fashionables (contrary to the natural tendency of the Scotch) have moved northwards; their places have been supplied by drapers from the Lawn Market, barbers from the Parliament Stairs, and booksellers from the Cross; and, as the immense weight of tall stone-houses renders the alteration of the ground-floor dangerous, without taking down and rebuilding the whole, the expense of which would be very great, Princes Street is perhaps the most tasteless and clumsy line of shops in the island of Great Britain; while, so anxious are the people to huddle upon the top of each other, that it is not uncommon to find four or five shops for very opposite kinds of wares, in a pile up and down the same stair-case. George Street is the most gloomy and melancholy that can well be imagined; and a walk along its deserted pavements is sufficient to give any one the blue devils for a week. Queen Street is longer, but not a whit more lively; and, though the view from it be both extensive and varied, it seems no great favourite with the Athenians. Farther to the north the buildings are newer, and there is occasionally an attempt at the recurrence of architectural ornaments at the end of certain lengths of the buildings; but these ornaments want taste in their form, and force in their projections, and thus increase the poverty of the effect. Throughout the whole private dwellings of the Athens, you are impressed with the cold eternity of stone and lime, and you look in vain for that airy elegance, that rich variety of taste, and that repose of comfort, which you find in other places. Villas, self-contained houses, and snug or even decent gardens, seem to be held in the greatest abhorrence. You meet not with one of the delightful little boxes which are scattered round London by thousands, and of which there are always a few in the vicinity of even third-rate towns in England. The ambition of the Athenians appears to be, to make every four stone walls a joint stock company, as dull, as tasteless, and as heavy, as a stack of warehouses in Thames Street.

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.

Whence, it may be asked, does this self-adoration arise? To which I would answer, in the true Athenian manner, by asking where the affections of a widowed and childless woman, who has no hope and no chance of being courted by another, are centred. The Athens is a widowed metropolis: she stands registered in the pages of history as having been the seat of kings,—she has her walls of a palace, her name of a royal household, and her gewgaws of a crown and sceptre; but the satisfying, the fattening, the satiating,—or perhaps, as some would call it, the stultifying presence and influence of the monarch is not there; neither is there any vice-roy, or other kingly vice-gerent set high enough in its stead, to attract the attention, and invite or command the worship of the people. Thus, she is in herself not only the capital of Scotland, but all that Scotland has localized as an apology for a king; and therefore, besides assuming the consequence due to a royal seat, she puts on the airs of royalty itself, and worships her own shadow in the mirror of the passing time. She is the only city in the British islands which is so situated; and this alone would be sufficient to give her a peculiarity of character, and to make that peculiarity an inordinate pride.

Thus the Athens, taking her nominal and her real situation into the account, is both metropolitan and provincial: with regard to Scotland, she has the name, and assumes the pride, of being metropolitan in every thing; and in as far as concerns the administration of the laws as peculiar to Scotland, and in some degree, also, as concerning the internal discipline of the Scottish Kirk, she is really metropolitan; but in respect of Britain generally, she is nothing more than a provincial city, and the matters in which she is provincial have, to the full, as powerful an influence upon her rival character, as those in which she is, or flatters herself to be, metropolitan, have upon the character which she is anxious to assume. It is not, for instance, in the nature of things, that she can ever take the lead in matters of taste and fashion. Wherever the executive and legislative powers of the state are allocated, it is there that the gay and the rich will throng; and notwithstanding all the boasted elegance and taste of the Athens, no Scottish nobleman, or even squire, spends his winter there, if he can afford to spend it in London. Hence, the Athens is not only destitute of the source whence fashion flows, but she is also left without the means by which it could be supported: she is second-rate in her very nature, and also in those who form her leading society.

But it follows of necessary consequence, that a place which is second-rate in fashion and in wealth, must be second-rate also in every thing which fashion can encourage and wealth reward. A solitary student who prosecutes a science, or a solitary artist who practises an art, for its own sake, and with an inferior degree of regard to present honour and emolument, might perchance succeed better in the Athens than in the British metropolis. But, as British society is at present constituted, there are few who have the means, and apparently not many who have the desire, of proceeding in this way; and therefore, the place which attracts the fashion and the wealth, will also attract the superior talent, in consequence of the superior means of rewarding which it possesses; and upon this principle, it would be just as vain for the Athens to hope to rival London in any of the liberal arts, or elegant amusements, as it would be for the Scotch lords of Session, to rival the upper House of the British Parliament, the George Street Assembly Rooms to rival Almack’s, or the speeches of the Scotch advocates to be read with as much attention as those of the leading orators in the House of Commons.

Of those classes of persons whose professions fix them in Scotland, the Athens, if she manages her patronage honestly and judiciously, may always command the best. The judges and pleaders in her supreme court ought to be superior to the sheriffs and attornies in the Scottish counties; her clergymen, if those who have the appointment of them were to be guided solely by merit, ought to be the most learned and most eloquent that Scotland can produce; the professors in her university ought (under the same proviso) to be superior to those of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, and perhaps also to those of Glasgow; and, even in other cases, she may produce one or two lights more brilliant than the average in the metropolis;—but, in all cases, where there is no necessary tie, real or imaginary, to bind a man northward of the Tweed, the Athens must be satisfied with making her selection after London has been supplied. Or if she deny the conclusion, she must also deny a principle upon which her people know as well how to act as the people of any place,—that whoever can afford to pay the best, will get the best and the readiest service.

For adopting this theory, the Athens must not accuse me, either of ignorance of her erudition, or of a wish to detract from her real merits. I know her more intimately than she may perhaps be aware; and if I were to judge her by the strict letter of my own experience, I should place her sundry degrees lower still; and tell the world of some of the bitterness which she foolishly squeezes into her own dish, and some of the ludicrous positions into which she works herself, by attempting a grace and a dignity, which her nature and her education alike deny to her; but I have no desire to state any more than is sufficient to establish the truth; and if she can point out a theory either of this leading feature of her general character, or of any of the more detailed and particular ones, which will explain the phenomena better than mine, I shall be very willing to adopt it. Meanwhile, however, it is fitting that a city, which not only looks down in scorn upon the country to which she owes her daily bread, but which affects to sneer at those whom she must notwithstanding copy, and whom it is utterly impossible that she can ever equal, should be rebuked for her arrogance, and resisted when she would claim that to which she neither has nor can have the smallest title.