Together with the book's profound treatment of the spiritual ills born of the Enlightenment, this wonderful character is Barton's main gift to us.
The grand, iron-railinged terraces of the New Town can be intimidating - but they are touching, too; in the kindness and generosity of their spaciousness and light, and that huge, wonderful, overwhelming promise of the Enlightenment: that out of the chaos and Rabelaisian hurly-burly (the Old Town is still where much of the fun takes place), order will inevitably come.
Throughout history, emerging classes have done much the same, from the French Revolution with its radical Enlightenment and the wonderful achievements of Thomas Paine and others to the Chartists of the 19th century and the spate of human rights charters after the second world war.
The conversation veered toward the Learning Annex style of self-enlightenment: How to be wonderful and powerful (and erotic) in three hours or less.
It's a wonderful learning process - an upward spiral of enlightenment.
If you decide to hop aboard, it will stop off at many wonderful places where you'll experience genuine spiritual enlightenment.
But how grateful I am for the enlightenment, the occasional psychoanalysis and therapy sessions, and the wonderful intellectual arguments from my sisters-of-the-mind.
For all the slaughter and devastation it precipitated, it insists, the Reformation was a wonderful thing and a major step on the road toward human enlightenment.
In it, the late and wonderful David Rakoff tries a 20-day fast to see if he can achieve spiritual enlightenment like the Buddha, monks, saints and new age gurus have accomplished.
So I'm grateful to the writers who write such wonderful stories and poems and articles, who've enriched my world with a lifetime of pleasure and enlightenment.
Ours is a city of the mind, and this wonderful building reminds us of our intellectual history – of the spirit of enquiry that was at the heart of Enlightenment Edinburgh and that still means so much in Scotland".
