Yes, there can be little danger of sinking into barren formulae, into
glib aesthetic prattle about Renascence, in a movement of which one
expression is the purification of those plaguy, if picturesque, Closes,
which are the foul blot upon the beautiful Athens of the North. Those
sunless courts, entered by needles' eyes of apertures, congested with
hellish, heaven-scaling barracks, reeking with refuse and evil odours,
inhabited promiscuously by poverty and prostitution, worse than the worst
slums of London itself--how could they have been left so long to pollute
the fairest and well-nigh the wealthiest city in the kingdom? "Do you
wonder Edinburgh is renowned for its medical schools?" asked the
Professor grimly, as he darted in and out among those foul alleys,
explaining how he was demolishing this and reconstructing that--at once a
Destroying Angel and a Redeemer. Veritable ghettoes they seemed, these
blind alleys of gigantic habitations, branching out from the High Street,
hidden away from the superficial passer-by faring to Holyrood. They were
the pioneers of the trans-Atlantic sky-builders, were those old burghers,
who, shut in about their castled hill by the two lochs, one of which is
now the enchanting Princes Street, were fain to build heavenwards as
population grew.
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