Firth of Forth and Calton Hill 

‘As the sun over the hills to the west, the Firth of Forth glistened and everything seemed set for a golden voyage to a golden future.The Edinburgh skyline had rugged mountains, a great medieval castle and fine neoclassical architecture, on Calton Hill. Mr Loudon stood on the deck and waved his hand to the city. He had said goodbye to his family the day before and to the Dicksons after breakfast.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

More about Leith

Leith is the port of Edinburgh and was an important trading hub in the 18th century. Seen from the Firth of Forth, the foreground was dominated by the masts and sails of numerous ships from around the world, docked along the quaysides. Warehouses and other commercial buildings lined the waterfront, their tall stone facades reflecting the city's prosperity. In the distance, the skyline was formed by the hills surrounding Edinburgh, including the prominent landmarks of Calton Hill, Edinburgh Castle, Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags. 

The departure time for sailing ship leaving Edinburgh for London depended winds and tides, not on timetables. The favoured combination was a westerly wind and an ebbing tide. One of the best views of Edinburgh is looking south from Forth in the evening. It is often breathtaking. The rugged hills and neoclassical architecture could remind one of Poussin as much as of Claude Lorraine.

Robert Louis Stevenson's description of Calton Hill

'The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no great elevation, which the town embraces. The old London road runs on one side of it; while the New Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes the circuit. You mount by stairs in a cutting of the rock to find yourself in a field of monuments. Dugald Stewart has the honours of situation and architecture; Burns is memorialised lower down upon a spur; Lord Nelson, as befits a sailor, gives his name to the topgallant of the Calton Hill. This latter erection has been differently and yet, in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and a butterchurn; comparisons apart, it ranks among the vilest of men's handiworks.' 

'But the chief feature is an unfinished range of columns, the Modern Ruin' as it has been called, an imposing object from far and near, and giving Edinburgh, even from the sea, that chief feature is an unfinished range of columns, the Modern Ruin' as it has been called, an imposing object from far and near, and giving Edinburgh, even from the sea, that false air of a Modern Athens which has earned for her so many slighting speeches. meant to be a National Monument; and its present state is a very suitable monument to certain national characteristics. The old Observatory a quaint brown building on the edge of the steep—and the new Observatory—a classical edifice with a dome-occupy the central portion of the summit. All these are scattered on a green turf, browsed over by some sheep.'

'The scene suggests reflections on fame and on man's injustice to the dead. You see Dugald Stewart rather more handsomely commemorated than Burns. Immediately below, in the Canongate churchyard, lies Robert Fergusson, Burns's master in his art, who died insane while yet a stripling; and if Dugald Stewart has been somewhat too boisterously acclaimed, the Edinburgh poet, on the other hand, is most unrighteously forgotten. The votaries of Burns, a crew too common in all ranks in Scotland and inore remarkable for number than discretion, eagerly suppress all mention of the lad who handed to him the poetic impulse and, up to the time when he grew famous, continued to influence him in his manner and the choice of subjects. Burns himself not only acknowledged his debt in a fragment of autobiography, but erected a tomb over the grave in Canongate churchyard. This was worthy of an artist, but it was done in vain; and although I think I have read nearly all the biographies of Burns, I cannot remember one in which the modesty of nature was not violated, or where Fergusson was not sacrificed to the credit of his follower's originality. There is a kind of gaping admiration that would fain roll Shakespeare and Bacon into one, to have a bigger thing to gape at; and a class of men who cannot edit one author without disparaging all others. They are indeed mistaken if they think to please the great originals; and whoever puts Fergusson right with fame, cannot do better than dedicate his labours to the memory of Burns, who will be the best delighted of the dead.'