The Lawnmarket-Risps--The Weigh-house--Major Somervil1e and Captain Crawford--Anderson's Pills- Mylne's Court-Jame's Court-Sir John Lauder--Sir Islay Campbell--David Hume--"Corsica" Boswell--Dr.Johnson--Dr.Blair--"Gladstone's Land"--A Fire in 1771.

The Lawnmarket is the general designation of that part of the town which is a continuation of the High Street, but lies between the head of the old West Bow and St. Giles's Church, and is about 510 feet in length. Some venerable citizens still living can recall the time when this spacious and stately thoroughfare used to be so covered by the stalls and canvas booths of the " lawn-merchants," with their webs and rolls of cloth of every description, that it gave the central locality an appearance of something between a busy country fair and an Indian camp Like many other customs of the olden time this has passed away, and the name alone remains to indicate the former usages of the place, although the importance of the street was such that its occupants had a community of their own called the Lawnmarket Club, which was famous in its day for the earliest possession of English and foreign intelligence.

Among other fashions and customs departed, it may be allowable here to notice an adjunct of the first-floor dwellings of old Edinburgh. The means of bringing a servant to the door was neither a knocker nor bell, but an apparatus peculiar to Scotland alone, and still used in some parts of Fife, called a rasp, which consists of a slender bar of serrated or twisted iron screwed to the door in an upright position, about two inches from it, and furnished with a large ring, by which the bar could be rasped, or risped, in such a way as secured at-tention. In many instances the doors were also furnished with two eyelet-holes, through which the visitor could be fully vised before admission was accorded. In many other instances the entrances to the turnpike stairs had loopholes for arrows or musketry, and the archways to the closes and wynds had single and sometimes double gates, the great hooks of which still remain in some places and on which these were last hung in 1745, prior to the occupation of the city by the Highlanders.

The Lawnmarket was bounded on the west by the Butter Tron, or Weigh-house, and on the east by the Tolbooth, which adjoined St. Giles's, thus forming in earlier times the greatest open space, save the Grassmarket, within the walls. The Weigh-house, built on ground which was granted to the citizens by David II., in I352, was a clumsy and hideous edifice, rebuilt in 1660, on the site of the previous building, which Gordon of Rothiemay, in his map of 1647, shows to have been rather an ornate edifice, two storeys in height, with a double outside stair on the south side, and a steeple and vane at the east end, above an archway, where enormous quantities of butter and cheese were continually being disposed of In 1640 the Lawnmarket was the scene of a remarkable single combat, of which we have a very clearly-detailed account in "The Memoirs of the Somervilles." In that year, when Major Somer-ville of Drum commanded the garrison of Cove-nanting troops in Edinburgh Castle, a Captain Crawford, who, though not one of his officers, deemed himself privileged to enter the fortress at all times, walked up to the gates one morning, and, on finding them closed, somewhat peremptorily demanded admission The sentinel within told him that he must " before entering, acquaint Major Somerville with his name and rank.

" To this Crawford replied, furiously, " Your major is neither soldier nor a gentleman, and if he were without this gate, and at a distance from his guards, I would tell him that he was a pitiful cullion to boot ! " The irritated captain was retiring down the Castle Hill, when he was overtaken, rapier in hand, by Major Somerville, to whom the sentinel had found means to convey the obnoxious message with mischievous precision. Sir," said the major, "you must permit me to accompany you a little way, and then you shall know more of my mind." " I will wait on you where you please," replied Crawford, grimly; and they walked together in silence to the south side of the Greyfriars churchyard, at all times a lonely place.

