Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/134

116 In one of the old churches I had the great satisfaction of hearing the good and venerable Dr. Blair, whose sermons have been edifying the world for some years past.

The Register-office, in the new town, is a fine building. Princes-street is a noble street, or rather row of houses, looking over the dry trench up to the backs of the houses in the old town; some of them, as I have before observed, fourteen stories high, on that side of the High-street; having almost all of them little sloping gardens, with pieces of rocks, and trees interspersed among them. From Princes-street too is seen, at the extremity of the High-street to the west, the Castle, and the irregular perpendicular side of the bold projecting rock on which it stands.

Most of the new town is built with free-stone, hewn, something like that of Bath. St. Andrew's square is grand; but Queen-street, for view, beats all the other parts of the town. It is a row, rather than a street; it being in front open to every thing that is beautiful, towards Belle Veue, Leith, the Forth, and the lofty hills of Fifeshire beyond it. The fronts of the houses, however, in Queen-street are not so complete as those in