August, around what PUBLIC WORKS I see

Lo! Stately streets, Lo! Squares that court the breeze

See! Long canals and deepened rivers join

Each part with each, and with the encircling Main

The whole enlivened Isle.

(lines from James Thomson's poem 'Liberty' engraved on Craig's original plan for Edinburgh's New Town)

Craig's original, imaginative but impractical conception was for the street plan to resemble the Union Flag with diagonal streets radiating from the centre. This was subsequently modified in favour of three parallel main streets running in a straight line between terminating squares. In the painting he is seen with a further modification which envisaged a circus as the central focus, but this was not adopted. The plan for a canal skirted by promenades in place of the drained valley of the Nor Loch was abandoned.