"Now," said Somerville, unsheathing his sword, "I am without the Castle gates and at a distance from my guards. Draw and make good your threat ! " Instead of defending himself like a man of honour, Crawford took off his hat, and begged pardon, on which Somerville jerked his long bowl -hilted rapier into its sheath, and said, with scorn, " You have neither the discretion of a gentleman, nor the courage of a soldier; begone for a coward and fool, fit only for Bedlam ! " and he returned to the Castle, accompanied by his officers, who had followed them to see the result of the quarrel. It is said that Crawford had been offended at not being invited to a banquet given in the Castle by Somerville to old General Ruthven, on the day after the latter surrendered.
As great liberties were taken with him after this in consequence of his doubtful reputation for courage, he resolved, by satisfaction demanded in a public and desper-ate manner, to retrieve his lost honour, or die in seeking it . Thus, one forenoon, about eleven o'clock, when the Major was on his way to visit General Sir Alexander Leslie, and proceeding down the spacious Lawnmarket, which at that hour was always thronged with idlers, he was suddenly confronted by Captain Crawford, who, unsheathing both sword and dagger, exclaimed, " If you be a pretty man--draw ! " With a thick walking cane recently presented to him by General Ruthven, the Major parried his onset and then drew his sword, which was a half-rapier slung in a shoulder belt, and attacked the Captain so briskly, that he was forced to fall back, pace by pace, fighting des-perately, from the middle of the Lawnmarket to the goldsmiths' booths, where Somerville struck him down on the causeway by the iron pommel of his sword and disarmed him.

Several of Somerville's soldiers now came upon the scene, and by these he would have been slain had not the victor protected him; but for this assault upon a superior officer he was thrown into-prison, where he lay for a year, heavily manacled, and in a wretched con-dition, till Somerville's wife who resided at the Drum House, near Gilmerton, and to whom he had writ-ten an imploring letter, procured his liberation.

Here in the Lawnmarket, in the lofty tenement dated 1690 on the second floor, is the "shop" where that venerable drug, called the " Grana Angelica," but better known among the country people as " Anderson's Pills," are sold. They took their origin from a physician of the time of Charles I., who gave them his name, and of whom a long account was given in the University Magazine, and locally their fame lasted for nearly 250 years. From his daughter Lilias Anderson, the patent, granted by James VII., came " to Thomas Weir, chirurgeon, in Edinburgh," who left the secret of preparing the pills to his daughter, Mrs. Irving, who died in 1837, at the-age of ninety-nine. Portraits of Anderson and his daugh-ter, in Vandyke costumes, the former with a book in his hand, and the latter with a pill the size of a walnut between her fingers, are still preserved in the house. It was in 1635 that the Doctor first made known the virtues of his pills, which is really a good form of aloetic medicine.

In Mylne's Court, on the north side of the Lawn-market, we find the first attempt to substitute an open square of some space for the narrow closes which so long contained the town residences of the Scottish noblesse. Under a Roman Doric entablature, bearing the date 1690, is the main en-trance to this court, the principal house of which, forming its northern side, has a very handsome doorway, peaked in the centre, like an ogee arch, with ornate mouldings that mark the handiwork of the builder, Robert Mylne, who erected the more modern portions of Holyrood. Palace--the seventh royal master-mason, whose uncle's tomb, on the east side of the Greyfriars churchyard, bears that he;
" Sixth master mason to a royal race,
Of seven successive kings, sleeps in this place. "
The edifice that forms the west side of Mylne's Court belongs to an earlier period, and had once been the side of the close. The most northerly potion, which presents a very irregular but most picturesque facade, with dormer windows above the line of the roof, was long the town mansion of the Lairds of Comiston. Over the entrance is a very common Edinburgh legend,
" Blissit. be God in al his Giftis", and the date, 1580. Bartholomew Somerville, a merchant and burgess, was one of the earliest inhabitants of this edifice, and his name appears conspicuously among those to whose liber-ality Edinburgh was indebted for the es-tablishment of her University on a last-ing basis. Here also resided Sir John Harper of Cambusnethan.

In 1710, Lord Fountainhall reports a case connected with this court, in which Bailie Michael Allan, a proprietor there, endeavoured to prevent the entrance of " heavy carriages," which damaged his cellar under the pend thereto. The last person of rank resident here was Lady Isabella Douglas, who had a house on the west side of it in 1761 . Robert the son of Mylne, the builder, who was born in 1734, settled in London as an architect, and his plan for constructing a bridge at Blackfriars was preferred to those of twenty other candidates,2 * and on its completion he was appointed surveyor of St. Paul's Cathedral, with a salary of £300 per annum.

