\T GREAT CITIES > i u . f 'JSjf^^^S^T 1 ffl K.'l:. 1 -&r^ H v*|£JS Pte •* 1 i{H^^JH~' l. St '•W^^ ^'FJWJWUOTWB ♦ >• E J J PICTURE PLAN OF EDINBURGH. A. AND C. BLACK, LONDON. LIST OF VOLUMES IN THE PEEPS AT MANY LANDS AND CITIES SERIES EACH CONTAINING 13 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BELGIUM IRELAND BURMA ITALY CANADA JAMAICA JAPAN CEYLON CHINA KOREA CORSICA MOROCCO DENMARK NEW ZEALAND EDINBURGH NORWAY EGYPT - PARIS ENGLAND PORTUGAL FINLAND RUSSIA FRANCE SCOTLAND GERMANY SIAM GREECE SOUTH AFRICA HOLLAND SOUTH SEAS HOLY LAND SPAIN ICELAND SWITZERLAND INDIA A LARGER VOLUM E IN THE SAME STYLE THE WORLD Containing 37 full-page illustrations in colour PUBLISHED BY ADAH AND CHARLES BLACK SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W. AGENTS AMERICA . . . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 A 66 FHTH AVBNUH, NEW YORK AUSTRALASIA . OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 305 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE CANADA . . THE M ACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. St. Martin's House, 70 Bond Street, TORONTO TJTDIA .... MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD. Macmillan Building, BOMBAY 109 Bow Bazaar Street. CALCUTTA THE CASTLE AND SCOTT MONUMENT. INSCRIBED TO MY VERY DEAR FRIENDS SIR LEWIS and LADY McIVER S&atyr- Oh City of my memories ! Oh City of my heart ! I love the rain that lashes you, The wind that makes me smart ; Your beauty in the sunshine No mortal can forget, — But most I love the smell of you When every stone is wet ! Your New Town's stately rhythm, Your Old Town's rugged rhyme ; How many scores of comedies You've laughed at in your time ! In what a host of tragedies Your stones play silent part, — Oh City of grey mists and dreams ! Oh City of my heart ! CONTENTS CHAPTER I. " EDINA, SCOTIA'S DARLING SEAT " II. " MINE OWN ROMANTIC TOWN " . III. "THE GREY METROPOLIS OF THE NORTH " IV. STORIES OF THE PAST : TWO MIRACLES . V. STORIES OF THE PAST : BATTLES, MURDERS AND SUDDEN DEATHS VI. EDINBURGH GIRLS AND BOYS IN OLD DAYS VII. GIRLS AND BOYS OF MODERN EDINBURGH VIII. HOOD AND GOWN .... IX. WIG AND GOWN ..... X. WINTER IN EDINBURGH XI. EDINBURGH IN SUMMER 5 9 13 22 27 36 45 56 65 78 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE CASTLE AND SCOTT MONUMENT FACING PAGE EDINBURGH FROM "REST AND BE THANKFUL PRINCES STREET ....... HOLYROOD PALACE AND PART OF THE ANCIENT ABBEY THE MESSENGER FROM FLODDEN MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS "GREENBREEKS" LEADING THE POTTER ROW " BICKER " .... SIR WALTER SCOTT .... JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF ENGLAND THE CHURCH OF ST. GILES JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE .... LADY STAIR'S CLOSE .... A Picture Plan of Edinburgh inside front cover Frontispiece v/ 8/ 17 v 24 33 40 BOYS IN A AS A BOY 49 56 65 72 8l 88 EDINBURGH CHAPTER I "edina, scotia's darling seat." A little English girl asked me the other day : " How big is Edinburgh ? Is it as big as Amersham?" Now, Amersham is a little town in Buckinghamshire — one street of lovely old red-roofed houses, and the spire of an ancient parish Church, and the chimney of a new brewery, — and that is all. You can walk through it in less than five minutes, and be out in the fields and woods again. So I tried to explain that Edinburgh was altogether different and very much bigger. "It is the Capital of Scotland, just as London is the Capital of England," the little English girl was told. " Oh, I see," she said ; " then is it as big as London?" Then Scottish pride had to be curbed, and Scottish truthfulness had to confess that no, it was not nearly so big as London. " It is about the size of — of — but what other towns do you know?" " Well," said the little English girl, " you see, I don't know any other towns except Amersham and London !" So she had to be left picturing Edinburgh as some- thing between London and Amersham, and I do not feel she has a very distinct idea of Edinburgh. I could only tell her I hoped to persuade her to come and see it for herself some day. And again the difficulty confronts me, for there is nothing so hopeless as to try and give other people a 5 6 Edinburgh picture of a town they do not know. It is easy to tell its story, but impossible to give its portrait ; and again I can only hope to persuade my readers to come and see Edinburgh for themselves some day. And Edin- burgh is worth coming to see, for it is a picture as well as a poem. Some towns are very beautiful, and some are very interesting ; just as some people are pleasant to look at, and some people are amusing to talk to ; but Edinburgh is both, and so is well worth making friends with. Perhaps we might look at Edinburgh first, before we begin to talk to her. And the first thing one sees in looking at Edinburgh is her Castle, for it stands high up above the town on the " Castle Rock." Fancy a great town with an abrupt, rocky hill rising out of the very middle of it, — crags and cliffs sheer down into the pretty public gardens at its base, close by the gay shops and the traffic and the houses of the town. And when, walking along the crowded, busy, cheerful street, you raise your eyes, you find that the grim hill is topped by a mighty castle — a town in itself — walls and battlements and towers looking almost part of the rock on which they are built. The great mer de glace which covered Scotland in glacial times, in the Edinburgh district flowed from west to east, and consequently most of the hills in and near Edinburgh stand straight and steep and high to the west, and slope down gradually, like a cat's back, to the east. The Castle Rock is shaped thus ; and down the ridge to the east, — the backbone of the cat, — the principal street of the Old Town of Edinburgh descends for one mile to Holyrood Palace. And the Castle Rock is not the only hill in Edinburgh, " Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat " 7 for Holyrood Palace lies against a background of the green slopes of Arthur's Seat, a great hill nearly a thousand feet high, and shaped like a couchant lion. Until about a hundred years ago this used to be the whole extent of the town of Edinburgh — the Castle, and the long line of street down to Holyrood, and all the little straggling " closes " and " wynds " off this main line of street, like very short ribs out of the backbone. It must have been a very uncomfortable town to live in, for there was not enough room ; and yet it seemed impossible to extend it, because it was all built on the ridge of this hill, and because, below the hill, along under the ridge, and lapping the foot of the cliffs of the Castle Rock, was a great deep lake — " the Nor' Loch." And at the lower end of the street, down in the plain in which Holyrood lies, was only a narrow valley between two hills — Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill. What was to be done ? It was as if the town were perched on an island, surrounded by lochs and hills. It was certainly very picturesque, and visitors admired it very much ; but the inhabitants could hardly breathe, and the little children could not grow. And then suddenly, just over one hundred years ago, Edinburgh had a really great Lord Provost, Lord Provost Drummond, and he saw how it could be done. The Nor' Loch was drained, a huge bridge flung across the hollow, houses and buildings sprang up on the other side, and soon all the country lanes and fields between Edinburgh and the sea were turned into broad town streets and squares. And this is the New Town of Edinburgh. And now, facing the ridge of the High Street, and with the bed of the Nor' Loch between filled by public 8 Edinburgh gardens, is Princes Street, the chief street of the New Town of Edinburgh. And because it faces the Old Town above it, and the Castle, whose hoary cliffs go straight down into the gardens, Princes Street is built with one side only, like a street split all down the middle, — one row of gay shops and clubs and hotels and great buildings, one broad stone pavement full of people, — and on the opposite side only light railings, trees, statues, waiting rows of cabs, and — the view ! It is said that Princes Street is different from all other streets, and is the finest street in Europe. All this is the centre of Edinburgh ; but the town now stretches for miles on every side — north, behind Princes Street, up slopes and down slopes till it reaches the sea ; west, where Princes Street leads to the great squares and crescents and terraces where the wealthier people live ; east, till Princes Street ends at the foot of the third hill, Calton Hill, opposite Arthur's Seat — not nearly so big nor so high a hill, and with buildings and monuments upon it ; and to the south, behind the Old Town, there are suburbs for many miles, right out into the country. But it is to the High Street and Princes Street and the streets about them that tourists come, and that have made Edinburgh famous. Unfortunately, anyone can build a new house, or buy an old house and alter it or pull it down altogether, and many people have no ftding for beauty at all ; so a great deal of modern Edinburgh is very ugly, and a great deal of Old Edinburgh is much spoilt. But Nature has done her best to make it impossible for men ever to quite ruin Edinburgh. Nothing can alter the Castle Rock, and that wonderful ridge down from it to the valley and Holyrood, on which the Old " Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat " 9 Town is built — high houses and gables and spires. And nothing can alter Arthur's Seat, the great couchant lion guarding the city, " Gaunt shoulder to the Capital, and blind eyes to the Bay." And then, beyond the city — beyond the massed streets and chimneys and steeples, and the patches of green trees and gardens among them — nothing can change the Forth, to the shores of which the city stretches, ending there in her busy harbours. These are the points that catch the eye when Edinburgh is seen from a distance — the Castle, painted grey against the sky, abrupt and impressive out of the very centre of the town ; the striking lionlike shape of Arthur's Seat ; the miles of houses, up and down on heights and in hollows ; every now and then some fine building or graceful spire ; and then the gleam of the Firth of Forth, and the hills of Fife beyond. CHAPTER II " MINE OWN ROMANTIC TOWN " And now, having looked at Edinburgh, let us ask her to talk. What a babble of Voices one hears im- mediately ! In the Old Town, voices of Kings and Queens, of powerful Churchmen and rulers and states- men ; voices of priests and poets and soldiers ; voices of women and of martyrs ; voices of lawyers and of criminals. And the Voices that we hear down the centuries of Scottish history, telling the story of Edinburgh, are not all speaking in the Scots tongue — many of them are speaking French. Very far off, up at the Castle, there is the sound of ED. 2 io Edinburgh the Saxon queen, St. Margaret, teaching her splendid old warrior husband, Malcolm Canmore, to read. But that is over eight hundred years ago, and her voice is very faint — I do not believe even Malcolm Canmore is listening. There are many Voices up at Edinburgh Castle — the voice of every king and queen of Scotland has been heard there — Robert the Bruce, and all the splendid Scottish Stewarts, and poor Mary, Queen of Scots, and Charles I., and Oliver Cromwell. His voice was heard in the Banqueting Hall. Ah ! what a noise at the Castle ! — the clash of arms, the cries of midnight surprises, the shouts of command, the groans of prisoners, the prayers of the doomed, the shrieks of the tortured ! And there are the voices of women, too, to be heard ; — the weak voices of little defenceless princesses, sent there for safety ; the voices of nuns, and of power- ful abbesses ; the voices of clever queens - regent, matching their women's wits against unscrupulous nobles ; the brave tones of captives, — noble women, imprisoned and ill-treated for their faith, or their loyalty, or their politics And hark ! There is another voice from the Castle, and it can be heard above all the rest, though it is four hundred years ago, and is only the little first cry of a new-born baby. For he is a most important person, that little puny infant, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots ; he is afterwards to be James VI. of Scotland, and the first king to rule over Scotland and England also — England and Scotland, once such bitter enemies, now one great kingdom, of whose pasts and present each country may be equally proud. In the wynds and closes jutting down out of either side of the High Street, many famous people have " Mine Own Romantic Town " 1 1 spoken, among them the author of " Robinson Crusoe," who lived for some time in Edinburgh, and Robert Burns, who visited there ; and again there are women's voices — that of her who wrote " The Flowers of the Forest," and that of her who wrote " Young Jamie lo'ed me weel." They both lived in Edinburgh closes. All down the High Street there is a great din — you can scarcely hear the Voices for the shouting and the fighting and the quarrelling. But when you come to the middle of the street, where the High Street becomes the Canongate, and where St. Giles's Church stands, there is only one voice to be heard, raised loud and insistent above all others, — the voice of John Knox, preaching. In the Canongate, where all the greatest nobles lived, at the Court end of the town beside the royal residence, there are very pretty sounds ; — courtiers' voices, soft and learned ; sounds of music and dancing ; of love- making ; of the reading and reciting of poetry. And behind all this is again the sound of praying and chant- ing, for Holyrood Palace was built in the fifteenth century beside the great twelfth-century Abbey of Holy- rood, where the Augustine abbots ruled ; and in the Abbey Church all the pious Stewart kings of Scotland worshipped, and before its High Altar most of them were married, and beneath it some were buried. But there are sounds of tragedy also from Holyrood. There is Riccio's shriek of terror and agony when the murderers came in from behind the tapestry as he sat at supper with his Queen, and he was dragged out and stabbed to death. Round the doors of Holyrood can be heard — from a century and a half ago — the sound of excited Gaelic, — Gaelic, which many people think is the native tongue of 12 Edinburgh all Scotland, just as they suppose all Scotchmen wear the kilt. But Gaelic was welcome in Edinburgh in 1745, when Prince Charlie held his Court for a few hopeful days at Holyrood, and all the Highland chiefs who had flocked to his standard, and the wild caterans that came in their trains, were living about the place. In the New Town also we can hear Voices, carrying on the story of Edinburgh. These are the Voices of the last two centuries. Dear, kindly, homely Scottish voices, the voices of men and women who lived in Edinburgh after its Law Courts and University had been given to it, and after its royalty and its nobility had been taken from it. Very learned words we can hear at every windy corner ! They come from the lips of philosophers, of historians, of poets, of thinkers, of novelists, of preachers, of discoverers, of artists, of scientists, of celebrities of every kind. Amongst them there is the voice that told so many sufferers they need feel no more pain under the surgeon's knife — the voice of the inventor of chloroform. There is the voice of Raeburn, the portrait painter ; of Hume, the philosopher and historian ; of Carlyle ; of Lister; of Henry Dundas, " the King of Scotland"; of Lord Jeffrey ; of Lord Cockburn ; of " Christopher North"; of Aytoun, who wrote the "Lays of the Cava- liers"; and a voice of yesterday — that of Robert Louis Stevenson. But again there is one Voice in the New Town of Edinburgh that dominates all others. No harsh voice preaching reformation, this, but a golden voice waking the dead Past, and making our Scotland dear and famous all the world over. It comes from the New Town, but it tells of the Old, — it tells of " Mine own romantic town " — it is the voice of Sir Walter Scott. " Grey Metropolis of the North ' : 13 CHAPTER III "the grey metropolis of the north" That was what Tennyson called Edinburgh. He spent only one night there, in summer, and it was — as sometimes happens, even in summer, in Edinburgh as well as anywhere else — a cold, grey, cloudy day. And Tennyson stood at an hotel window in Princes Street, and thought of all his own beautiful Arthurian country, that he has described in his poetry — rich English pasturelands and lazy rivers and " rooky woods," and he received a bad impression of Edinburgh which he has immortalized in four lines. They always come into the mind on a cold, misty day, when the grey New Town, with all her broad, uniform streets of dark stone terraces and crescents, and her great squares, with their formal gardens of lawns and paths and trees, railed- in and deserted, are all looking particularly chilly and stately and dull. Perhaps this strikes a stranger more than it does anyone who lives in Edinburgh, partly because those who live there are well accustomed to the stately grey gloom of the houses, and partly because they also know well all the friendly, cosy rooms that lie behind those rather forbidding-looking rows of windows. The New Town of Edinburgh, for the reason that it was all planned and built at one time, and has not merely " growed," like Topsy, is all very even and regular. When you look down at it from the Castle you see it spread below you, something like a game of "noughts and crosses" on a slate. There are three great parallel streets, each a mile long, the middle one with a large square at either end of it, and smaller streets go through these at right angles and at even 14 Edinburgh distances, so that they divide the chief streets into blocks. There are also smaller streets that worm their way at the backs of the three big streets, and some of these used to be good old dwelling streets, but they are now all given over to lawyers' offices, printing works, small shops, and slums. At the east end, the New Town stretches on towards Leith Walk, that used to be the famous old road between Edinburgh and her port. It is now all shops and tramway cars, and very noisy and busy and dirty. To the north, that lies away behind the three chief streets, is the old-fashioned, very respectable part of the town, with dear old solid houses, built about a hundred years ago, and full of memories of the cosy old days of the early nineteenth century ; but now many of them are " to let," and one hears that " prices are going down," for people are moving away to the newer and more fashionable west end, where the houses are not nearly so well-built nor so comfortable. Ever since James V. founded the Scottish Law Courts there have been a great many lawyers in Edin- burgh. Nowadays there are in Edinburgh more lawyers than any other kind of man. Most of all these great grey stone houses, both at the north side of the town and at the west end of it, contain lawyers ; and shortly before ten o'clock in the morning they all come out, and wend their ways to their day's work, either to their offices in the streets of the New Town, or, if they be advocates, across Princes Street and up into the Old Town, to the Law Courts — " Parliament House " — in the High Street. And, later on, the front- doors are again opened, and the perambulators are care- fully lowered down the front-door steps, and the nurses " Grey Metropolis of the North " 15 and children start for their morning's walk, and about the same time the ladies and dogs of the town go out to do their morning's shopping. They go to Princes Street, and the streets round about ; and the nurses and children either go to some gardens, or are tempted also to Princes Street by the sunshine and the cheerfulness. It is very difficult to walk along Princes Street on a fair day, because of the number of perambulators, — sometimes two, or even three, abreast. Each contains a dear little gold-haired, pink and white, intelligent