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Edinburgh
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But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the
vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by
all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried
in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with snow as it
comes flying southward from the Highland hills. The weather is
raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and
a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The delicate
die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping
rain, have sometimes been tempted to envy them their fate. For
all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark
weather and a perpetual tilting against squalls, there could
scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of
residence. Many such aspire angrily after that Somewhere-else of
the imagination, where all troubles are supposed to end. They
lean over the great bridge which joins the New Town with the Old
- that windiest spot, or high altar, in this northern temple of
the winds - and watch the trains smoking out from under them and
vanishing into the tunnel on a voyage to brighter skies. Happy
the passengers who shake off the dust of Edinburgh, and have
heard for the last time the cry of the east wind among her
chimney-tops!
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Edinburgh
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To none but those who have themselves suffered the thing in the
body can the gloom and depression of our Edinburgh winter be
brought home. For some constitutions there is something almost
physically disgusting in the bleak ugliness of easterly weather;
the wind wearies, the sickly sky depresses them; and they turn
back from their walk to avoid the aspect of the unrefulgent sun
going down among perturbed and pallid mists. The days are so
short that a man does much of his business, and certainly all of
his pleasure, by the haggard glare of gas lamps. The roads are
as heavy as a fallow. People go by, so drenched and
draggle-tailed that I have often wondered how they found the
heart to undress. And meantime the wind whistles through the
town as if it were an open meadow; and if you lie awake all
night, you hear it shrieking and raving overhead with a noise of
shipwrecks and falling houses. In a word, life is so unsightly
that there are times when the heart turns sick in a man's
inside; and the look of a tavern, or the thought of the warm,
fire-lit study, is like the touch of land to one who has been
long struggling with the seas.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Picturesque Old Edinburgh
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