Eastward of Mylne's Court is James's Court, a more modern erection of the same kind, associated, in various ways, with some of the most eminent men in the Scottish capital; for here resided David Hume, after his removal from Jack's Land in the Canongate, in 1762; in the same house afterwards dwelt Boswell, and here he welcomed Paoli, the Corsican chief, in 1771, and the still more illustrious Dr. Johnson, when, in 1773 he was on his way to the Western Isles.

James's Court occupies the site of some now forgotten closes, in one of which dwelt Sir John Lauder, afterwards Lord Fountainhall, author of the famous " Decisions " and other works. At the trial of the Earl of Argyle, in 1681, for an alleged illegal construction of the Test, Lauder acted as counsel for that unfortunate nobleman, together with Sir George Lockhart and six other advocates. These having all signed an opinion that his explana-tion of the Test contained nothing treasonable, were summoned before the Privy Council, and after being examined on oath, were dismissed with a warning and censure by the Duke of Albany.

Though it is so long ago as September 1722 since Lord Fountainhall died, a tradition of his residence has come down to the present time." The mother of the late Mr Gilbert Innes of Stow " says Chambers, was a daughter of his lordship's son, Sir Andrew Lauder, and she used to describe to her children the visits she used to pay to her venerable grandfather s house, situated, as she said, where James's Court now stands. She and her sister always went with their maid on the Saturday afternoons, and were shown into a room where the aged judge was sitting--a room covered with gilt leather, and containing many huge presses and cabinets, one of which was ornamented with a death's head at the top.

After amusing themselves for an hour or two with his lordship they used each to get a shilling from him, and retire . . . It is curious to think that the mother of a gentleman living in 1839 (for only then did Mrs. Innes of Stow leave this earthly scene) should have been familiar with a lawyer who entered at the bar soon after the Restoration (1668), and acted as counsel for the unfortunate Earl of Argyle in 168I--a being of an age as different in every respect from the present as the wilds of North America are different from the long-practised lands of Lothian or Devon-shire."

In James's Court was the residence of Sir Islay Campbell, Lord President, whose mother was Helen Wallace, a daughter of the house of Ellerslhe. Admitted to the bar in 1757, he was one of the counsel for the defender in the famous Douglas case, and, on the decision of the House of Lords being given, he posted to Edinburgh ere the mail could arrive, and was the first to announce to the crowds assem-bled at the Cross the great intelligence. " Douglas for ever ! " he cried, waving his hat in the air.

A shout from the people responded, and, untrac-ing the horses from his carriage, they drew it in triumph to his house in James's Court, probably the same in which his father, who was long one of the principal clerks of Session, resided.

This court is a well-known pile of building which rises to a vast height at the head of the Earthen Mound, and was erected between 1725 and 1727 by James Brownhill, a speculative builder, and for years after it was deemed a fashionable quarter, the denizens of which were all persons of good position, though each occupied but a flat or floor; they clubbed in all public measures, kept a secretary to record their names and proceedings, and had balls and parties among themselves; but among the many local notables who dwelt here the names of only three, Hume, Boswell, and Dr. Blair, are familiar to us now.
Burton, the biographer of the historian of England, thus describes this great fabric, the western portion of which was destroyed by fire in 1858, and has erected on its site, in the old Scottish style, an equally lofty structure for the Savings Bank and Free Church offices; con-sequently the houses rendered so interesting by the names of Hume, Blair, Johnson, and Boswell, are among the things that were. "Entering one of the doors opposite to the main entrance, the stranger is sometimes led by a friend, wishing to afford him an agreeable surprise, down flight after flight of the steps of a stone staircase, and when he imagines he is descending so far into the bowels of the earth, he emerges on the edge of a cheerful, crowded thoroughfare, connecting together the old and new town, the latter of which lies spread be-fore him in a contrast to the gloom from which he has emerged.