baby, combed and curled, its white capes and laces spread out on its cushions, its ornamental rug covering it, its inevit- able " Teddy Bear " placed beside it, and its neat nurse, as she runs her front wheel into the shins of passers-by, or streaks them with mud, looking defiantly and proudly ahead over the top of her morning's achievement. Twelve o'clock is the brightest and sunniest time in Princes Street, especially on Saturday. On a bright Saturday " forenoon " — a word not used in England — in Princes Street, Lord Tennyson would have recanted his words. The crowds are packed ; but there is no jostling, as there is in a London street, for everyone walks to the right-hand side, and so there are two streams of people, one going east and one west. But there are little " blocks " in the human traffic where groups of friends have met and are chatting. The shops of Edinburgh are justly famous. Of course they are not all in Princes Street ; many are in the other great streets, north or west, but Princes Street has perhaps the gayest shop windows. George Street, the second of the three chief streets that run parallel through the New Town, is very grey and dignified and sombre, and permits itself no such 1 6 Edinburgh frivolity as a one-sided aspect, even of the view. In the crowds gathered on Saturday morning, the passers- by in Princes Street have to stop to admire the windows of the flower -shops — carnations of every possible shade, great, dewy roses, feathery acacia-sprays, azaleas, brilliant-hued anemones, and deep, sweet violets — all reflected in mirrors, gathered into baskets, arranged in bouquets and festoons, tied with broad ribbons — a perfect ballroom for a millionaire fairy. Other great plate-glass windows will show just as delicate and brilliant hues, but the flowers here are artificial, and are amongst silks and satins, hats and gloves and laces. These windows win a good deal of attention — pretty frocks and hats both outside and inside. There are a great many jewellers' shops, brilliant and flashing and costly. The book-shops of Edinburgh are so historic and famous that they ought to have a chapter to them- selves. Are they not the lineal descendants of that book-shop of the seventeenth century, the shop of Andro Hart, bookseller and publisher, just opposite the Cross, the favourite lounge of the poet Drummond of Hawthornden ? And of Allan Ramsay's book-shop, also beside the Cross, where all the eighteenth-century literati gathered? Edinburgh is a city of books — authors, paper-makers, printers, binders, publishers, and booksellers. But we must not forget, in " the land o' cakes," our confectioners' shops. They are quite superior to ordinary ones. Not only are Scottish cakes works of art, but there are in Scotland our famous scones, our " bawbee baps," our shortbread, Pitcaithlie bannocks, and mutton-pies. And each Princes Street baker has upstairs a dainty tea and luncheon room, some with a balcony full of little tables, — a gay sight in " Grey Metropolis of the North ' 17 summer under its striped awning, and the cause of much envious interest from the inhabitants of the tops of tramway cars or high coaches, who are on the line of sight. Our much-abused climate cannot be very bad if it allows eating and drinking, foreign fashion, out of doors from Spring to Autumn, — though some- times the wind does spill the tea ! Amongst the shops are every now and then great buildings — hotels and banks and clubs, and the windows of the clubs are full of those who idly watch the crowds outside. The road side of the pavement has its attractions, too. Here are flowers also — humbler flowers, being sold in baskets — flowers in their seasons, daffodils and violets in Spring, roses in Summer. And there, stand- ing patiently and smilingly on the edge of the causeway, is something Tennyson never saw — a " Suffragette " selling her papers, with her colours, purple white and green, displayed in ribbon and on her embroidered bag, and a bunch of papers in her outstretched hand. What would the author of " The Princess " have thought of this? Would he have stopped and bought a copy of Votes for Women ? And now we must cross the street, piloting our way through among cars and cabs and cable-tramways and carts and " taxis," and look at the statues. They stand just within the gardens, behind the railings ; but they face towards Princes Street. There are some half- dozen, and they are all statues of, or memorials to, those who have in their day been Edinburgh citizens. At the extreme west of Princes Street is the Church of St. John the Evangelist, built on the model of St. George's Chapel, Windsor. It is opposite the busy ed. 3 1 8 Edinburgh Caledonian Station and its hotel, and the crowded thoroughfare of Lothian Street lies between ; but facing Princes Street there stands, beside St. John's Church, the beautiful Cross erected in memory of Dean Ramsay, the author of " Scottish Life and Character," who was attached to St. John's all the last part of his life. Then there are statues of Sir James Y. Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform; of "Christopher North"; of Allan Ramsay, the author of the "Gentle Shepherd"; of Adam Black, Edinburgh's Member and Lord Provost ; of Livingstone, the explorer — this last doubly interest- ing, as the sculptor, Mrs. D. O. Hill, was also a citizen of Edinburgh. The newest statue in Princes Street is very instructive. It is of a trooper on horseback. Who is he ? Why, he is the last of our Scots Greys. He is the only one left to us of our famous regiment, so long quartered in Edinburgh, and the pride of Scotland. Who has not heard of the Scots Greys at Waterloo? It was at Waterloo that Sergeant-Major Ewart took the eagle from three Frenchmen. It was the conduct of the Greys at Waterloo that won for the regiment the right to bear its emblem, an eagle, and the word " Waterloo." But the story that sets every true Scot's blood tingling is the story of how, late in the day, the Scots Greys charged to the cry " Scotland for Ever !" Many people have seen Lady Butler's picture of that famous charge. It is told that, long ago, when the picture was sent up to the London Academy, the hanging committee all bared their heads when they saw it. It was the picture of the year, and it had to have a rail put round it to keep off the crowd that was always pressing in front of it. But the artists would " Grey Metropolis of the North "19 not make Lady Butler an Academician for all that, for, though she painted the finest work of the year, and though she could rouse patriotism by her work, was she not a woman ? Here, in Princes Street, stands the memorial to those of the Scots Greys who fell in South Africa. It was unveiled on a cold, wet November day in 1906 by Lord Rosebery, who made one of his almost inspired speeches — a speech whose impression will not easily be forgotten by those who heard. " Flesh of our flesh," he said, " bone of our bone. . . . Scotland for Ever !" The Scots Greys have left us. There stands the silent mounted trooper in Princes Street — " Lest we forget." Farther on is the great Gothic monument that en- closes the statue of Sir Walter Scott. You can go inside this one, and pay twopence, and climb up the narrow circular stair, up and up and up in the dark, every now and then with a shaft of light and a breath of air from a loop-hole, and again, every now and then, coming suddenly out into wind and sunshine and finding your- self in a little gallery, whence you can look down at the town below, that grows smaller and smaller as you mount. And the steps of the spiral stair grow smaller and smaller, too, as you mount, till at the very top it is difficult to find foothold on them, especially as the last ones are worn hollow. From the very top of the Scott Monument, if it is a clear day, you have a wonderful view. The cabs and cars in Princes Street below look like tiny crawling flies, and all the town is spread away in every direction — streets and spires and chimneys and domes and steeples; but your eye passes quickly over that to the Firth of Forth, with its busy shores — Leith and its docks and its 20 Edinburgh fort ; Granton with her harbours and shipping ; Trinity and Joppa and Portobello and their piers ; and then the stretch of sea — the dotted vessels, the islands — Inch- keith and its lighthouse, and Inchcolm and its monastery ; and beyond them the shores of Fife, woods, fields and farms on the Fife hillsides, and high above them the Fife Lomands, and the dream of the snowy peaks of the Highland hills. And look to the west — there, beyond Dalmeny, is that monster of engineering, — the Forth Bridge, — the highest bridge in the world, spanning the Firth of Forth with its three mighty arches, where the two shores are at their nearest, — a mile from shore to shore. You will consider it has been worth twopence and the climb ; but you will feel a little dizzy when you have descended to the world again, step by step, round and round in the darkness, and find yourself once more in the sunshine of the busy street. And you will look up at Sir Walter's statue under the arches of the monu- ment, at his kindly, rugged head, at his great dog beside him, and at the grass terraces round the monument filled afresh every year with planted wreaths of flowers. And now you are approaching the East end of Princes Street, close to the other big railway-station, called "The Waverley," after Scott's first novel. There is a large new hotel there, too, and farther on is the General Post- Office, and . . . Suddenly, with a terrific noise, a cannon is fired off close at hand. The horses that are "gun- shy " start and rear, and you, if you are a stranger to Edinburgh, jump as if you had been shot ; but if you belong to Edinburgh you merely pull out your watch, and if the hands point to one o'clock you shut it and walk on, looking satisfied. For this is " The Gun " — " the One o'clock Gun," fired from the Castle every day " Grey Metropolis of the North ' 21 when the time-ball signal attached to the flagstaff of Nelson's Monument on Calton Hill falls, showing that it is one o'clock by Greenwich time. When The Gun goes off in Edinburgh, for one moment everyone is hold- ing a watch and looking at it. It happened once that in London, quite late in the afternoon, a gun was fired — it was the first of a royal salute — and two people walk- ing towards one another in Piccadilly each pulled out a watch. And then, looking up, they met each other's eyes, and laughed in friendly understanding. Each knew the other must be from Edinburgh. But what a change has come over Princes Street ! All the babies and perambulators are hurrying home to nursery dinners ; all the ladies and their dogs are going too ; all the clerks, men and women, are hurrying out of their offices, and there are swarms of girls and boys, women and men, from the printing-works and other places of industry, pouring out for their dinner-hours. There is now a good deal of jostling and good-humour. And, presently, out come the lawyers too, and the bankers and stockbrokers and business men, all intent on luncheon. Some turn into their clubs, some into restaurants, or into the dainty tea-rooms with their balconies. And while they are at luncheon the sun clouds over, and big drops of rain stain the dark stone pavement a darker grey. Umbrellas are put up ; the last belated perambulator has its hood drawn over its occupant, and the nurse bends her head and runs ; the shop doorways fill up, and so do the club windows ; the broad pavement, lately so crowded, is rapidly emptied, and so are the cab-stands opposite. Sky, Castle, mist, views, vistas, houses, pavement, — all are no longer a picture, they are shades of a photography 22 Edinburgh and we are again in the " gloom that saddens heaven and earth," in "the Grey Metropolis of the North." And so the day wears on to a close, till in the even- ing it " fairs," and the air is sweet and fresh. And presently the stars appear above the chimneys, and then the bugles sound from the Castle, calling the wanderers home. CHAPTER IV STORIES OF THE PAST : TWO MIRACLES About eight hundred years ago, two young Saxon princesses, and their brother and their mother, were shipwrecked in the Firth of Forth, and were landed at Queensferry. The young princesses were the grand- nieces of Edward the Confessor, and their brother was Edgar the Atheling, heir to the English crown, and they had all fled from England because it had been invaded and taken by William the Conqueror. The king of Scotland in those days was Malcolm III., and when he was a prince he had been obliged to fly from Scotland, — not because Scotland had been conquered by a foreign foe, for that has never yet happened to Scotland, though it may some day, — but because his father, King Duncan, had been murdered by Macbeth, as Shake- speare's play makes all the world aware. So Malcolm had fled to the court of Edward the Confessor, and had there been very kindly received and kept for fifteen years, till Macbeth died ; and then he had come back to reign in Scotland. So now of course the nieces and nephew of Edward the Confessor thought Malcolm would be grateful and kind to them in his turn. And so he was ; and, though he was much older than they were, and had been married before, he fell in love with Two Miracles 22 one of the princesses, whose name was Margaret, and made her his queen. Malcolm, called " Canmore," which means " big head," was a great soldier, and loved fighting, and he fought many battles ; but he did not know how to read or write. It is said that Queen Margaret, who was more learned, taught the king to read, and it is also told that he loved her so much that he used to kiss her books that he could not read him- self. She also taught him to like all sorts of beauty and splendour, such as should surround a king ; and the court of Scotland became a fine and stately court, instead of rather a rough and simple one, such as had contented the soldier king and his first queen ; and Malcolm and Margaret were waited on by persons of high rank in the kingdom, and served on gold and silver dishes, and wore beautiful clothes and jewels, and encouraged the making of rare and costly things. Queen Margaret was very pious, and she and the King used to wash the feet of the poor, and with their own hands feed beggars and orphans. Malcolm Canmore and Queen Margaret lived a great deal at Edinburgh Castle, though Edinburgh was not then the Capital of Scotland, but was only a fortress built on a high rock among woods. Edinburgh Castle itself is utterly different to-day from what it was in those days, — there is only a tiny bit left of Malcolm's and Margaret's Castle, and that is Queen Margaret's little chapel, and it is the very oldest bit of all Edinburgh to-day. When the King and Queen were tired of living at the Castle, they used to ferry across the Firth of Forth, at the place where the shore of Fife is only a mile off, — where the Forth Bridge now stands, — and go to Dun- fermline. Here they had a palace, and here they had 24 Edinburgh been married, and here the Queen had founded a mag- nificent Abbey. The two villages on the opposite sides of the Firth of Forth are still called North Queensferry and South Queensferry. But Malcolm Canmore was a fighter, and did not always stay at home. Though he loved the Queen so much that he kissed her books, her indirect influence did not always prevail if it thwarted his own wishes. One day, after he and the Queen had been married over twenty years, he went with two of his sons to fight in Northumberland, though the Queen was very ill indeed and begged him to stay. He left her and the younger children in Edinburgh Castle. And hither, four days later, the second son rode back alone, and told his mother that her husband, the King, and their eldest son were both slain. The news killed the Queen. She died in her little chapel, praying. And when the little group of orphans and the old priest in charge of them looked down over the Castle walls, they found they were surrounded by enemies. A wild, rough uncle, Donald Bane, who, when Malcolm had fled for refuge to the civilized Saxon court, had fled to the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, where life was still very savage, had now come, with a wild horde of followers, to take his nephews prisoners or slay them, and make himself King of Scotland. There they were, — men dressed in deer-skins, surrounding the Castle Rock, howling and whooping and intent on battle. And whilst the unhappy princes and princesses looked down, and thought themselves doomed, — gradually it all faded from sight. Wave after wave of soft white mist blew up from the Firth of Forth, hung over all the land, blotted the trees and hills and morasses from sight, crawled up Two Miracles 25 the sides of the Castle Rock, and shrouded everything in a dense vapour. What did the orphans and the old priest do ? They gave God thanks for a miracle, and took dead Queen Margaret in her coffin, and escaped out of a little postern gate, and crept and scrambled down the steep rocky sides of the hill, — a perilous descent, — and across the land, through woods and over morasses, bear- ing their mother's coffin with them, and at last reached the ferry over the Forth, and crossed it to Dunfermline, to the Abbey their mother had built, and were safe. Donald Bane did reign for a short time as king of Scot- land, but so did the gallant young princes who carried their mother's coffin all that way that misty day eight hundred years ago. Four of them were kings of Scot- land, one after another, and one of their sisters, Maude, married Henry I., and so became Queen of England. The next story of a miracle in Edinburgh is the story of one of these sons of Malcolm and Margaret, — David, the last of them to reign, and one of the best kings Scotland has had. It is the story of how Holyrood Abbey was founded. King David was hunting in the big forest of Drums- heugh, and he had been advised that he ought not to hunt that day, because it was a day his Church keeps holy, — the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, — and not a day to spend on sport or pleasure. But the King, though he was very pious, would not listen. Perhaps it was a fine day, and the temptation was great. Anyhow, he went, riding among his courtiers, with jest and laugh, with bugles slung and horses champing, joyous and self- willed, taking his kingly pleasure. And somehow, as the day wore on, he became separated from the others, ed. 4 26 Edinburgh and found himself riding alone in the great forest at the edge of Arthur's Seat, and could no longer hear the bugles and the cries of the chase. And suddenly there crashed through the trees a huge angry white stag, and it turned at bay and attacked the King, who had only his short hunting sword with which to defend himself. And then the miracle. No white woolly mist from the Forth, but a hand from the clouds, that placed a Cross in King David's hand, and the King held up the sacred emblem in front of the stag, and the stag retreated before it into the forest, and the King was saved. King David had always been very generous to the Church. To build and endow Churches and Abbeys was the one way then of protecting the ownership of land and property, and educating the people. King David, indeed, was called " a sair sanct for the crown." But the night after King David had disobeyed his Confessor and hunted on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, St. Andrew, Scotland's Patron Saint, came to him in a dream, and told him to found yet another Abbey on the scene of the miracle. And so he built a splendid Abbey at the foot of Arthur's Seat, — the Abbey of the Holy Rood; and the miraculous Cross that had saved the King was placed above the High Altar, and remained there for many years, till it was carried off by English invaders and placed in Durham Cathedral. So now there was a rich and powerful Abbey down in the valley a mile below the Castle ; and the Augustine Canons began to build the Canongate round about their Abbey, and naturally there was much coming and going between the Castle and the Abbey and the Canongate, and a street, — a steep, mediaeval street, — gradually grew all down the ridge of Castle Hill from one to the other. And so began the town of Edinburgh. Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 27 CHAPTER V STORIES OF THE PAST: BATTLES, MURDERS, AND SUDDEN DEATHS There have been so many battles, murders, and sudden deaths in Edinburgh that it is impossible to tell of half of even the most famous and romantic. Let us take four stories out of two hundred and ten years of Edin- burgh history, and let us begin with a story of sudden death, — the story of " the Black Dinner" in the Castle, in the year 1440, when James II. was a little boy often years old, four years after he had come to the throne. There was a great family in Scotland that was second in wealth and power only to the royal family of Stewart, — the family of the Douglases. When James I., the good and great poet-king of Scotland, was murdered at Perth, and his little six-year-old son was crowned James II., the head of the great house of Douglas was the old Earl of Douglas ; but he died and was succeeded by his son, a youth of seventeen. This boy-earl was very brave and proud and haughty, and he kept great state, and surrounded himself with royal splendour, riding about with a regiment of two thousand lances, and sending ambassadors to the court of France, as though he had been a king instead of a subject. The little King — too young to see any wrong to himself in all this — admired and looked up to the young earl, as a boy of ten would admire the bold ways of another boy, seven years older than himself. But the statesmen who had charge of the King were more experienced and saw danger ahead. In those days sudden death was the only method that occurred to men when other people annoyed them. The 28 Edinburgh young Earl of Douglas and his fifteen-year-old brother were invited to Edinburgh Castle by the King's guardians, Sir Alexander Livingstone and Sir William Crichton ; and the little King and they, and the two young Douglases and their old adviser, Sir Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld, all made merry and feasted together ; but the Earl's retinue were not allowed within the Castle walls. Suddenly there was placed on the table a dish containing the head of a great black bull. This was the old Scottish symbol that someone present was doomed to death. The warlike Douglases under- stood it. Instantly all was clamour. The two brave boy-nobles sprang to their feet and drew their swords : the little King begged and prayed for the lives of his friends. But the banqueting-hall was filled with armed men — armed men, against two striplings and an old man, — guests ! They would not have called it murder — there was a form of trial for treason — but the prisoners had been doomed to death before the trial, for the black bull's head had meant that. They were executed on the Castle Hill. " Edinburgh Castle, towne and toure, God grant thou sink for sin ! And that even for the black dinour Earl Douglas gat therein." That was not the last sudden death in King James II. 's reign. His own death was sudden, as was the death of most of the brave kings of Scotland ; but it did not occur in Edinburgh. Let the next story of the past be a story that redounds to the credit of the town, though it is the saddest story in all Scottish history, — the story of Flodden. It was a moonlit night in August, 1 5 1 3. On the Borough Muir, — part of the old royal hunting forest of Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 29 Drumsheugh, where King David had encountered the stag, — was encamped the host of the Scottish army, old men and young men, Lowlanders, Highlanders, and Islanders. A thousand tents gleamed in the moonlight, and the cries of the sentries broke through the hushed sounds of the night. Within the little city few were sleeping, and many a brave woman's heart was anxious, for on the morrow their gallant and beloved King, James IV., was to march to war with the English, and not a home in Edinburgh but was giving a husband or a son to follow him and strike for King and Country. In the centre of the High Street, beside the Col- legiate Church of St. Giles, stood the City Cross, rising from its little battlemented tower, whence all royal proclamations were made to the citizens. The moon- light fell on the High Street and on the Cross. King James was at the Abbey of Holyrood. It was midnight, and many honest folk were in their beds, but others were wakeful. Who are these heralds and pursuivants who mount to the foot of the Cross in the moonshine ? Are they living men, or are they a spectral throng ? The night is wakened with trumpets, and scared faces appear at the windows of the tall houses of the High Street. A voice proclaims from the Cross a ghastly summons, reading by name a long roll of Scotland's chivalry — earls and barons, knights and gentlemen and honest burghers, — desiring them to appear within forty days before the Court of Pluto. Amongst those who heard this dread summons was a certain " Maister Richart Lawsone," who, when he heard his own name read out, called to his servant to bring him his purse, and took out a crown and cast it over the stair on which 30 Edinburgh he stood into the street, crying, a I appeal from that summons' judgement and sentence thereof, and take me all hail in the mercy of God and Christ Jesus His Son." Next day, Scotland's Standard, the "ruddy lion ramped on gold," waved in August sunshine on the Borough Muir, and the tents were struck, and all was eager preparation and enthusiasm ; and then the King and his army moved south, and Edinburgh was left deserted — women and old men and children, waiting. It was about three weeks after the army had marched away that one messenger rode back into the town, — the first escaped from the battle, — and told the news. The King was dead, the battle lost, and dead beside the King were all the flower of Scotland who had marched so gaily forth. The story runs that not one from all that ghostly death-roll had escaped save only that " Maister Richart Lawsone " who had appealed from the summons. Thirteen earls, fourteen lords, an archbishop, a bishop, two abbots, all had fallen. Not a noble house in Scotland but had lost a member ; not a Scottish home but mourned its dead. The whole of Scotland was staggered by the blow. And Edinburgh ? Brave little sixteenth-century Edinburgh ! What should we hear now? That the stocks had fallen. What did they hear then ? Another Pro- clamation from the City Cross, — not a spectral throng then. " All manner of persons " were ordered to have ready their goods and weapons of war for defence of the town lest the English marched upon it ; and the women were not to weep in the streets, but to go into the Church and pray for their Country. The next battle was not an international one : it was Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 3 1 civil war. Edinburgh was famed for its street-fights in the Middle Ages. Every Edinburgh burgher was bound to keep a spear, and to be ready to rush out with it when the beacon fires flashed from hill to hill, telling Scotland that the English were over the Border again. That was the way they telegraphed in those days, — and it was almost as quick a way of sending the news. A bonfire blazed up on Berwick Law, — in a moment, the fire laid ready on the top of Arthur's Seat was kindled and began to crackle ; and so on, right up to the Highlands. And when the bonfires blazed, out came the lusty citizens with their spears ; for in the Middle Ages in Scotland there was no paid army as there is now, and so it was every citizen's duty to be able to bear arms in defence of the Country. But Edinburgh folk were quick tempered, and the spears were handy, and were not always used legiti- mately on English heads. Many a fight has raged in the High Street of Edinburgh, and up and down the narrow closes. The most celebrated is the one that took place in the reign of James V., and it is called " Cleanse the Causeway," and was a political fight between the two great houses of Douglas and Hamilton. The Earl of Angus was head of the house of Douglas, and the Earl of Arran was head of the house of Hamilton, and Bishop Gavin Douglas, the famous poet, nephew of the Earl of Angus, tried to make peace between them, by appealing to the great Archbishop Beaton, who was with the Hamiltons. But the Archbishop vowed that on his conscience he knew nothing at all about it, and he struck himself on the chest as he said so, and there was a noise of metal, showing that the Archbishop was wear- 32 Edinburgh ing armour under his rochet. So Gavin Douglas told him his conscience " clattered," which means it told tales. Then the fight began. Such a fight ! The Hamiltons streamed up the narrow wynds from the Archbishop's palace in the Cowgate, and found the Douglases waiting for them, packed in a mass in the High Street, and there were clashings of arms and cries and blows, and all the windows were filled with spectators, and spears were handed down to the fighters. At the end of the fight all the causeways and closes were filled with dead and dying. The Douglases had won the day, and the Earl of Arran escaped by swimming across the Nor' Loch on a collier's horse ; and the Archbishop, whose conscience had told tales, hid behind an Altar in a Church, and was dragged out, and was saved by the would-be peacemaker, Bishop Gavin Douglas ! The story of the next reign is the story of a murder at Holyrood. When sightseers visit Holyrood they are shown a little room with part of the threadbare tapestry still hanging on the wall, and a secret stair behind it. This was Queen Mary's boudoir, off her room, and the stair led down to the room of her bad boy-husband, Lord Darnley. In this little ante-room Queen Mary sat at supper with the Countess of Argyle and the lay Abbot of Holyrood and others of her household, including the Queen's Italian secretary, her musician and favourite, Riccio. The visitor to-day wonders how so many could have gathered in this tiny room ; but there were still others to come into it. The first to come was Darnley, who entered and sat down by the Queen ; and at that signal in rushed Lord Ruthven and a band of others, — armed assassins, — and seized Riccio. There THE MESSENGER FROM FLODDEN. Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 33 was a struggle, the Queen trying to protect Riccio, and Riccio clinging to her skirt and praying her to save him. The supper-table was overturned, and they pointed a pistol at their Queen, and stabbed the man in her sight, and then dragged him across the Presence Chamber, and completed their murder with " whingers and swords " — fifty-six wounds — one unarmed man against an armed band. Nowadays, a candle is held down to a dark stain in the wooden boards in the shadowy doorway to let the stranger see the brass plate and the bloodstains of Riccio, — once real, perhaps now not so real. All night the young Queen, the outraged daughter of a line of kings, was a prisoner in the hands of this husband and his brutal friends ; and one of them told her that if she attempted to speak he would " cut her into collops and cast her over the wall." Little wonder that a few months later, before the birth of her child, she sought the safety of the Castle. Darnley was not arraigned for treason ; but a year later he was visited with smallpox, and lay in a house just outside the city. The Queen visited her sick husband there ; and one Sunday evening she went thence on foot under a silken canopy, with lighted torches and a guard of Archers, to Holyrood. Here baby James lay peacefully in his cradle, unaware of his royal destinies, and here a masque was going on in honour of the marriage of one of the Queen's servants. And in the small hours of that morning the house where Darnley lay was blown up with gunpowder, and Darnley was blown up with it. A shifting of the scenes, and it is eighty-three years later in Edinburgh. Much has happened. Sixty-three ed. 5 34 Edinburgh years have passed since Mary, Queen of Scots, ended her sorrows on the scaffold. Her son, born in Edin- burgh Castle, had reigned for fifty-eight years over Scotland, and for the last twenty-two of them had been king of both England and Scotland. His son, Charles I., had been beheaded ; and his son — the great-grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, — was in exile, while Cromwell ruled as Protector. The Marquis of Montrose had been faithful to Charles I., and had fought many battles for him against the disloyal Covenanters in Scotland. Six days after Charles I. was beheaded the Scots had Charles II. pro- claimed King at the Cross of Edinburgh. But they then sent to tell him that he could not be King unless he gave up his creed and became a Covenanter. Rather than do this, Prince Charles, then eighteen years old, sent Montrose to Scotland to try and win his ancient kingdom for him. But Montrose was defeated, taken prisoner, and sent to Edinburgh and condemned to death. How the Covenanters hated him ! On the day of his death they had him dragged, tightly bound, on a high hurdle drawn by a single horse, all through the streets of Edinburgh, that the rabble might enjoy the spectacle. On the hurdle sat the black-garbed executioner, and in front of it were marched a band of other Cavalier prisoners, bound and bareheaded. The cavalcade was preceded by the City magistrates in their robes of office ; and all round the people pressed, a mass of pitiless humanity, yelling and throwing mud and stones, jibes and curses. The forestairs, balconies, and the windows of the lofty houses were filled with specta- tors. Were they all pitiless ? No ; some shed tears. And so the hurdle rattled on, slowly. It took three hours to drive through the town. Battles, Murders, and Sudden Deaths 35 Close down to Holyrood, the procession paused in front of Moray House ; for on that day the great Marquis of Argyle, the most powerful Covenanting lord in Scotland, and Montrose's rival and arch-enemy, was a guest at Moray House, attending the marriage festivities of his son and the Earl of Moray's daughter. The wedding-party, including many of the Covenanting lords, came out on to the stone balcony to gloat over their enemy as he passed to his death. In their bravery of silks and laces and jewels they leant over and looked at the moving mass of yelling rabble, and at the pale, proud, calm face of Montrose. He must have been close to them in that narrow street on his high hurdle, — bare- headed, wounded, bound, and utterly fearless. For one moment the eyes of the two men met, and Argyle turned away. Montrose was hanged on May 21, 1650, at the Cross of Edinburgh, on a gibbet thirty feet high, and his head was spiked on the Tolbooth, out in the middle of the High Street by St. Giles's Church. It remained there for eleven years, and then it was taken down and reverently buried with his mutilated body, buried in all pomp and respect by Bishop Wishart, who had been his Chaplain, and was now made Bishop of Edinburgh. It was on the same day that Montrose was buried that the Marquis of Argyle, a martyr in his turn, was executed at the Cross. Many are the battles, murders, and sudden deaths that have helped to make the story of Edinburgh. But in remembering them we ought to remember that the cruelties were never all on one side, either in Religion or Politics. The Covenanters treated their enemies most barbarously, and in their turn were treated by their enemies most barbarously. It is all because it is men's 36 Edinburgh nature to be cruel and tyrannical to those who defy them, and then are helpless and in their power. Nor need we judge the people of the past, lest we be judged ; for, with all our added three centuries of civilization, are we in this respect very much better to-day? CHAPTER VI EDINBURGH GIRLS AND BOYS IN OLD DAYS Almost the first thing we know about Edinburgh, — out of the shadowy, legendary past, before it was even a town, — is something about little girls ; for it is thought that the reason why Edinburgh Castle used long ago to be called the " Castell of Maydens," was because very young Pictish princesses were kept there for safety. Such cold little Pictish " Maydens " they must have been, spending long days looking down over the ram- parts and rocks on to woods and mists and far-off sea and hills, and wondering, in their cramped little minds, what the world was like, and what it held for them ! But this was very long ago indeed. Scottish children could not always have been very happy in the Middle Ages, for there was so much fighting between England and Scotland that people lived in a continual state of readiness for their enemies ; and in the towns there could have been very little room for children, — no freedom nor running about ; no country walks on fine days, for outside the town there were wolves prowling ; and on wet days no large airy nurseries or schoolrooms, even for the children of rich parents, and no books and no grand toys. The boys were better off than the girls, for what education there was was given to them. Of the girls Girls and Boys in Old Days 37 we hear nothing ; but we have a glimpse of the boys of the fifteenth century. In James I.'s reign, a boy of sixteen was counted a man, and had to possess weapons according to his rank, to be ready to defend his Country. And four times a year he had to attend, with all the men of the land, meetings called " Wapinschaws " — (shows of weapons) — and be fined if he did not possess the right ones. It was thought in those days much more necessary that boys should be trained to be of use to the Country than that they should enjoy themselves, and so boys were forbidden by law to play at football, which did not train them to fight, and any boy found playing football was fined fourpence. But they were ordered by law to practise archery from the time they were twelve years old, for that was learning to fight. Close to the Church in every Parish there was a shooting-ground, and on each public holiday, — that is to say, about once a week, — every boy had to shoot three arrows at a mark. This is why to this day we see yew-trees in Church- yards. They were planted there in the days of bows and arrows, for it was from these trees that the bows were cut. But the sons of gentlemen in Scotland were from very early days taught Latin as well as fighting. All the Scottish kings were fond of learning, and encouraged it. In the reign of James IV., — himself a highly educated man, speaking several languages, and interested in all arts and crafts as well as being excellent in all manly sports and a brave knight, — the boys of Scotland who were the sons of men of rank were well looked after. Their fathers were ordered by law to send them to school when they were eight or nine till they were good Latin scholars, and then they were to go on to one of the Scottish Universities. 3 8 Edinburgh But all the Latin in the world could not tame the unruly little boys of Edinburgh. Fighting was their one instinct. They used to have great street-fights like their elders. But whereas the street-fights between rival noble houses and their followers were called " tulzies," and were fights to the death, the street-fights between rival bands of boys were called "bickers," and were conducted with fists and stones and mud. So long ago as 1529, when James V. was king, the Town Council of Edinburgh passed an act ordering that there should be no more " Bickerings between Bairns," and that if any should be found bickering their "faderis and moderis " (fathers and mothers) were to answer for it. But how could the bairns be expected not to bicker if their respected faderis set them such bad examples? It was only nine years before that the great " tulzie " of " Cleanse the Causeway " had raged up and down the town. Had not every Edinburgh boy of course heard of it ? Had he not often, on dark winter evenings by fire- light, sat and listened open-mouthed to the story of that day ? Was it not his proudest ambition to do likewise ? All through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the boys of Edinburgh must have witnessed many "tulzies" in the High Street, between great rival families, — between the Scotts and the Kerrs, between the Hoppringles and the Elliots. How could the Town Council hope to make the boys bicker no more ? The High School was the chief School in Edinburgh, to which all the important citizens sent their sons. It was the descendant of the Town Grammar School in which the boys of James IV. 