Edinburgh Since C18

Edinburgh has subsequently lead a peaceful and almost uninterrupted prosperity. If in industry, wealth, and population it has had to yield to Glasgow, it has remained the head and centre of Scottish affairs - in the Church, in the Law, and in Executive Government; it has kept a lead in art and literature; while education, on which a copestone - since widened, heightened, and renewed - was placed when the University was founded, under municipal auspices, in 1583, may be said to be its chief business.

Nor have trade and commerce, especially the trades, like printing, that minister to letters, been neglected; or the architectural enhancement of the beauties of the site provided by Nature; or the extension of its boundaries to " a' the airts."

A Rubicon in its course was passed when it stepped across the Nor' Loch valley, and began to occupy the New Town. The first house in St. Andrew Square dates from 1768.

It has since become a great industrial centre - with the acquisition of Leith a great seaport - while retaining the place it held in the time of Hume and Boswell, of Kames and Robertson and Dugald stewart, of Scott and Jeffrey and Cockburn, as the "Modern Athens." It has widened its frontiers until it stretches from the sea to the Pentlands, and from the Almond almost to the Esk.

Advertisements