Precipitous city

Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful of the world's cities, a place of splendor whose craggy skyline brings together two entirely different worlds. To the south of its main thoroughfare, Princes Street, the Castle with the towering medieval tenements and spires of the old town within its protection; to the north, the cool elegance of Georgian architecture blessed by the Smile of Reason: it is a city of bewildering contrasts. It was with good reason that Edinburgh's writers proclaimed their native city with wit and gusto. Robert Burns addressed it heroically as "Scotia's Darling Seat," Sir Walter Scott, with his eye fixed firmly on the glorious past, held it for ever as his "own romantic town" and Robert Louis Stevenson, his mind sharpened by the pain of exile, called it, aptly enough, his "precipitous city." - Jacket flap.