's time had been drilled in Latin, and so was governed by the Town Council. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Edinburgh Girls and Boys in Old Days 39 was still the home of royalty, and the Royal Standard waved at Holyrood, showing that James VI. was in residence there, the King took a keen interest in the chief school of his Capital, and it was in these days that it was christened " The Royal High School." The first Earl of Haddington, Secretary of State for Scotland, himself an old High School boy, also took great interest in the school, and he showed this interest in a way that must have won the hearts of all the scholars. One summer evening the Earl of Haddington was in his own splendid house in the Cowgate, sitting resting in his dressing-gown and cap and slippers, chatting and drinking wine with a friend. There was a noise in the street outside, and they looked out to find that a u bicker" was in progress between the High School boys and the students of the newly-founded University, — then merely boys too, — and the students were winning the day. Up rose the Earl of Haddington, President of the Court of Session and Secretary of State for Scotland, in his dressing-gown and slippers. Out he rushed and took command of his old school, cheered them on, drove the students through the Grassmarket and out of one of the City gates, the West Port. No doubt using his high authority, he locked the City gate, so that the students had to spend the night outside ; and then he went back to his friend and his wine. It was later on in James VI. 's reign that the boys of the High School felt themselves wronged by the refusal to them of a week's holiday, so they got into the school by night, taking swords and firearms with them, and in the morning it was found that the school was in a state of siege. The Town Council sent a force of city officers to quell the young garrison. The boys refused to 4-0 Edinburgh surrender, and threatened death to any who approached them. Bailie Macmorran, a merchant of great wealth and importance in the town, ordered the door to be forced open with a battering ram, and while this was being done, one of the boys fired at him, and killed him on the spot. The wealthy Macmorran family demanded " blood for blood"; but the father of the frenzied boy was a man of rank and note, and great influence was used to have the boy set free. When one remembers the spirit of vengeance of the time, one is thankful to know that he was saved from the clutches of the law. The house of Bailie Macmorran, in Riddle's Close, where he enter- tained King James and his Danish bride, still stands. Of the girls' schools in Edinburgh at the beginning of the eighteenth century, we hear occasionally. In Chambers's " Traditions of Edinburgh " it is told that in 1703, — that was only eight years after Bailie Macmorran was shot by the High School boy, — the mistress of a boarding-school kept in an Edinburgh "close" advertised that she taught " young ladies and gentlewomen all sorts of breeding that is to be had in any part of Britain, and great care taken of their conversation." Later on in the century there was a very noted school for girls in Edin- burgh, at which Sir Walter Scott's mother was educated. It was kept by Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, a lady who was connected with many of the old families, and so was given charge of their daughters. Sir Walter Scott said of her that " she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education, as all her young ladies in after life wrote and spelt admirably, were well acquainted with history and the belles lettres i without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and the accompt book ; and perfectly well-bred in society." After leaving her IP^ ?-Q f! ^bBB ^^ "m w8ff ^^Mtfiftll BmH Mm .^ipSS Sw ■jH IfiES^k 1 19 -7/ • ?. ishf^ "•f^WHfc: ^ 2jKj*> ! . | H - 1 {TSiGS^V'.* ^'^(wwJS? 1 • ' j ' I ' I B 1 E ' MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. Front the Memorial Portrait in the possession of Lord Darnley. Girls and Boys in Old Days 4.1 the " young ladies " were sent " to be finished off by the Honble. Mrs. Ogilvie,"and by her were trained, above all things, to sit upright and walk gracefully. A happier school this of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair's than the High School seems to have been. Lord Cockburn describes it when he went there in 1787, a trembling little man of eight years old, and his account is not very cheerful. " There were probably not ten days in which I was not flogged, at least once. . . . Two of the masters, in particular, were so savage, that any master doing now what they did every hour, would certainly be transported." The pupils had to be at school by seven in the morning in summer ; and all the teaching they received was still Latin, and Latin only, as it had been three centuries before. And yet this was the system that turned out such men as Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Francis and Leonard Horner, Lord Cockburn ; and many others, notables of their time. And they contrived to be very happy in spite of the floggings, as boys will, learning very little Latin and less love for it in six hours indoors, and roaming over the hills and the open country by which Edinburgh was sur- rounded. And then there were always the "bickers"! The " bickers," in spite of the Town Council and the Town Guard, had survived the tulzies, and were still in full force in the eighteenth century. There were " bickers " between rival schools and between rival parts of the town, and between sons of gentlemen and the poorer boys of the town ; and when the New Town was beginning to be built, there were great "bickers" between the boys of the Old Town and the boys of the New Town. Sir Walter Scott, when he was a boy, used to take part in " bickers " between the boys of George ED. 6 42 Edinburgh Square, where he lived, and the boys of Potterrow, a poor street near George Square. He tells how the leader of the Potterrow boys was a fine little fellow about thirteen years old, tall and active, blue eyed and fair haired, bare armed and bare footed. The George Square boys did not know his name, and he went by the name of " Greenbreeks." In one terrific conflict in " The Meadows," on the outskirts of Edinburgh, this young champion, leading a charge, was struck on the head by a " hanger " or knife, and fell, " his bright hair plentifully dabbled with blood." This was utterly against all the traditions and rules of " bickers." The Watchman, — the police of that day, — carried Greenbreeks off to the Infirmary, and the boys all fled, throwing the hanger into a ditch as they ran. But bare-footed Greenbreeks was a boy of metal : he declined to tell tales. So did he Watchman. When Greenbreeks recovered, a gii iger- bread baker, who supplied both the rich boys of George Square and the poor boys of Potterrow, was called upon to act as " go-between," and Greenbreeks was proffered a sum of pocket-money by the very penitent boy who had done the deed. He replied that " he would not sell his blood." After much urging he at last accepted a pound of snuff for an old grandmother or aunt with whom he lived. But the boys never met nor made friends, not from any ill-feeling, but because that would have stopped the " bickers" and the fun ! Long, long years after, that hanger was found, rusty and earth-clogged, in The Meadows. The last picture of Old Edinburgh is also, like the first, a picture of its little girls. No Pictish princesses in captivity, but two little hoydens in the reign of George III. Girls and Boys in Old Days 43 All the wooden houses of the Old Town had " fore- stairs," — nights of outside steps leading from the pave- ment up over the booths of the street to the first storey of the house, where people lived. It had always from very early days been the habit for pigs to be kept under these " forestairs," and to have free liberty to run about in the streets. For the honour of Edinburgh be it said that this was the same in other towns, — in Paris, for example. And so it was part of the life of the High Street that the pigs should come grumphing out from under the " forestairs " and stroll at their piggie pleasure through the chief street of the town. No fear of motor car or cab ! — for there was no vehicle passed in those days down the crowded, jostling, dirty street, only foot passengers and sedan chairs and an occasional horseman, and then the laugh was on the pig's side, if he could run snorting between the horse's legs and throw the rider. Not only did pigs run about like dogs, but they were made into pets. There was one old judge in Edinburgh who, when he was a boy, had a pet pig that followed him wherever he went, and at night used to sleep at the foot of his bed. And the last story of Edinburgh little girls of old days is of the little daughters of Lady Maxwell of Monreith, who lived in Hyndford's Close. They used to spend happy mornings riding up and down the High Street on the last of the pigs that were allowed to run about free in the old way — one sister proudly mounted on a big sow, and the other sister running along by her and thumping the sow with a stick. One of these little women became afterwards Duchess of Gordon, and the other, Lady Wallace, was a society wit and a beauty. 44 Edinburgh These, then, were the Edinburgh girls and boys of old days, — the girls and boys who lived in Edinburgh when it was a dear old picturesque town, high houses and narrow closes all down the hill from the Castle to the Canongate, a mile of densely-packed squalor and splendour, dirt and learning, gossip and wit, kindliness and brutality, cosiness and crime. It was in this crowded hive of a city that the girls and boys of Edin- burgh lived in old days. And they had not room to grow. If they were the children of people of quality, or of wealthy people, they lived in the closes off the High Street ; and if they were the children of merchants or tradesmen, they lived in the upper storeys of the tall houses in the High Street, above the booths and shops and cellars of the street. But they were all very over- crowded ; and as in those days it was not as it is now, when the best of everything is given to children, the grown-up people took, as a matter of course the best rooms of the house, and the children had to live and sleep wherever they could. Chambers's " Traditions " tells how in Edinburgh, just before the people could stand it no longer and the New Town was built, the town house of a country gentleman and lawyer, afterwards a judge, contained only three rooms and a kitchen ! There was the mother's parlour and the father's study, and the third room was a bedroom ; at night the children and the nurse had beds laid down for them in the study, the housemaid slept under the kitchen dresser, and the butler was turned out of doors. In a merchant's house in the High Street the kitchen and nursery were in cellars under the street, and the " children rotted off like sheep." It was time indeed that the New Town was built ! Girls and Boys in Old Days 45 CHAPTER VII GIRLS AND BOYS OF MODERN EDINBURGH The Old Town of Edinburgh still swarms with children, but they are the children of the very poor. They live in the old closes and wynds, where the children of noblemen lived in bygone centuries ; they run in and out of old stone doorways, — doorways with armorial bearings carved above them, or the pious legends so beloved of the seventeenth-century people who built these homes — " Feare the Lord and Depart from Evil," or, " Blissit be God in al His Giftis " ; they keek out of windows high up, behind garments suspended to dry on a pole stuck out of every case- ment ; they climb up and down the dark, noisome turret stairs indoors ; they sit outside in the street in groups, on the forestairs, watching the sights of the streets, as did the gaily-dressed ladies of the past. A very different street, and very different sights ! But the children on the forestairs are the prettiest of the sights, just as the ladies used to be. Such bonny little tow-headed, or curly red-headed, creatures ! The motherly small girls with babies in their arms, and gossiping like their elders ; and all, boys and girls alike, with their little bare toes ! For very poor children in Edinburgh do not wear boots and stockings — they run about, even in winter, with nimble naked legs, and chilly, mud-stained feet. In hot summer weather it is evidently great fun to sit in rows on the edge of the causeway after a heavy shower of rain has filled the gutters, and splash these little bare feet, with complete abandon and shrill cries of delight, in the flowing stream. 46 Edinburgh It is almost as good as going out of town, and is perhaps the nearest approach to country holidays they ever have. But the children of the poor are in many ways not so badly off as were the rich folks' children when the Old Town was the residence of the great, — and certainly they are not so uncared for as were the children of the poor in those days. Each door now in these high closes, — rabbit-warrens of human life, — is marked telling the number of cubic feet of air the room contains, and how many persons may live in it. Then there are the Board Schools to give poor children free education from the time they are five till they are fourteen ; there are the Infirmaries and the Sick Children's Hospital to give them free attendance when they are ill ; and since Queen Victoria's day there are the Jubilee Nurses to nurse them at their own homes ; and there are the Cripples' Home, the School for the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb School, Dr. Guthrie's Ragged Schools, the Boys' Brigade, Sunday Schools, Free Breakfasts, and last, but by no means least, there are the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the League of Pity, and the Children's Shelter, all in one building in the middle of the High Street. There are hundreds of enterprises, public and private, to make the children of the poor healthy and happy and of use to the world ; but of course, in spite of all, there are hundreds of unhappy, starved little children, with wizened, reproach- ful faces and miserable homes, in Edinburgh to-day. It is the very poorest who live in the closes of the Old Town ; but there are many as poor in the New Town and in the suburbs ; and there is one thing that the poor children of Edinburgh have that must seem to them the best thing of all, and that is the Parks and open spaces they have in which to play. Girls and Boys of To-day 47 There are many of these in Edinburgh ; and they are jealously guarded for the children. Even the little ones of the Old Town can run on their little bare feet out of the foetid air of the wynds and closes, and in a minute or two be playing in the Queen's Park or on the green sides of Arthur's Seat. The Princes Street Gardens are free to all, and it does not take two minutes to run down some steep wynd from the Lawnmarket, by the Castle, and cross the top of the Mound to the gate leading into West Princes Street Gardens, and so along a rough little path, high above the gay flower- beds and walks and seats, and skirt round the edge of the cliffs of the Castle Rock, and over a crazy footbridge and some rocks that protrude through the path, and so to the ruins of the Well-House Tower, the only bit left of the fifteenth-century wall. Opened only this summer, there is the new park at Saughton, to the west of the town, taking in the old walled garden of Saughton House. And Edinburgh citizens are promised thousands of roses, and alfresco teas. The children of the South Side have still The Meadows, where Sir Walter Scott played, and also Bruntsneld Links, where very smoky-fleeced sheep crop, careless of golf-balls. And lastly, to the north of the town, there is the People's Park, a huge open space, fresh and wholesome, from which the very best view of Edinburgh can be seen, — a perfect panorama, spread out in the sunshine or seen through the mist, as the case may be, — what artists call " a broken sky-line," the Castle in the very centre, and many a church steeple and many a tower, new and old, the great clock-tower of the modern North British Railway Hotel, the beautiful, hoary, open 48 Edinburgh arches of St. Giles's broken crown halfway down the ridge of the Old Town, and the steeple of St. Mary's Cathedral rising highest of all. " Peter " would no longer be able to lament, in his " Letters to his Kins- folk," about Edinburgh, that "the only want, if want there be, in the whole aspect of this City, is, some such type of the grandeur of Religion rearing itself in the air, in somewhat of its due proportion of magnitude and magnificence. It is the only great city, the first impression of whose greatness is not blended with ideas suggested by the presence of some such edifice, piercing the sky in splendour or in gloom, far above the frailer and lowlier habitations of those that come to worship beneath its roof." Beyond the town altogether, but not beyond the reach of little feet, even bare ones, there are still the hills and the open country round Edinburgh, where children may roam among grass and whins, with all the beautiful clean-washed colours of the Midlothian country spread before their eyes, and the sun on their shoulders, and the wind in their faces. How often, on Saturday afternoons, or on a holiday, does one meet in the lanes round Edinburgh little troops of bare-legged, eager-voiced, ragged bird's-nesters scanning the hedges ; or of venturesome children, often accompanied by the baby in an ancient perambulator, all tired and dragging along in charge of an older sister, a " wise-like wean " of some thirteen summers or so. They carry in their paws bunches of fading wild-flowers, or, if their walk has lain in the direction of the Canal, — that most Dutch little bit of Edinburgh, — one of the small boys may be bearing a bottle of water, and if you inquire you will be told it is " a fesh," and the bottle will be proudly 'GREENBREEKS" LEADING THE POTTER ROW BOYS IN A "BICKER. Girls and Boys of To-day 49 exhibited that you may see for yourself a fish about an inch long, somehow extracted from its native element. The elder sister will ask you the way back to some incredibly far-off home whence they have wandered, and whither they are now returning in the evening, to find the mother equally tired, for she will have spent her holiday in doing all the family washing, hanging it on the pole out of the window to dry, and then " redding up " the house for Sunday. And what about " gentlemen's bairns," as they used to be called in old days ? Well, they live now in the dull, dignified, formal, grey terraces and crescents and squares of the New Town ; and happy those little ones whose nursery windows, high up in the roof, look down on to the green trees of gardens across the way, and not merely to another row of staring windows opposite. The boys of Modern Edinburgh have a great many other schools now besides the Royal High School, and they do not learn Latin only, nor do they shoot the Town Bailies. The girls of Modern Edinburgh are no longer to be seen riding on sows, but neither have they learned to sit upright ; and the way in which they propel themselves along the streets by swinging one arm like a flail, would have shocked the soul of the Honble. Mrs. Ogilvie. The High School is still what James VI. made it, — the Royal High School ; and it is still the Town School, for its Governors are Edinburgh's Lord Provost and Council. But it is no longer in the old quarters to which Scott and Cockburn went; for in 1825, just after its first rival, the Academy, had been founded and was being built, the old High School roused itself into action. The ed. 7 50 Edinburgh Academy was rearing a dull, low, classic building in a rather mean part of the North Side of the town ; but the High School possessed itself of a wonderful site, on the green slopes of Calton Hill ; and there, in the four years from July 1825 to June 1829, it erected a copy of the Athenian Temple of Theseus, — a huge mass of Greek columns and temples and wings, and two acres of playground right on the face of the hill. The High School then emerged from the Old Town and betook itself and all its traditions, — a proud proces- sion, Provost and Bailies, University professors and eminent citizens, former scholars, parents and boys, all to the music of a military band, — to its magnificent new quarters. And Lord Cockburn was so ecstatic that he forgot all about his floggings, and said in a speech that " with great experience and opportunity of observation, I certainly have never yet seen any one system so well adapted for training up good citizens, as well as learned and virtuous men, as the old High School of Edinburgh and the Scottish Universities . . . because men of the highest and lowest rank of society send their children to be educated together . . . they sit side by side." Alas ! Was it a case of — " Oh the auld hoose, the auld hoose, Deserted tho' ye be, There ne'er will be a new hoose . . ." ? Or was it, perhaps, the fact that at the newly- founded Academy the highest and lowest ranks were not educated together, and did not sit side by side ? Sir Walter Scott was one of the first directors of the Edinburgh Academy; and at the Opening, in 1825, he made a speech, and told " his young friends round him " that there was to be a class at this school not to be found Girls and Boys of To-day 5 1 in any similar academy,— a class for the study of English Literature. A teacher was " to be added to the institu- tion " who should teach boys English composition and a knowledge of the history of their own country. Sir Walter Scott " would have the youths taught to venerate the patriots and heroes of our own country along with those of Greece and Rome ; to know the histories of Wallace and Bruce, as well as those of Themistocles and of Caesar ; and that the recollection of the fields of Flodden and Bannockburn should not be lost in those of Plataea and Marathon." To-day the school has had many a " teacher added to the institution," and the boys learn many kinds of know- ledge besides Latin and Greek. In 1909, at the opening of the new Science Department, the Academy boys of a newer generation were gathered, as were the boys of 1825, to listen to one of the great men of their day. ^ Greece and Rome and Scotland ? — Themistocles and Caesar and the Bruce ?