Edinburgh is governed by a city council, which electF, from its own members a lord provost, a city treasurer, and seven bailies, who constitute the civil magistracy. The Dean of Guild is elected to the council by the Guild Brethren. The city sends four representatives to Parliament. In the matter of municipal under takings Edinburgh has been most active. Its water and gas supplies are managed by a joint commission with Leith. I S95 it has suc cessfully operated an electriedight plant at a substantial animal profit. It also owns its street-railway lines. which, however, are oper ated by a private company at a rental of about 7 per cent. of time capita] outlay. The traetion power is mostly cable. Baths, a public laundry, cemeteries, markets, and slaughter-houses are maintained by the corporation, and a consider able sum is expended annually in aid of tech nical education and for the maintenamp of pub lic. libraries. Following the lead of its sister city Glasgow, Edinburgh has madertakcn nu merous schemes for the better housing of its working (lasses, and has erected several blocks of dwelling-houses, which are let in flats at an exceedingly low rental. The city's system of sewerage has been much hnproved, and now has four separate outlets into the sea. Its garbage is disposed of in destructors or sold for fertiliz ing purposes. Edinburgh has long borne an enviable reputation as an educational centre. At the head of its institutions of learning stands the university (q.v.). Other prominent ediwa tional institutions are the lleriot-Watt College; Ileriot's Hospital, founded by a bequest of George Ileriot, the jeweler of James VI.; Don ahlson's hospital, Hospital. the Merchant Company's Schools, the high school and Fettes College, time last-named being mod eled on the plan of Rugby and Eton. .The Royal Infirmary, consisting of a series of detached buildings in the Scottish baronial style, cost in the neighhorhood of $2,000.000, and is consid ered] one of the most excellently equipped insti tutions of its kind in Europe. There aro nu merous parks and grounds, including Queen's Park of nearly 700 acres, the Aleadows, the Links, and Braid llills.
Edinburgh is not an important manufacturing town; it. however, derives considerable commer cial importance from its various banks and in surance offices. The prineipal industries are brewing (two-thirds of all the ale or beer brewed in Scotland being made in or near Edinburgh), printing and publishing with the kindred arts, iron-founding, tanning, and coach-building, manufaeture of articles in India-rubber, of house furniture, and of jewelry, and the rearing of young trees in nurseries m and around the town, for which the climate is favorable.
Edinburgh is the place of residence of consid erable numbers of the Scottish landed gentry, and its society is regarded as unusually polished from the predominance of the professional and literary elements in its composition. This arises from its status as a university town, and from the presence of the Supreme Law Courts of Scotland. The picturesque and commanding sit uation of the city. combined with its literary fame. has acquired for it the name of the 'Modern Athens.' The seaport of Leith is contigmous to Edinburgh. The climate is healthful, the mean temperature averaging 4S° Fahr., with an average rainfall of about. 27 inches. Population, royal and municipal borough, 1901, 316.470.
Edinburgh is supposed to have sprung tip round the castle built in the seventh century by Edwin, King of Northumbria burgh). If quickly grew to he a place of im portance. and in the eleventh century was a royal residence. Around the Abbey of Holyrond (q.v.), which Dash! I. founded in I P28, the town of C:inongate, later annexed to old Edin burgh. From Robert the Bruce the burghers received a charter which granted them a great degree of self-government and the possession of the port of Leith. In the fifteenth century the Scottish kings sought refuge from their turbu lent noble; in the Castle of Edinburgh, and the town became the capital of the kingdom, and was closely connected with the Chief V•elltA of Scot t history for the next two hundred and fifty year-, witnessing the fortune; of Mary Stuart (q.v.), the spread of the Reformation, and the battles of the l'ovenanters. The of James VI. to the English throne in 1603, and the union with England in 1707, deprived Edinburgh of much of its political prominence, but it ac quired instead great fame as the literary cen tre of Scotland, the home of Walter Scnt, Jef frey. and John Wilson ('eli•istopher The new town dates from 1763, after the Nor' /melt had been drained and bridged.