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A vision in Princes Street.
When we awoke next morning the sun had forgotten itself and was shining in at Mrs.M'Collop's back windows.
We should have arisen at once to burn sacrifices and offer oblations, but we had seen the sun frequently in America, and had no idea (poor fools!) that it was anything to be grateful for, so we accepted it, almost without comment, as one of the perennial providences of life.
When I speak of Edinburgh sunshine I do not mean, of course, any such burning, whole-souled, ardent warmth of beam as one finds in countries where they make a specialty of climate.

It is, generally speaking, a half-hearted, uncertain ray, as pale and transitory as a martyr's smile; but its faintest gleam, or its most puerile attempt to gleam, is admired and recorded by its well-disciplined constituency.

Not only that, but at the first timid blink of the sun the true Scotsman remarks smilingly, 'I think now we shall be having settled weather!' It is a pathetic optimism, beautiful but quite groundless, and leads one to believe in the story that when Father Noah refused to take Sandy into the ark, he sat down philosophically outside, saying, with a glance at the clouds, 'Aweel! the day's just aboot the ord'nar', an' I wouldna won'er if we saw the sun afore nicht!' But what loyal son of Edina cares for these transatlantic gibes, and where is the dweller within her royal gates who fails to succumb to the sombre beauty of that old grey town of the North?
'Grey! why, it is grey or grey and gold, or grey and gold and blue, or grey and gold and blue and green, or grey and gold and blue and green and purple, according as the heaven pleases and you choose your ground! But take it when it is most sombrely grey, where is another such grey city ?' So says one of her lovers, and so the great army of lovers would say, had they the same gift of language; for 'Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be,...
Yea, an imperial city that might hold Five time a hundred noble towns in fee....
Thus should her towers be raised; with vicinage Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets, As if to indicate, 'mid choicest seats Of Art, abiding Nature's majesty.' We ate a hasty breakfast that first morning, and prepared to go out for a walk into the great unknown, perhaps the most pleasurable sensation in the world.

Francesca was ready first, and, having mentioned the fact several times ostentatiously, she went into the drawing-room to wait and read the Scotsman.