— Plataea and Marathon and Flodden ?— Why, Sir William Ramsay took his hearers through earth and fire and water and air, hanging wildly on to the spectrum-coloured tails of elusive new elements! What would the Wizard of the North have thought, could he have entered the Academy lecture-hall that day and listened with the rest, lost in amazed awe, to the discoverer of argon lightly telling how through Earth and Heaven — or such fragments of Heaven as have condescended to fall on to Earth— he had stalked his prey ? Truly, the " fairy tales of Science " ; and certainly, — how many thousand times had he lifted that piece of apparatus? — "the long result of time." Besides these two chief day-schools — the High School and the Academy — there are several big public boarding- 52 Edinburgh schools, — Loretto, Fettes, and Merchiston. The last is interesting because it is at one of the old historic houses left in Edinburgh, — Merchiston Castle, the home of the Napiers, and where the inventor of logarithms lived. Fettes College is only about fifty years old. It stands on the northern slopes, down towards the sea, and is on the English public-school system, with a central College and separate large "Houses," each under its "House Master " ; and it has a pretty Chapel. Then there are the great " Hospitals," — that is, the endowed schools. Most of these were founded by Edinburgh citizens who began life poor and ended it rich, and left their money to help other boys to make their way in. life. The chief of these " Hospitals " is Heriot's Hospital, founded by the famous goldsmith of James VI. 's day. George Heriot began life as a goldsmith's apprentice, and then started for himself with a tiny little booth or shop in Parliament Close, off the High Street. He rapidly became rich, and was made goldsmith to the Queen. Scotland in the seventeenth century was a poor country, and its King had not much money of his own, and greatly valued those of his richer subjects who supplied his wants. He had to depend on the private fortunes of those about him, and this explains the great favour in which " Jingling Geordie," as he called the goldsmith, was held. There is a well-known story that one day George Heriot had been sent for to Holyrood, and found his sovereign sitting by a fire of cedar-wood. The goldsmith noticed how pleasant the fragrance was which the cedar-wood made in burning. " Yes," said the King, who always thought a good deal about money, " and it is as costly as it is pleasant." Girls and Boys of To-day 53 Heriot told the King that if he would pay him a visit in his little booth he would show him a costlier fire, and the King accepted the invitation and went, only to find an ordinary fire burning brightly. " Is this your costly fire ?" he asked. " Wait till I get my fuel, your Majesty," said Jing- ling Geordie ; and he took out of his press a bond for two thousand pounds he had lent the King, and put it on the top of the fire. A useful subject to a poor monarch, Jingling Geordie ! When George Heriot died he left money to endow a school for " Puir orphan and faderless boys, sons of freemen in Edinburgh." To this day Heriot's Hospital is one of the most beautiful buildings in all Edinburgh. Its architecture is said to be peculiar to Scotland, and it is certainly very impressive, with its quadrangle and its octagonal towers, its Chapel and its doorways. Other rich Edinburgh citizens left their money to found schools. George Watson, a merchant in Edin- burgh, who died in 1723, left money for a Hospital for sons and grandsons of merchants. This has now been changed into day-schools. Daniel Stewart, of the Exchequer, who died in 1 8 14, founded Stewart's Hospital for boys ; and John Watson, a Writer to the Signet, founded a Hospital which bears his name, and in it sons of Writers to the Signet are taken by preference. Donaldson, the printer, was more open-minded than any of these, for " Donaldson's Hospital " was founded to clothe, maintain and educate poor boys and girls for trade or domestic service. And lastly there is the Orphan Hospital, which has the old clock of the Netherbow Port in its clock tower ; and it also educates girls as well as boys. All these 54 Edinburgh Hospitals stand in grounds of their own, and are large buildings, — some of them things of architectural beauty ; and in two of them, as we have seen, girls as well as boys are inmates, but in both of these the scholars are the " puir orphans, faderless children." What about the daughters of Edinburgh who are neither puir nor fader- less ? What education for girls is there in the town ? In the eighteenth century, while the boys had their High School, it was thought enough for the girls to go to a school kept in a private dwelling up a stair or two in a close. We have not got much farther nowadays, for whereas Edinburgh boys have their big public day- schools, and their vast palaces, like Fettes, the schools for their sisters are all in private houses, neither built nor intended for the purpose, and it is thought much if these private houses are on the outskirts of the town, — some disused old family mansion, — so that there is some form of garden, and not merely front-door steps and a " back green." The education in the dining-room and drawing-room is no doubt excellent, and the little girls are most carefully tended ; but some day, when the girls and boys of the Edinburgh of to-day are written about as the children of old days, it may happen that Edinburgh daughters as well as Edinburgh sons will have their great schools, and that brothers will not come home for the holidays from their palatial towers and quad- rangles, their Grecian columns and temples, their Chapels and windows and gateways, their playgrounds and cricket- fields and swimming-baths, their Greek and their Latin and their Science, their lecture-halls and laboratories, their libraries and their busaries, and feel themselves — small blame to them ! — such intensely superior beings to their street-bred sisters. Girls and Boys of To-day 55 And the play-hours ? They would take a volume. And perhaps play-hours and games and parties are nowa- days pretty much the same in Edinburgh as those of the girls and boys of other towns. But Edinburgh may be very grateful for the new form of play that is not play at all, but good citizenship — the "Boy Scouts" and the " Girl Guides." Up and down the cold grey streets they march, workman-like little band in their serviceable khaki uniforms ; but chiefly are they decora- tive in the gardens, where much scouting goes on. Is this the evolution of the " Bickers "? Flat they lie on their faces, high up in the long grass among the flowering rhododendrons, silent, intent, and watchful. Far down below, on the smooth lawn, above the Water of Leith, another band is moving slowly, prodding the shaven, carefully-rolled turf, earnestly examining the newly-raked gravel-path. Suddenly, down upon them with whoops and a rush come the ambushed band. There is a wild skirmish ; but it is not they that the enemy from the ambush seek, — they scatter them and rush on to a seat on which lie a photo- graphic camera, two or three straps of school books, and an overcoat. These are hastily grabbed, and the enemy are off up the hill again with their plunder. "Oh, Brown! — I say! — that's not fair!" shouts one from below. " Who left their guns unprotected f comes the answer, in a voice of breathless triumph. What battles of the future, one wonders, are they to be that are now being fought in the flowery glades of the Dean Gardens ? 56 Edinburgh CHAPTER VIII HOOD AND GOWN Edinburgh University stands, a grey, square, stern building, in a thronged, busy street leading right up from the east end of Princes Street to the southern suburbs. It stands on the very spot where, in 1567, Darnley, the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, was blown up by gunpowder. Then it was outside the town, but now the University has tramway cars in front of it, shops all round it, and slums clustering at its back. This stern grey college is " the University Old Build- ings," and a little way off, facing " The Meadows," are " the University New Buildings," built within the memory of this generation. They are chiefly given over to the Medical and Science classes and laboratories. Between the two are other buildings belonging to, or connected with, the University, — the McEwan Hall, the Music Class-room, the Men Students' Union. But it is round " the University Old Buildings," built at the beginning of the nineteenth century on the original site of the old college buildings, that tradition clings. Edinburgh University is the youngest of the four Scottish Universities. St. Andrews had been founded at the beginning of the fifteenth century, while James I. was a prisoner in England ; Glasgow in the middle of the fifteenth century, in James II. 's reign ; Aberdeen at the end of the fifteenth century, in James IV.'s reign. But Edinburgh, the Capital, was not a University town for nearly another century, — not until 1582. The University of Edinburgh is always called " the Protestant University," because it was built in the Protestant days of James VI., whereas the earlier Uni- SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. 1822. From the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn. Hood and Gown 57 versities were founded in Roman Catholic days, by Papal Bull. But it is hardly truthful, and it is certainly un- grateful, to give all the credit to the Protestants and the Town, for the earliest benefactor of Edinburgh Uni- versity was a Catholic Bishop, — Robert Reid, Abbot of Kinloss and Bishop of Orkney. This Robert Reid died in 1 558, and left 8,000 merks — a big sum in those days — to found "a College of Edinburgh "; and it was actually this sum that the Edinburgh magistrates used, twenty- four years later, to buy the site on which " the Protestant University " was reared, and on which it stands to-day. If all the founders and benefactors and promoters of our institutions and charities were allowed to return to Earth on All Hallows Eve, and to flit about in ghostly fashion, pass by their own statues, find themselves in streets christened after them, enter buildings dedicated to them, or carrying on work for the world's good which they began, — if such a thing were to happen, would not that All Hallows Night be, as the refrain of a Cowboy chorus says, " Their night to howl " ? Certainly there would be, on such an All Hallows Night in Edinburgh, one lonely soul who would stand aghast in our University quadrangle, and not give even Darnley's shattered spirit first place for pathos. The Abbot in the quadrangle would be a very courtly ghost. In his day he had been a scholar, a courtier, a lawyer, an ambassador ; he had built Churches, gathered libraries, travelled on royal embassies, been the second Lord President of the Court of Session, had encouraged art and learning, and founded other colleges besides that at Edinburgh, — one, for instance, at Kirkwall, the Capital of his Diocese, for teaching country youths grammar and philosophy. He had drawn up an admir- ed. 8 58 Edinburgh able scheme for the college he wished to endow at Edinburgh ; and then he had died at Dieppe, — died very mysteriously with several others, as people did occasion- ally in those days, — as he returned from witnessing the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to her first husband, the Dauphin of France. And now ? — the ghost of the Abbot of Kinloss and Bishop of Orkney might flit over the quadrangle to the spirit of Sir David Brewster, lean- ing against the pedestal of his own statue, and ask for information. " I beseech you to tell me, good Sir, is this the colledge within the Burgh of Edinburgh, for exerceis of leirning thairinto, quhilk umqhhill I bequeathed in my testament the sowme of aucht thousand merkis?" And Sir David Brewster would reply shortly : "You're very far out, Abbot. Your name's never mentioned here." In the twenty-four years between the Founder's death and the building of the University much had happened in Scotland. Darnley had been blown up ; Queen Mary had been imprisoned for fourteen years in England ; John Knox had been dead for fourteen years ; and Scotland had become a Protestant country. No Papal Bull was needed, only a Charter signed, in April 1582, by sixteen-year-old James VI., to empower the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council to found the University of Edinburgh. Kirk o' Field, the purchased site, was at that time a place of fields and gardens outside the town, with some Church edifices and other buildings straggling over it — including the family mansion of the Hamiltons. The Town authorities purchased it with the Bishop's bequest in June 1582, and apparently their further funds were not Hood and Gown 59 great, for they did not attempt to build a University, but only proceeded to alter and add to the buildings already there. Then they appointed the first " Provost " or professor, and he lectured in the lower hall of Hamilton House. His name was Robert Rollock, and he came to Edinburgh from a professorship of philo- sophy at St. Andrews University. He was a young man of twenty-eight years of age, round-headed, his ruddy face surmounted and surrounded by hair and short beard, both of reddish hue. His name and colour- ing somehow suggest the Three R's ; but he had to instruct u everie bairne repairing to the said coledge " in much more learned subjects, Latin and Theology, — and, in a year or two, in Theology also. This was the first of our Edinburgh professors. What a list of notable names comes after his ! It seems that the Edinburgh Magistrates did not have to lay out any money on the University library, any more than they had to do so on the University site, for it was fortunate that in 1580, two years before the University was founded, an Edinburgh advocate, Mr. Clement Little, had bequeathed his library to " Edinburgh and Kirk of God thair to reman," and this library was appropriated by the Magistrates for their new University. These books are chiefly theological, but they were soon added to, for Drummond of Hawthornden, the poet, left a large number of books to the University, including a few of the earlier editions of Shakespeare's plays. There they are still, with Drummond of Hawthornden's beautiful handwriting in them, treasured in the strong-room of our University library. There also are the volumes of the original library of Mr. Clement Little, and many other treasures, 60 Edinburgh for the library has been richly endowed from time to time ; and here in the strong-room are books wonderful to handle, rare manuscripts, illumined missals, beautiful soft specimens of early printers' work, and bindings with great clasps and bosses, relics of the days of scholarship and leisure and devotion. And so, the Magistrates having laid out the Abbot's bequest with one hand, and commandeered the Advocate's bequest with the other, the University prospered, and they took all the credit. No, not all. There was yet King James to come. He came in 1616. It was thirty-five years since, a boy of sixteen, he had signed the Charter, and it was fourteen years since he had left Scotland to be King of England as well, and he came back to visit his ancient Kingdom of Scotland. He found the youngest Scottish University thriving, " beginning to take notice," as nurses say of babies. So he christened it, and stood Godfather. He said it was " worthie to be honoured with our name," and that it was " to be callit in all times herafter by the name of King James's College," and gave it a " Royal Godbairn gift " of lands and tithes in Lothian and Fife. At first, the University must have been more like a school than a University, and the students, — though they were far more independent than are the students of English Universities, were allowed to live where they pleased in the town, were not under the authority of the University except in bounds, and wore no especial dress, yet were in themselves mere schoolboys. We have seen how they " bickered " in the streets with the boys of other schools, and we find them spoken of in the Burgh Records as " bairns." Moreover, the ancient practice that Solomon recommended seems to have been Hood and Gown 61 resorted to by the early professors, for at Edinburgh, as well as in other Universities, unruly students were birched. But on one occasion the son of the Lord Provost was birched, and this gave dire offence to the City Magistrates, who were the patrons and governors of the University, and considered themselves and their sons entitled to all respect at its hands. So the birching of the Lord Provost's son, though it may not have im- proved him, improved the University — there was no more birching after that. The interference by the Magistrates was not always so happy for the University. The Magistrates were not learned men and knew little about education, and it must have been very irksome to the professors of early days to have to submit to their ruling in matters concerning learning and education. There was much friction be- tween Town and Gown. On one occasion, so regardless of the dignity of the University had the Town become, that the Magistrates actually