Blackford Hill

When "the broom is blowin' bonnie," Blackford Hill affords a spectacle of colour of extraordinary richness. Its green bulk is then embossed with gold. Covered with snow in the winter it presents an Alpine prospect.

In the darkness of a spring or summer night the hill provides a new viewpoint of special interest. When the darkness has fallen one might imagine one's self looking down on an ancient city in the Middle East.

There is an air of mystery, of romance, of the possibility of adventure in the broad sea of blackness, which the eye commands as from the height of some steep island rising in the midst of it.

From our exhilarating height we look down upon the encompassing city with an absolute sense of detachment, as some Greek god from his Olympus, or the Grand Vizier, gazing from his palace tower upon the alleys of his Middle Eastern city, before venturing down into its intricate ways.

There below, thousands of people are moving about on their separate quests. Thousands of threads are being woven into the great tapestry of life.

It is not so much the physical aspect as the psychological quality of the situation that eminates a Middle Eastern feel. Lines of twinkling lights reveal the city's position as if by some elaborate plan of festive illumination. The lights twinkle in long lines. There are curves and squares and crosses. There the illuminations merge into a soft phosphorescent glow. The city is mapped out and presents itself comprehensively to the mind at a glance.

We can try under this aspect of darkness to locate the familiar features. The Castle, rising above the plane of the general level, is easily recognised. The main arteries of communication stretching from the suburbs may also be noted.

But recognise its ways and the walls thereof as we may, it is a different Edinburgh from the Edinburgh of daylight. Edinburgh in the sunshine or the rain is a fair and frank Scottish town, set in a remarkably fine panorama of sea and landscape.

This is a city of witchery, of vague insubstantial glamour, a veritable home of new Arabian Nights. Released from the dwarfing comparison of the hills, the city has expanded. It gives an impression of vastness missed in the daytime.

Above those twinkling lights we feel ourselves, as it were, amongst the stars, with a sweeping outlook upon the firmament - stars above us and stars beneath, and we soar among them.

The stars below us are variegated in size and colour, like those above. Rows of distant street lamps, with a red light intervening near the top, makes a fantastic constellation.

Far away to the north-east a bright row on a slightly different plane, which we take to be the Portobello promenade, forms a glittering Orion's Belt. Over the general level of the lights, which seem to float on the darkness covering the city, the dull yellow clock-faces of towers and steeples rise like lighthouses.

And on the northern horizon, by the edge of the shadowy mass of the Salisbury Crags, a red light at Leith keeps winking solemnly. Soon, however, the moon arises. A wave of light rolls back the darkness. Masonry begins to appear. The city regains its more familiar aspect. It is bewitching enough still, but the vision of the Middle East has disappeared.

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