When he looks up to the building containing the upright street through which he has descended, he sees that vast pile of tall house standing at the head of the Mound, which creates astonishment in every visitor of Edinburgh. This vast fabric is built on the declivity of a hill, and thus one entering on the level of the Lawnmarket, is at the height of several storeys from the ground on the side next the New Town. I have ascertained that by ascending the western of the two stairs facing the entry of James's Court to the height of three storeys we arrive at the door of David Hume's house, which, of the two doors on that landing place, is the one towards the left."

The first fixed residence of David Hume was in Riddell's Land, Lawnmarket, near the head of the West Bow. From thence he removed to Jack's Land, in the Canongate, where nearly the whole of his " History of England " was written; and it is somewhat singular that Dr. Smollett, the continuation of that work, lived some time after in his sister's house, exactly opposite. The great historian and philosopher dwelt but a short time in James's Court, when he went to France as. Secretary to the Embassy. during his absence, which lasted some years, his house was rented by Dr. Blair; but amid the gaieties' of Paris his mind would seem to have reverted to his Scottish home. "I am sensible that I am misplaced, and I wish twice or thrice a-day for my easy-chair, and my retreat in James's Court," he wrote to his friend Dr. Fergusson; then he added, as Burton tells us,
' Never think, dear Fergusson, that as long as you are master of your own fireside and your own time, you can be unhappy, or that any other circumstance can add to your enjoyment." "Never put a fire in the south room with the red paper," he wrote to Dr. Blair ~ " it is so warm of itself, that all last winter, which was a very severe one, I lay with a single blanket, and frequently, upon coming in at midnight starving with cold, I have sat down and read for an hour as if I had a stove in the room" One of his most intimate friends and correspondents while in France was Mrs. Cockburn of Ormiston, authoress of one of the beautiful songs called " The Flowers of the Forest," who died at Edinburgh, 1794. Some of her letters to Hume are dated in 1764, from Baird's Close, on the Castle Hill.

About the year 1766, when still in Paris, he began to think of settling there, and gave orders to sell his house in James's Court, and he was only prevented from doing so by a mere chance. Leaving the letter of instruction to be posted by his Parisian landlord, he set out to pass his Christmas with the Countess de Boufflers at L'Isle Adam; but a snow storm had blocked up the roads. He re-turned to Paris, and finding that his letter had not yet been posted, he changed his mind, and thought that he had better retain his flat in James's Court, to which he returned in 1766.

He soon after left it as Under-Secretary of State to General Conway, but in 1769, on the resignation of that Minister, he returned again to James's Court, with what was then deemed opulence--£1,000 per an-num--and became the head of that brilliant circle of literary men who then adorned Edinburgh.
"I am glad to come within sight of you," he wrote to Adam Smith, then busy with "The Wealth of Nations " in the quietude of his mother's house, " and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my windows but I wish also to be on speaking terms with you.' In another letter he speaks of " my old house in James's Court, which is very cheerful and very elegant, but too small to display my great talent for cookery, the science to which I intend to addict the remaining years of my life."

Elsewhere we shall find David Hume in a more fashionable abode in the new town of Edinburgh and on his finally quitting James's Court, his house there was leased by James Boswell, whose character is thus summed up by Lord Macaulay:--" Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride and eternally blus-tering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London; so curious to know everybody who was talked about that, Tory and High Churchman though he was, he manoeuvred for an introduction to Tom Paine; so vain of the most childish distinctions, that when he had been to Court he drove to the office where his book was printing, without changing his clothes, and summoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and sword. Such was this man, and such he was content to be."