dared to a borrow" the Uni- versity Mace, and to forget to return it for four years. In matters of teaching as well as discipline the students were treated as schoolboys. For more than a hundred years they were taught as is the fashion in boys' schools, — that is, one professor, or "regent," as he was called, taught his own group of students all the subjects for three or four years. But this is not our modern idea of a University. We expect a professor to be a man famous in some special subject, and who has devoted all his life to it, and can inspire others to do the same. For a University is not a place merely to train people for different professions and ways of making money. The ideal University is a place where anyone who wants to study any subject, — no matter 62 Edinburgh how unknown and out of the way and " specialized " the subject may be, — can receive the very best teaching to be had in that subject, and find the best methods,— in laboratories and libraries, — of learning all that it is possible to learn about it. In 1708 a new system was introduced; and since then Edinburgh University has had a separate professor for every subject. So far so good ; — but in those days there were only three hundred students, and they were all Divinity students or Arts students ; and there were only eight professors ! In 1707 a Professor of Public Law was appointed, and this began the Legal Faculty in Edinburgh ; and in 1720 a Professor of Anatomy was appointed, and that was the beginning of the great Medical School of Edinburgh, now — thanks to its having had so many eminent professors, — famous all the world over. And there have been great names in the other Faculties also, — in Arts, in Law, in Divinity. To give a list of the men that Edinburgh University is proud of would take too long ; but a few must be mentioned. Dugald Stewart, the metaphysician ; Dr. Alexander Munro, who really began the Medical School ; Pro- fessor Cullen ; Professor Black, of " latent heat " fame ; Lister, — does not the whole of Listerian surgery date from Edinburgh University ? Dr. Chalmers ; Sir David Brewster ; John Goodsir ; Aytoun, author of " Lays of the Cavaliers " ; Sir James Y. Simpson, the discoverer of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform ; Sir Lyon Playfair ; Professor Tait. The present buildings — " the University Old Build- ings," — date from the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth. The original plan was Hood and Gown 63 designed by the architect Adam, who built so much of the New Town of Edinburgh ; but lack of funds caused years of delay, and when finally, in 1 8 1 5, an annual grant of ten thousand pounds from Parliament quickened the process of building, Adam's plans were altered by another architect, Piayfair. In 1858 the University, which had long since come to be called " Edinburgh University," instead of " the Town College," was enabled, by the Universities Act, to finally throw off the control of the Town, and now the Senatus Academicus (the Principal and Professors) regulates the teaching and discipline, subject to the control of the University Court ; and the Lord Provost and one member of the Town Council are members of this Court, to represent the old order which had prevailed for two hundred and seventy-six years. In 1884 Edinburgh University celebrated its "Ter- centenary," — its three-hundredth birthday. It was a most brilliant week in Edinburgh, that week in April 1884, for the University had invited all the greatest celebrities of Europe to her birthday party, — invited guests from England and Ireland, from our Colonies, from America, from France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Greece. Every country in Europe, and Britain beyond the seas, had sent of its greatest men — authors and thinkers, divines and men of science, discoverers, philosophers, historians, statesmen, soldiers, — names to thrill the pulses and fire the brain. The grey streets of the sober old city were enlivened by flashes of academic colours, and her halls were lit up by flashes of foreign eyes and foreign wits. All the guests were feted and lionized ; the hospitable private houses were thrown open for their entertainment ; they were feasted 64 Edinburgh and they were listened to, and were one and all given an honorary degree of Edinburgh University. And then they all went home, and Edinburgh sobered down again. It has always been a feature of Edinburgh University that she " thinks Imperially." To attend a Graduation Ceremonial is to receive a lesson on the number of races that live under the British Flag. Students from all parts of the world come to Edinburgh University ; but especially students from Britain beyond the Seas, — from India, from Australia, from New Zealand, from Canada, from South Africa, from Newfoundland. It seems impossible that anyone brought up at Edinburgh University, enjoying the education of such contacts, should ever go out into the world a " Little Englander." And now, since 1894, there is another feature of Edinburgh University. She has admitted women. Most of the women students are Arts students, — in the Arts Course there have of late years sometimes been more women than men ; but there are a large number of women Medical students — not yet quite so hospitably treated as the men as regards their training, but quite as hospitably treated as regards their examinations, — and there are women Science students, and women students of Music. They have their academic life, — their Union and their Debating Societies, their Conservative Association and their Liberal Association ; and at the Graduation Ceremonials nearly as many women as men go up in their academic hoods and gowns to be " capped" by the Chancellor. And they, too, are gathered from all parts of the world. " What made you think of coming here?" it was asked of one girl graduate who was from South Africa. " Well, 1 think it was because my father is an Edin- JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF ENGLAND AS A BOY. From the painting by Zucchero in the National Portrait Gallery, Londoi Wig and Gown 65 burgh man, and he is very loyal to his old Alma Mater, and often talks of it. So my brother and I both decided to come here." What would Robert Rollock have thought! For that matter, what would any professor forty years ago ? But with some of them even then it was an as yet unrealized dream. CHAPTER IX WIG AND GOWN " La Salle des pas perdus," it has been called — the hall of lost footsteps. Up and down, down and up, the great Hall they pace daily, the members of His Majesty's Bar, in their black gowns and grey wigs — tall men with gowns flapping about their knees, short men with gowns to their ankles ; big- headed men with little wigs set awry atop of their craniums, and their own hair showing beneath ; small- headed men with the stiff curls of their wigs well down over their ears. And here they, or those who went before them, have paced and loitered up and down for almost two hundred years, ever since the Union of Scotland and England sent our Scottish statesmen to help to govern England as well as Scotland, and left the Parlia- ment House in Edinburgh empty for the use of the legal world of the Scottish Capital, — a la Salle des pas perdus." Where have all the footsteps led ? Some have never led beyond this Hall. Many a man has paced here from the time he was " called " to the Scottish Bar till he was called to a higher tribunal. He has grown grey while pacing, — grey and disappointed, wearied and dulled, — and has passed away, having done nothing nobler than to live and die. But not all. All have not been lost ed. 9 66 Edinburgh footsteps. Hundreds have led to worldly success and wealth. Hundreds have led to great public careers and fame. Hundreds, — better still, — have led to lives spent for the general welfare. Some have led to European reputations. Some of the footsteps have led to immortality. Some ? Well, one at least. Sir Walter Scott has paced this floor. It is a difficult profession. Often the best men get to the front, but sometimes they are outdistanced and shoved behind by mere astuteness, or by a stroke of good luck, on the part of others less worthy. It is the same, no doubt, at the London Bar. " He is a rising man," one hears ; and he rises rapidly, like Jonah's gourd, for next time one hears him spoken of it is with another prefix before his name. Or else, also like Jonah's gourd, he is never mentioned again. A beautiful and dignified setting, this ancient Scottish Parliament Hall. Perhaps, had the Town and citizens known that the Scottish Parliaments were to meet for only sixty-seven years after its completion, they would not have spent so much money on it, and on the great arched black oak roof, its arches crossed and interlocked and resting on one another, high overhead. Here, only eleven years after it was built, Montrose's trial took place. Here Cromwell's troopers gathered. Here the beauty and chivalry of Edinburgh feasted at the Restoration. But the chief use of the Parliament Hall was for meetings of the Parliament. When Scotland had her own Parliament, it was a one-chambered House. But — it was not a House of Commons, rather was it a House of Peers. Of its three hundred and fourteen members, ten were Dukes, three Marquesses, seventy-five Earls, seventeen Vis- Wig and Gown 67 counts, fifty-two Barons, ninety Knights of Shires, and only sixty- seven were Burgesses. It was to Parliament House that the " Riding to the Parliament " came from Holyrood, — the yearly cere- monial of the Opening of Parliament, when the Sovereign, or the Lord High Commissioner representing the Sovereign, was conducted in a great procession, — " a very stately and pompous Cavalcade," Maitland calls it in his history. This was its order : — Two Trumpeters ; two Pursuivants; the sixty-seven Burgesses, two by two, each attended by a footman ; four Door-keepers of the Court of Session, two by two ; the ninety Knights of Shires, two by two, each attended by two footmen ; Com- moners and Officers of State, two by two ; two Door- keepers of the Privy Council Chamber ; the Peers in their robes — first the fifty-two Barons, attended by train- bearers, pages, and three footmen each ; then the seven- teen Viscounts, attended by train-bearers, pages, and three footmen each ; then the seventy-five Earls, attended by train-bearers, pages, and four footmen each ; then the three Marquesses, attended by train-bearers, pages, and six footmen each ; then the ten Dukes, attended by train-bearers, pages, and eight footmen each. The Dukes were followed by the Lord High Chan- cellor, bearing the Great Seal. Then came four Trum- peters, two by two, and four Pursuivants, two by two, six Heralds, the Gentleman Usher, and then the Lyon King of Arms. He was followed by three of the most ancient of the nobles, bearing the Scottish Regalia, which had been conveyed that morning from the Castle to Holyrood to be in readiness. The Sword of State came first, then the Sceptre, then the Crown, and a Mace walked on either hand of each of these. Finally rode 68 Edinburgh the Sovereign, or the Commissioner who represented the Sovereign ; and the Cavalcade wound up by a troop of Life Guards. Arrived at Parliament House, the King, or the Lord High Commissioner, was led to the throne by the Lord High Constable and the Earl Marischal, and the Regalia was laid on the table in front of him. Little wonder that the gaping crowd had their patriotism and loyalty stirred by such pageantry, and that they were ignorantly unwilling to exchange it for the larger future opened out to Scotland — and to England too — by the Treaty of Union. But the removal of the political centre to London naturally changed altogether the character of Edinburgh Society, and in no way more so than by leaving the lawyers in possession, not of Parliament House only, but of the whole command of public life. In the absence of other aristocracy, the legal lights became the leaders of society in the Capital. This has been modified in late years by other great interests springing up in Edinburgh, and enriching its society ; and also by the fact that the members of the Bar are now no longer altogether drawn, as used to be the case, from among the younger sons of noble houses or great landed families, but are rather the clever elder sons of professional men. But Parliament House casts a legal shadow over all Edinburgh. How many a door in the dignified stone terraces and streets and crescents bears a brass plate with a name and the word " Advocate " underneath ! And in some of the cold northerly streets, where the top windows command a view of the sea, and legal firms have their dwellings, or in the great wind-swept squares, where papers and dust eddy at their ease, and Wig and Gown 69 legal firms do congregate, there the doors show many brass plates, one above the other, each bearing below the names the mystic letters " W.S." or " S.S.C." Yes, it is a very legal town. It is told that once the love- letter of an Edinburgh swain began : " Madam, In answer to your duplies, received of date as per margin." One of the first sights that the stranger to Edinburgh is taken to see is Parliament House, and the first thing he is shown there is the great Parliament Hall. But he will not be told about the Scottish Parliaments from 1639 to I 7°75 ne will De invited to look, awe-struck, at the pacing, loitering, whispering, gossiping, jesting crowd of wigs and gowns — advocates, solicitors, agents, writers, and litigants ; and then he will be shown the statues of Lord Melville and Lord President Blair by Chantrey, and that by Roubillac of Duncan Forbes of Colloden ; and the splendid series of portraits, all the great Edinburgh Judges and Lord Advocates and Deans of the Faculty and Presidents of the Court of Session, — such clever faces ! — Some such beautiful faces, fine in expression ; some so dissipated ; but one and all so clever ! The portraits are many of them by Raeburn, and there is one by Kneller, and of the later ones some are the work of Sir Daniel Macnee, of Sir George Reid, of Sargent, of Orchardson. And then, passing through the throng to the top of the Hall, the visitor will be shown the great window, representing James V. of Scotland, — the dear " Red Tod," the Founder of the Court of Session, — presenting Pope Clement VII. 's Charter to Alexander Mylne, Abbot of Cambuskenneth, the first President of the Court of Session, and Bishop Gavin Dunbar blessing the act. This Alexander Mylne was the elder son of the first Royal Master Mason of 70 Edinburgh that name, — and the line, carried on by his brother, con- tinued till 1 8 1 1, — twelve generations in direct descent, all Royal Master Masons. Alexander Mylne, whom James V. appointed first President of the new Court of Session, was prominent in his day both in Church and State, an ecclesiastic, a statesman, a lawyer, an author, and an architect. In those days the President had to be an ecclesiastic, as most of the revenues came from the Church, and also because the clergy were the only class trained in law. Nowadays it is the lawyers who seek to rule the Church. It is curious that both great facts in Edinburgh life, Hood and Gown and Wig and Gown, seem to have had an Abbot at their source. The stranger, having had the window explained to him, will be taken through the modern corridors that lead out of the Hall to the stuffy Court-rooms, that he may stand and hear the eloquence of Judge or Counsel. Then he will be taken to the Library to see the treasures. The Advocates' Library was founded by Sir George Mackenzie, King's Advocate in the reigns of Charles II. and James VII. He was a man of letters and the friend and correspondent of Dryden ; but what is recollected of him in Edinburgh is that he was the prosecutor of the Covenanters. His books are in the Advocates' Library, and his tomb is in Greyfriars Churchyard ; and in old days the little street-boys used to come to the gate of it, and peep in through the little squares of open ironwork, and call out : " Bluidy Mackingie, come oot if ye daur ! Lift the sneck and draw the bar !" — and then run away as quickly as their little Noncon- forming legs would carry them. Wig and Gown 71 The Advocates' Library, as the present Keeper writes of it, has since the middle of the eighteenth century " become universally recognized as being not only the national library, but the natural place of deposit for national records and relics." And indeed it is this. Not only does it now number about 500,000 volumes, not only is it the only library in Scotland which has retained the right to receive a copy of every book pub- lished in Great Britain, but, as the same writer says, " from earliest date the Faculty has pursued the generous policy of giving ample access to the Library to all genuine workers in literature and science." One such " genuine worker in literature " was Thomas Carlyle, who used it as a young man, and wrote of it gratefully long afterwards. There have been countless others. As for " national records and relics," is there not, over the stair, the Standard of the Earl Marshal of Scotland, saved from Flodden field by Black John Skirving of Plewland Hill ? But the priceless treasures are in the " Laigh Parliament House," that pillared, vaultlike hall under the Parliament Hall, in which the Privy Council met, and where, it is alleged, torture took place. Here, on an easel, is the Bull sent by the Pope to grant to Scotland the right to crown and anoint her Kings. It was sent in answer to a petition from Robert the Bruce. Here, each reverently curtained, are the two Covenants, — the " Solemn League and Covenant " and the " National Covenant." Here, in glass cases, are valuable manuscripts, — manuscripts of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Here are the Bas- sendine Bible, and all kinds of wonderful and rare specimens of early printing, both home and foreign. Here are many letters, among which, — most interesting "j 2 Edinburgh of all to younger visitors, and pathetic enough to any, — are some letters written by little royal children, — the child letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, to her mother, Mary of Lorraine, widow of James V. ; and one of Charles, afterwards Charles I., to his father, James I. and VI. Both these little innocent writers afterwards died on the scaffold. Here is Prince Charles's, — undated, but probably written to his father in London from Holy- rood, where he was being brought up under his tutor, Robert Carey : — " SwEETE Sweete Father i learne to decline substatives and adiectives. give me your blessing, i thank you for my best man. Your loving sone, To my Father the King." York. Scarcely less affectionate is the letter of one of the little sons of James VI. 