Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/164

152 we cross the border-line between conscious sensation and subconscious stimulation.

Rome is a city of candles and incense mingled with the dry mustiness of crumbling skeletons.

In Edinburgh you encounter here and there the smell of old Scotland. Thatch enters into its make-up, why I cannot tell you. But the cold grey metropolis still preserves the soul of the thatch, a cosy sensation that is prone to bring tears to the eyes of the returning exile.

In Glasgow damp soot struggles with the smell of the Bromielaw for the mastery.

Dublin mingles the warm, rich aroma of Guinness’s Brewery with the cold smell of a corpse from the Liffey.

Those are the cities I know best myself. But I have often been told, and can quite believe it, that every city has its own particular atmosphere.

Some days, both in a city and in the country, are as rich and full of odours as a Turner picture is rich and various in colour. Other days bring us but a grey Whistlerian monotone, in which, nevertheless, the trained sense delights to distinguish an infinity of tender shades, unobserved by the casual.

I used to think that country smells were particularly dear to the country-born only, and that