's youngest daughter, Elizabeth, to his grandfather : — "S r I kisse your hand. I would fain see yo r Ma tie . I can say Nominativo hie, haec, hoc, and all 5 delensions, and a part of pronomen and a part of verbrum. I have two horses alive, that can goe up my staires a blacke horse, and a chestnut horse. I pray God to blesse your Ma tie . Yo r Ma ties obedient Grand-child, Frederick Henry." Evidently King James's respect for Latin, learnt in his boyhood at the knee of George Buchanan, and shown in his keen personal interest in the Royal High School of Edinburgh, had not deserted him when he was King of England. And his son, and long after- wards his grandchildren, knew this. When the stranger reluctantly tears himself from the Laigh Parliament House, he has, having seen it and the Parliament Hall and the Court-rooms, seen all that there Wig and Gown 73 is to be shown. And he may, or may not, have grasped the system of our Scottish Law Court Procedure. But he has still to hear the stories of the Scottish lawyers of the Past. The judge of whom, perhaps, most stories are told, is Lord Braxfield. Lord Cockburn describes him as " illiterate, and without any taste for refined enjoyment, strength of understanding, which gave him power with- out cultivation, only encouraged disdain of all natures less coarse than his own." He was harsh and domineer- ing, and with a kind of brutal joviality, which Lord Cockburn excuses as " not cruelty," but a " cherished coarseness." It was Lord Braxfield who told a prisoner who had pleaded his own cause, " Ye're a very clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hanging." Still more incredibly brutal was Lord Karnes when he had before him, charged with murder, a man named Matthew Hay, with whom he had often played chess. After pronouncing the death sentence upon him, " That's checkmate to you, Matthew !" he added. Another judge of whom many stories are told is Lord Eskgrove, or " Esky " as he was usually called. The wags of Parliament House of his Hay used to imitate his peculiarities. Lord Cockburn relates that it was a common sight to see a knot of persons in Parlia- ment Hall all listening to one of their number who was talking slowly, with low muttering voice and a projected chin, — and then suddenly the listeners would burst asunder in roars of laughter, and one knew that an imitation of " Esky " was going on. Walter Scott was one of the young advocates who was famous for being able to caricature him. If Lord Cockburn's description is a true one, " Esky " ED. 10 74 Edinburgh must indeed have been a decorative oddity. It is worth quoting. " He seemed, in his old age," he says, " to be about the average height ; but as he then stooped a good deal, he might have been taller in reality. His face varied, according to circumstances, from a scurfy red to a scurfy blue; the nose was prodigious ; the under lip enormous, and supported on a huge clumsy chin, which moved like the jaw of an exaggerated Dutch toy. He walked with a slow, stealthy step — something between a walk and a hirple, and helped himself on by short movements of his elbows, backwards and forwards, like fins. His voice was low and mumbling, and on the Bench was generally inaudible for some time after the movement of the lips showed that he had begun speaking." Nevertheless, he was kinder to the poor wretched prisoners before him than was either Lord Braxfleld or Lord Karnes, for what this extraordinary absurdity used to say to a man he had just condemned to death was this : — " Whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be, or even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, there are plenty of rever-end gentlemen who will be most happy for to show you the way to yeternal life." Most of these judges, — as were unfortunately so many men, and wise and great men too, in the eighteenth century, — were hard drinkers. It was the days when men boasted of being " two-bottle men " and " three- bottle men." It was claret they drank ; but they drank too much. There is a story of a learned judge who was found on a dust-heap in the morning, and neither he nor anyone else seems to have been ashamed of the position. Indeed, the men of those days were rather proud of Wig and Gown 75 their drinking, and it is very unfortunate that a good many of our laws and regulations concerning drinking were apparently framed in those days, and are rather for the care and protection of the drunken people than for their punishment. There was a judge called Lord Hermand (all Scottish judges have the courtesy title "Lord ") of whom the story is told that when he was trying a young man who had killed a friend in a drunken quarrel, he exclaimed, " Why, he was drunk ! And yet he murdered the very man who had been drinking with him ! ... if he will do this when he is drunk, what will he not do when he is sober ?" Once an advocate was not sober when he began to plead, and pleaded most eloquently, — but on the wrong side ! Indignation on the part of his client, whom he ought to have been defending, and whom he was denouncing instead ! It was all in vain that his agent and those near pulled his gown and signed to him and frowned at him — on he went, a long and fervid speech. At last someone slipped a paper into his hand. He glanced down and read, " You have pled for the wrong party." Perhaps this sobered him, — at any rate his wits never failed him, for he simply turned again to the judge and went on pleading, "Such, my Lord, is the statement which you will probably hear from my brother on the opposite side of the case. I shall now beg leave, in a very few words, to show your Lordship how utterly untenable are the principles, and how distorted are the facts, upon which this very specious statement has proceeded." Which he then did. But " I hate scandal," as the old lady said at intervals while she was telling shocking tales of all her neighbours. 76 Edinburgh Let us come to the memorable names and splendid memories of Parliament House. There have been great lawyers on the Scottish Bench. James Dalrymple, afterwards the first Viscount Stair, Lord President of the Court of Session towards the end of the seventeenth century, was not only one of the most able of lawyers and administrators, but was also a soldier and a philosopher, — had, indeed, held a Chair of Philosophy in Glasgow ; and he wrote a learned legal tome. Sir Thomas Hope, King's Advocate during Charles I.'s reign, was an interesting figure apart from his law. He was the grandson of John de Hope, of the family of Des Houblons in Picardy, who had come over from France in the train of James V. and his first little bride, Madeline, daughter of Francis I. of France. His fragile little Queen died a few weeks after her coming ; but John de Hope did not find our winds so rough, and settled in Scotland, and from him are descended many of our old Scottish families, — the Hopes, the Hoptouns, some of the Erskines, and the Bruces of Kinross. Sir Thomas Hope had several sons, three of whom were judges, and in the portrait of him in Parliament House, and also in another one in the possession of one of his descendants, he is represented as wearing a kind of head- dress, — the Parliament House one is like a lace cap, but in the private portrait what he wears looks like a laurel wreath, — but the reason of this head covering is that it was not considered dignified or proper that a father should plead bareheaded before his sons ! Sir Thomas Hope was one of the two lawyers who drew up the National League and Covenant. Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, who founded the Library, was King's Advocate later in the Century. Wig and Gown 77 In the eighteenth century two names at very least must be mentioned. First, that of Duncan Forbes of Colloden, who was Lord Advocate and then Lord President, was a politician as well as an administrator, and, though so humane to those who were in trouble for the Jacobite Rising of 17 15 that he was accused of being a Jacobite himself, yet was really the pillar of the House of Hanover in Scotland. He tried to prevent the second Rising of '45, and then was active in lessening Scotland's sufferings after it ; and he died impoverished and unrewarded. Next must be mentioned Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville. His was a career of statesmanship rather than a legal career. He entered Parliament as Member for Midlothian, was appointed Lord Advocate and held the office all through the Tory administration of Lord North, and was Pitt's trusted colleague and adviser all the time Pitt was Premier. He held various offices, — Treasurer of the Navy, Minister for India, Home Secretary, Secretary for War, First Lord of the Admiralty. Henry Dundas has been called " the King of Scotland," and was the central figure in all Scottish affairs, and for seventeen years ruled Scotland, — " The Dundas Despotism." His monument now stands on its column high over the city, in the centre of St. Andrew Square, — the only monument that can compare with it is the Nelson Monument in the centre of Trafalgar Square. In the nineteenth century two names also stand out among the many that might be chosen, those of Lord Brougham and Chancellor Inglis. Lord Brougham's fame extended beyond the city in which he was born. He defended Queen Caroline ; he was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain ; and he was Chancellor of Edinburgh University. 78 Edinburgh Lord Inglis first made his name by his successful defence of Madeline Smith, and he afterwards became one of our greatest judges, was Lord Justice General and Lord President, and Chancellor of our University. His name brings us very near the present day, for he died in 1 891. These are some of the men who, down the centuries, have administered Law in Scotland and upheld the dignity of the Court of Session. Their footsteps have paced Parliament Hall, and their portraits now hang on its walls, looking down at their successors. CHAPTER X WINTER IN EDINBURGH Winter is " the Season " in Edinburgh, and it is also the busy time when everyone is in town and everything is going on, — schools, University Session, Law Courts, art exhibitions, concerts, lectures, political meetings, balls, dinner-parties, bazaars. As a rule Edinburgh does not take very active interest in new ideas. Enthusiasm for antiquity is understood, and some forms of it are tolerated, but any other form of enthusiasm finds itself " up against it," as the Americans say, in Edinburgh. The majority of the citizens are exceedingly Conservative in everything, — except their politics. They do each year as they have done the previous year, and, if possible, what their fathers and mothers did before them. It is even hinted that their politics come to them by the truly Conservative method of inheritance, and are the result of their fathers' or their grandfathers' admiration of Mr. Gladstone. But, if Edinburgh can be roused to interest or activity Winter in Edinburgh 79 at all, it is between October and March. " Now we shall have to wait until October," it is said in February or March, when some function has to be postponed. Thus people who have met constantly all the winter months lose sight of one another during the summer, and have to re-begin their intercourse all over again when October brings them back to town and work and sociability. Sometimes they have been away all summer ; or it may merely be that they have had no reason nor opportunity of meeting. In October they all forgather again, and "Where have you been ?" neighbours ask; and " I suppose you are back now for the winter ?" But the friendliness has suffered a check. In fact, the six summer months are, as sportsmen say, " a close-time " for friends. But winter — winter in Edinburgh ! The very words bring up a hundred pictures, a hundred memories. What sunsets we have ! What sudden views of frost- bound landscape ! What grand skies ! " Winter in Edinburgh " — when we hear the words in summer, as we lie lazily on the hot, honey-scented moors, we first shiver at the thought of mist and cold, and of what Gavin Douglas described — " The frosty region ringes of the year, The time and season bitter cauld and pale. The plain streetis and every high way Was full of flushes, dubbes, mire and clay." And then we seem to feel the glow of fire and light and warmth and life, to see the brilliant rooms, to hear all the clash of good music and good talk. And then and there among the heather, with the untroubled blue sky overhead, and the silence broken only by the bees among the honey, we shut our eyes and let the pictures 80 Edinburgh concentrate themselves into two or three : — the mirrors at the end of the Assembly Rooms reflecting the moving crowd of dancers, — the " glimmer of satin and shimmer of pearls," and the brilliance of the uniforms. Or we hear the sudden music of fife and drum, thrilling and arresting, and see the kilted soldiers swing down the Mound from the Castle, and march along Princes Street, with the little ragged boys, and all the slouching, un- trained young men, running or shuffling along the pave- ment beside them. Somehow it always recalls the story of the Relief of Lucknow, — the far-off music of the pipes, the one Scotswoman who heard it first, — started up, listened, — recognized the air — " The Campbells are coming !" — and gave the glad news. Or we think of another picture, — of coming down the Mound about five o'clock on a winter's after- noon, with the great outline of the Castle blotted in Indian ink, battlements and walls and towers, against the red glow and radiance of the western sky, and Princes Street below, a line of clustering yellow lights in the gathering dusk, like a necklace of jewels. Until Christmas, the winter climate of Edinburgh is not so bad as grumblers pretend. Our summers — Tennyson was right — are often chillier than summers ought to be ; but at all times we have plenty of " weather," — fresh, keen, pure air, unstinted sunshine and winds, large expanses of sky, — and all the oxygen is to-day's allowance, not yesterday's complicated leavings. And in winter, — at any rate until Christmas, — we are warmer than our brethren in London. Indeed, in October and November we often have glorious weather — the " Indian Summer "as it is called. It is not until February or March that the east wind comes, and sweeps JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE. Winter in Edinburgh 81 round our streets and squares, the " draughty parallelo- grams," as Louis Stevenson dubbed them, and drives all the loose papers and some of the hats before it, and the City becomes what Stevenson called it, " a downright meteorological purgatory." We generally expect and receive one fall of snow before Christmas,— happy the children if it come just at Christmas-time, — and perhaps a day or two of frost and of skating. Anxious inquiries are made as to whether Craiglockhart "is bearing." When it is, a " skating holiday " is given in the schools, and groups of people with jingling skates dangling from their hands hurry off for a day's pleasure on the ice. But the skating does not last long, and the snow melts and the sun returns, for most of the winter is due after Christ- mas — it is seldom that Duddingstone " is bearing," or that the ice on the canal is thicker than a canal boat, drawn by a thin, unhappy horse straining at his rope on the slippery towing-path, can manage to crash through. Happy the children, and happy also the artist, when the snow falls on Edinburgh ! © " Gardens in glory and balm in the breeze — Ah, pretty Summer, e'en boast as you please ! Sweet are your gifts ; but to winter we owe Snow on the Ochils and sun on the snow." But winter brings other visitors to Edinburgh besides the snow. It brings seagulls and owls and wild geese. The seagulls come from the Firth of Forth, — poor things, they are starving, and they come with harsh, hungry cries, and great white wings. If you put bread out for the birds all winter, as every well-conducted person does, on the doorsteps or window-sills, or in the garden if you have one, you well know what happens. The cocky little sparrows come first, and perhaps a tame, smart ed. n 82 Edinburgh little robin ; and then, shyly and hesitatingly, and then with sharp, angry pecks and dabs, come the bigger birds, — thrushes and blackbirds, — " mavis and merle " we call them in Scotland. Soon there is quite a crowd of birds making short work of the crumbs. But with the first frost come the gulls, dwarfing even the great big black rooks, and the crumbs are strangely inadequate, and huge basins of porridge or scraps and crusts have to be pro- vided for thesewhite-winged Vikings from the North Sea. The owls and the wild geese are more rare visitors, but they do come ; and it appears they used to come in Gavin Douglas's day, for he speaks of them : " Horned Hetawd, which clepe we the nicht-owl Within her cavern heard I shout and howl, Laithly of form, with crooked camshow beak : Ugsome to hear was her wild eldritch shriek. The wild geese, claiking eke by nichtes tide, Attowe the city fleeand heard I glide." Our language has changed since Gavin Douglas's time ; but the languages of the horned night-owls and of the wild geese have not. The hideous shriek that proceeds from the distorted beak is just what disturbed the poet in Edinburgh in the year 1512, when he was Provost of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles. And the wild geese still, in severe winters, " claik " by night-time, " fleeand " round about the city. In the winter of 1909-10 there were spells of intense cold, and they brought both owls and wild geese among us. The wild geese swept high over the gloomy pillars and propriety of Moray Place, and were lost to sight ; but the owls stayed for some time, and, like little children, were heard and not seen. " They start to hoot at about nine every evening," a young Scot reported ; and it was true. They seemed to have come into town for the Winter in Edinburgh 83 winter, and to have taken up their residence in the Moray Place Gardens and the Dean Gardens, on either side of the Water of Leith, and in the beautiful Botanic Gardens and Arborituum ; and from these comfortable surroundings they called to one another eerie remarks across the valley, and vied with the fog signals from the Forth, which also generally " start to hoot " about nine o'clock. In winter another cry is heard in Edinburgh, neither owls nor fog signals, but quite as weird as either. It is the cry of our fishwives. " Caller herrin' " we are all familiar with, from the song ; but there is also " Caller haddie," and, more rare, " Caller Oo," and, most rare, " Caller Partin !" " Caller Oo !" is only heard if the name of the month has the letter R in it, for " Caller Oo " means fresh oysters, and we all know that oysters are not in season unless the month has an R in it. So we hear " Caller Oo !" cried in the winter evenings, and a beautiful minor cry it is, drawn out plaintively on a minor seventh. " Those commiserating sevenths — ' Life might last ! we can but try !' " And life generally does last to those who try the oysters out of the picturesque fishwife's creel. Far back in the centuries, native oysters used to be very cheap indeed in Edinburgh, and Edinburgh, — cosy and learned but not wealthy,— used to eat a great many, especially for supper. So many, indeed, that the builders used the shells for cement, and there are still some very old houses in Edinburgh where one can see the oyster-shells embedded in the cement between the stones of the rough rubble walls. So we may feel that we are keeping up the traditions of the town when we eat oysters. 84 Edinburgh " Caller Partin " means fresh crabs ; and there are some loyal Scots who are patriotic enough to speak of a certain delicacy to be discovered at ball suppers and dainty luncheon parties as " partin tart." The last two General Elections have taken place in winter. Even at these times of public anxiety over great issues, and of universal upheaval and excitement, Edinburgh remains calm. It would seem as if the fall of a Ministry and the fate of an Empire disturb many an honest person less than it would disturb him if the One O'clock Gun did not go off. That indeed would be something to talk about ! The evening papers would be full of it, with big headlines, and the boys crying it in the streets — " News ! — 'Spatch ! News ! — 'Spatch !" And those who paused to read the posters in the gutters would see : "Unprecedented Occurrence in Edinburgh." "Account by Eyewitness on Calton Hill." " Guests all late at Civic Luncheon." But a General Election ? — There was a deaf man resident in Edinburgh who did not record his vote. He had not heard there was an Election. But on the actual Polling Day itself, especially towards evening, some degree of interest is exhibited, and crowds gather about the Polling stations, and outside the Scots- man Office, and a few public-spirited people flash about in motors, or roll or rattle along in carriages or carts, with the ribbons of their party fluttering in streamers behind, and " Vote for " tied on behind. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and Polling Day is a happy time for the little street gamins, for the Board Schools are used as Polling stations, and so perforce they are given a holiday. There is no need to complain Winter in Edinburgh 85 of apathy on their parts. They gather in noisy, chatter- ing, excited, bickering crowds outside the Polling booths, and they snatch at the fluttering streamers of gay ribbons and run off with them. The little Radicals are hot politicians ; and at last Election they had been drilled all over Scotland, and taught to sing a specially written Election song to the martial air of " Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching !" They formed quite a feature of the Election tumult, marching in good order about the streets, with cars and banners, all singing shrilly, as they tramped in unison — " Vote, vote, vote for " And here the name of whoever was the Radical candidate for the special constituency had been ingeniously worked somehow into the metre. Poor mites ! They did their parts well ; and they probably knew just as much as many of their fathers. The electors of Edinburgh needed all the urging that could be given as that winter's day wore to a close. The Country needed their votes ; yes, — but it was pitch dark and snowing heavily. Thick, great, soft flakes fell on Conservative and Radical alike, till to outward seem- ing there was nothing to choose between them, and all were white and pure and shriven. Certainly there was nothing to choose between the Radical and the Con- servative posters, for the snow had drifted swiftly and silently against them, till each one was literally carte blanche^ and the electioneering promises in blue and red were obliterated altogether, as is so often the fate of electioneering promises. The white boards caused great merriment among the sandwich-men in charge, and the passers by joined in and jeered at them. " Who's your man ?" " Who are you for ?" 86 Edinburgh Down the street at a quick trot came a small urchin with a big board tied round his neck. Boy and board were both white with snow. " Hi, my laddie !" called the men to him, " who are you for ?" The little fellow swept his ragged coat sleeve down the face of his board. " I'm for Bovril /" he cried, with consequence and pride. And sure enough, the layer of snow removed, there, printed in huge letters, was the advertisement, " Vote for Bovril." Shouts of applause nearly overwhelmed the sturdy little urchin. " Ay, my laddie, you're recht ! Yours is the best man ! Wish we had him !" they all cried, stamping their feet in the snow. But the thought of snow in Edinburgh recalls another scene — as impressive a scene as any that Edinburgh has ever beheld. It was nearly ten years ago, in the High Street, — that ancient street that has witnessed all the history of Scot- land. The people of Edinburgh had gathered there to hear a Proclamation from the City Cross, — a new Cross now, on the model of the old, and erected on its site beside St. Giles's Church and Parliament House, and close to where the " Heart of Midlothian," marked on stones of the pavement, shows where the old Tolbooth of many memories stood. The whole of the street was crowded, and every window and stair was filled with spectators. How often has this happened in the High Street all through the centuries ! How often have the citizens of Edinburgh Winter in Edinburgh 87 filled their street to see a Royal procession pass, or a martyr driven to his death ; to watch a wild street fight, or to enjoy the pageantry of the " Riding of Parliament"! How often have they loyally decorated their " forestairs " and windows with rich tapestries and rugs hung over them, and crowded in that very street to cheer and wave and welcome home a very young royal bride for one of their brave Stewart kings ! How often have they assembled beside St. Giles's and Parliament House to hear a Royal Proclamation read by the Lyon King of Arms from the Mercat Cross ! Again they had gathered, that winter day in 1901, in the ancient, poverty-struck street, among the traditions of the Past. And snow had fallen on all the city, and left it white and silent, unsullied in its shroud. Oueen Victoria was dead ; and the citizens of Edinburgh had gathered to hear King Edward proclaimed King, — King Edward, the thirteenth generation, in direct descent, from James IV. of Scotland, whose marriage with Margaret Tudor united the Royal Families of Scotland and England, and led the way to the Union of the Crowns. Some of us were met on the Outlook Tower, high up beside the Castle. Thence we looked right down the whole length of the ancient mediaeval street descending the ridge to Holyrood through the centre of the massed Old Town of Edinburgh. It was an unforgettable scene. The mourning crowds ; the murky air, grey with yet unfallen snow ; the white roofs and gables ; the flashes of colour as the soldiers and heralds appeared in view ; the fanfare of trumpets through the snow ; the bared heads ; and then — suddenly all seemed to stand still, a moment of pause between the Past and the Future, for we heard the familiar strain of the National Anthem, and it 88 Edinburgh was the first time we had heard it when it was no longer " God Save the Queen " that we sang. And through the music, and the snow-laden air, and the hushed crowds, came the sound of sobs. Only nine and a half years, — it seems yesterday. And again, so soon ! — another Proclamation has been read from the City Cross, — read this time on a balmy day in May. And while the solemn salute crashed from the Argyle Battery at the Castle, and the echoes beat and reverberated and thundered against the mountain sides, as far as the Ochils across the Forth, and back against the lion front of Arthur's Seat — the Pentlands — Corstor- phine — and then found their way against the great street fronts of the City, making the hearts of those who heard throb and their hands clench, while the thoughts and the faces were serious and sad, — the brilliant sun- shine blazed down on the black-garbed crowds that moved about the streets, and on the gay Spring flowers and green grass in the Princes Street gardens below the Castle, and on the flags that were raised from half-mast. Was the sunshine an omen ? God save the King ! CHAPTER XI EDINBURGH IN SUMMER Summer comes upon us gradually in Edinburgh. First there is a sudden balmy day in March. The fire in the breakfast-room is much too hot, and the wide-opened window admits the music of a blackbird, and a scent of burning wood in the air, wafted from the fields round the town where they are gathering bonfires of rubble. Some people's thoughts, under the influence of this day, are driven to "Spring cleaning," and the thoughts of others 'A.utlft^i LADY STAIR'S CLOSE. Edinburgh in Summer 89 to Spring holidays, and the fancies of yet others lightly turn to thoughts of Spring clothes. Next day it is bitterly cold again, and the sun over- sleeps himself under a mass of clouds, and winter is sulkily resumed. Then come the showers and sunshine of April, and with them a whisper of green begins to breathe over the trees in the gardens, and the birds are quite happy and very noisy. This lasts a full fortnight, when even the grumblers have nothing to say. And then a snowstorm ; and the buds wither with indignation, and the snow lies on the flowering currant and buries the crocuses, and the poor little songsters all come back to the windows to be fed and comforted. But this must be the last snow, we tell one another ; and no doubt the birds tell one another too. And, sure enough, in a few days the snow begins to melt, and melts very quickly, and discovers several intrepid crocuses none the worse, and the sun blazes out again, and in the gardens the great leaves of the chestnuts unfold, and the wallflowers make the air fragrant, and — " The winter it is past, and the summer's come at last, And the small birds sing on every tree." In the streets, the shops begin to deck their windows with " Spring goods," and every grey stone street of dwelling-houses is cold as mid- Winter on the side where the sun is not, and hot as mid-Summer on the side where the sun shines. And people catch colds. On the First of May, in old Catholic days in Scotland, there used to be great merrymaking, and May Day revels and sports. Bands of people went about dressed up as Robin Hood and Little John, acting, and playing practical jokes. Unfortunately these frolics and games ED. 12 90 Edinburgh became very noisy and rough, and ended in being drunken riots, and instead of trying to revive them and make them pretty harmless pastimes for the people again, the authorities simply tried to put a stop to them. Queen Mary herself wrote to the magistrates of Edin- burgh to tell them to end " Robin Hood's Day " ; and though it survived Queen Mary's orders, how could foolish frolics survive the sober days of stern Presbyterians, who would not let a bird sing in its cage on Sunday ? To this day, however, energetic citizens climb to the top of Arthur's Seat on May Day morning. If it be fine, by five o'clock one or two people reach the summit, and before eight o'clock over a thousand will be gathered. A contemporary writer states that this is " a last remnant of the worship of Baal," and that the custom is kept up by " the young of the female sex particularly." But it is noteworthy that the two instances he immediately gives of citizens who used to regularly climb Arthur's Seat before breakfast on the First of May, presumably to wash their faces in the dew, were neither of them " the young of the female sex," — one of the active old gentlemen being indeed over eighty ! Later on in May comes the Assembly week, when the Lord High Commissioner as representing the Sover- eign, takes up his residence in Holyrood, and presides over the Annual Assembly of the Established Church of Scotland, which, as some few English people do not quite realize, is the Presbyterian Church. The United Free Church and the Free Church also have their Assemblies at this time, and it is a busy week in Edin- burgh, and the streets are full of ministers. A great many ministers and elders come from all parts of Scotland to " attend the Assemblies," and you see them with their Edinburgh in Summer 91 wives and daughters, or their clerical brethren, walking about and looking at the sights of the town. And there are special functions going on all day. On the first day of all, the Commissioner, — who is a Scottish peer whose politics are in accord with those of the Government of the moment, — drives in procession through the town, to open the Assembly. It is a sort of shadow of the " Riding of the Parliament " of an older day. The Established Church and the United Free Church and the Free Church has each its " Moderator " elected for the year, and it is the custom for these Moderators to entertain all and sundry by giving breakfasts before the business of the day begins. Then there are the sittings of the Assemblies, before which all matters of Church doctrine and discipline and politics are discussed and decided. In the evening there are dinners and levees and receptions at Holyrood, and sometimes the Lord High Commissioner gives a garden-party in the historic grounds of the old Palace of the Stewarts. It usually rains heavily. Every year people seem to go away from town earlier than the year before. Some go in May, and a few houses, here and there, are shut up, and the windows filled with brown paper. Others go in June, and more houses stand empty. Those who have children at school are kept till July, when the schools " break up." But by the beginning of July Edinburgh is growing deserted, and by the end of the month, if you are in town, you walk about among the dull, grey, dignified streets and find every window papered inside with brown paper, and even some of the doors boarded up, so that the paint may not blister and crack with the summer's sunshine before the family comes back to town at the beginning of 92 Edinburgh winter. And in these days the grass grows up, green and tender, between the stones of the roads, and there will be quite a luxuriant crop along the edges of the pavements, and wherever it can break through. Flocks of footsore, silly sheep, driven through to Market or slaughter, have quite a " find," and nibble and crop round the curb-stones in front of stately, sombre mansions, where in winter judges wend their homeward way, or carriages and motor cars wait. It is an epitome of the life of the town — the romantic Past springing up fresh and vivid through the unimpressionable conventionality of the material present. For was not Moray Place " My lord of Moray's grounds " ? And was not Princes Street " The Lang Dykes " ? But in summer, though its " residential quarters " are like a city of the dead, — rows of empty houses staring with blind, closed eyes at a deserted, grass-grown street, — Edinburgh is not empty. An exodus of the Citizens has taken place, but an influx of tourists has poured into the City. The familiar faces are gone ; but the town is flooded by a new population. Every hotel is crowded. The shops are prepared for them, and the shop windows are full of tartans and Harris tweeds, rugs and shawls, knitted goods, knickerbocker stockings and " Tarn o' Shanters," with pieces of heather laid on the top of them. Even the boot shops have their goods im- bedded in banks of heather. Other windows are filled with guide-books and picture postcards, with views of the Castle, of the Scott Monument and Princes Street, of a fishwife in her pretty dress, of Louis Stevenson in his velvet coat, of the Forth Bridge, of the soldiers being drilled on the Castle Esplanade, of the High Street and John Knox's house in a snowstorm. A Edinburgh in Summer 93 third shop is full of clan brooches, pebbles, cairngorms and amethysts, and Queen Mary heart monograms in silver. Little boys run about in Princes Street selling sprigs of white heather, and others waylay tourists at the foot of the Mound, shouting " Guide to the Castle ! — Guide to Edinburgh Castle, one penny !" Great motor " char-a-bancs " start from the " Waverley steps " at the east end of Princes Street, and drive right along it, and out by the beautiful broad country road, the Queensferry Road, to the Forth Bridge. And the tourists stand about on the steps of the hotels, guide- book in hand, and gaze up at the Castle, and at the lion shape of Arthur's Seat, and they go to see all the proper sights. They drive or walk up from Holyrood to the Castle, or down from the Castle to Holyrood. Half- way on the steep street they look over John Knox's house, and at the relics collected there. They go into St. Giles's Church, and are told the lively tale of Jenny Geddes and her militant tactics, and divide their attention between her and the tombs of Montrose and Moray and Argyle. They peep into Parliament House, and into the Parliament Hall, empty if the Courts have " risen," — they cross to the Municipal Buildings, and see some of the signs of our luxurious civic life, and they discover the museum there. If they have time they go also to see the University and the McEwan Hall, and the Public Library. And no tourist will fail to go into Greyfriars Churchyard, where George Buchanan's grave bears his mask — familiar to all readers of Blackwood's Magazine ; where so many wonderful old tombs bear interesting names ; where " Greyfriars Bobby " kept his faithful watch for years 94 Edinburgh on his master's grave, — (and Baroness Burdett-Coutts raised a little effigy to him too, outside the sacred precincts, over a water trough where other dogs may lap) ; where the Covenant was signed on the flat tomb- stones, and the Covenanters were imprisoned, and the Martyrs Monument commemorates them ; and where Sir Walter Scott met his first love under an umbrella in a shower of rain. Then the tourist will wander about the New Town, and find it dusty and deserted. There are some sights here to see, — St. Mary's Cathedral, the largest ecclesiastical building reared in Britain since the Reformation, save Truro Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster. There is also the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery for those who love Art, and the view from either side of Dean Bridge for those who love Nature. And if the tourist have a free after- noon, and it is fine, he may wander farther, and admire the marvellous landscape gardening and the show of flowers at the Botanic Gardens ; or walk round the Calton Hill and look at the views, and then turn into the Calton Burial ground and discover the grave of Hume, and the Martyrs Monument. But above all, those who love the Past and know anything of it will spend their time in the Old Town. They will investigate some of the tortuous closes and wynds, and people them with the men and women who lived in them hundreds of years ago. There is a Lady Stair's Close," built in 1622 by Sir William Grey of Pittendrum, a wealthy Scottish merchant of the days of Charles I., and one of those who was ruined by his faithfulness to the Royalist cause, and to the brave Montrose. His initials and those of his wife, and their Edinburgh in Summer 95 Coat of Arms, are engraved over the entrance door inside the close, under the words " Feare the Lord and depart from eville." This close has been restored by Lord Rosebery, who is a lineal descendant of the builders , of it, Sir William Grey of Pittendrum and his wife. Early ,„ the eighteenth century, the house belonged to Lady Stair, the Dowager of the second } ° ?' r ' the famous Field Marshal ^d Ambassador and she hved here for many years, and was a great social figure in the Edinburgh life of her day, and celebrated for having the only black servant in the town James s Close is where Boswell lived, and Dr John- son stayed with him ; but the actual house was burnt down I„ Baxter's Close, however, is still the house in which Robert Burns lodged when he stayed in Edin- burgh in 1786. Opposite is Riddel's Close, where stands the house of the ill-fated Bailie Macmorran But any close is worth peeping into, however dirty for every close and every wynd has its history public or private, which it would take hours and volumes to tell.-Advocates' Close; Old Assembly Close, where the stately dancing and the formal love- R-tr w , th \, e i g J hteenth CentUr y were cond ^«l ; Bells Wynd; Niddry Street, where St. Cecilia's Hall still stands in squalid neglect,— the beautiful oval concert-room, once the centre of musical life in a music- loving town; Hyndeford Close, where Lady Anne Barnard, author of « Young Jamie lo'ed me wed," and correspondent of Lord Melville, lived. And the tourist will ask the reason why a new tavern hereabouts >s called Heave awa' Tavern," and has a young lad's head carved ,„ stone above it, and will be told the story of the brave boy who was among the thirty-five g6 Edinburgh people buried under the debris of an old house that fell here in 1861, and who was heard faintly to call from underneath the beams and masonry that hid him, to the rescuers who were digging, " Heave awa', chaps, I'm no deid yet!" Down in the Canongate there is Moray House with its balcony where Argyle and the wedding-party stood to watch Montrose driven by ; there is Queensberry House, now the House of Refuge ; there is White- horse Close, a fine old close, still intact ; there is the Canongate Tolbooth, standing out into the street ; and lastly there is the Canongate Churchyard, where so many of Edinburgh's famous dead lie, and where Robert Burns knelt and kissed the earth above the unmarked grave of the poet Fergusson. Having seen the town, the tourist will go on some of the many excursions, — perhaps mount one of the unwieldy motor coaches and drive to see Queensferry and the Forth Bridge ; certainly go to Roslin and walk through the " Den," and see the wonderful little Chapel ; and drive round the " Queen's Drive " that encircles Arthur's Seat, and visit Craigmillar Castle, where Queen Mary spent happy days. And then the tourists too, like the citizens, will leave Edinburgh to the sheep and the grass and the dust, and close their guide-books and journey on to the Highlands, — to the Trossachs and Loch Katrine, — and they will think that they have seen and know Edin- burgh, whereas they will only have had a little peep at it. 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