He was the eldest son of Alexander Boswell, one of the Judges of the Court of Session, a sound scholar, a respectable and useful country gentleman, an able and upright judge, who, on his elevation to the Bench, in compliance with the Scottish custom, assumed the distinctive title of Lord Auchinleck, from his estate in Ayrshire. His mother, Eupham Erskine, a descendant of the line of Alloa, from the House of Mar, was a woman of exemplary piety! To James's Court, Boswell, in August, 1773~ conducted Dr. Johnson, from the White Horse Hostel, in St. Mary's Wynd, then one of the principal inns of Edinburgh, where he found him storming at the waiter for having sweet-ened his lemonade without using the sugar-tongs. "Johnson and I," says Boswell, "walked arm-in arm up the High Street to my house in James's Court, and as we went, he acknowledged that the breadth of the Street and the loftiness of the build-ings on each side made a noble appearance." "My wife had tea ready for him," he adds, " and we sat chatting till nearly two in the morning."
It would appear that before the time of the visit--which lasted over several days--Boswell had removed into a better and larger mansion, immediately below and on the level of the court, a somewhat extraordinary house in its time, as it consisted o two floors with an internal stair. Mrs. Boswell who was Margaret Montgomery, a relation of the Earl of Eglinton, a gentlewoman of good breeding and brilliant understanding, was disgusted with the bearing and manners of Johnson, and expressed her opinion of him that he was " a great brute ! " And well might she think so, if Macaulay's description of him be correct.

" He could fast but when he did not fast he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling in his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks; he scarcely ever took wine; but when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. Everything about him--his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eyes, his in-satiable appetite for fish sauce and veal pie with plums, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contortions, his mut-terings, his gruntings, his puffings, his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sarcastic wit, his vehemence and his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage," &c., all served to make it a source of wonder to Mrs. Boswell that her husband could abide, much less worship, such a man. Thus, she once said to him, with extreme warmth, '~ I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear !" So romantic and fervid was his admiration of Johnson, that he tells us he added £500 to the fortune of one of his daughters, Veronica, because when a baby she was not frightened by the hideous visage of the lexicographer.
Among those invited to meet him at James's Court was Margaret Duchess of Douglas, a lady noted among those of her own rank for her illi-teracy, and whom Johnson describes as "talking broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, as scarcely understood by her own countrymen ;" yet it was remarked that in that which we would term now a spirit of " snobbery," Johnson reserved his attentions during the whole evening exclusively for the duchess. A daughter of Douglas of Mains, she was the widow of Archibald Duke of Douglas, who died in 1761.

While on this visit, Patrick Lord Elibank, a learned and accomplished noble, addressed a letter to him, and they afterwards had various conver-sations of literary subjects, all Or which are duly recorded in the pages of the sycophantic Boswell. Johnson was well and hospitably received by all classes in Edinburgh, where his roughness of manner and bearing were long proverbial. " From all I can learn," says Captain Topham, who visited the city in the following year, " he repaid all their attention to him with ill-breeding; and when in the company of the ablest men in this country his whole design was to show them how little he thought of them."

On one occasion he was in a large party, of which David Hume was one. A mutual friend proposed to introduce him to the historian. " No, sir ! " bellowed the intolerant moralist, and turned away. Among Boswell's friends and visitors at James's Court were Lords Kames and Hailes, the annalist of Scotland; Drs. Robertson, Blair, and Beattie, and others, the most eminent of his countrymen; but his strong predilection for London induced him to move there with his family, and in the winter of 1786 he was called to the English bar. His old house was not imme-diately abandoned to the plebeian population, as his successor in it was Lady Wallace, dowager of Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie, and mother of the unfortunate Captain William Wallace of the l5th Hussars, whose involvement in the affairs of the Duke of York and Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke made some noise in London during the time of the Regency. The house below those occupied by Hume and by Boswell was the property and resi-dence of Andrew Macdowal of Logan, author of the " Institutional Law of Scotland," afterwards elevated to the bench, in 1755, as Lord Bankton.

In another court named Paterson's, opening on the Lawnmarket, Margaret Countess Dowager of Glasgow was resident in 1761, and for some years before it. Her husband, the second earl, died in 1740.

One of the handsomest old houses still existing in the Lawnmarket is the tall and narrow tenement of polished ashlar adjoining James's Court. It is of a marked character, and highly adorned. Of old it belonged to Sir Robert Bannatyne, but in 1631 was acquired by Thomas Gladstone, a merchant burgess, and on the western gable are the initials of himself and wife. In 1634 ,when- the city was divided for the formation of sixteen companies, in obedience to an injunction of Charles I., the second division was ordered to terminate at " Thomas Gladstone's Land," on the north side of the street.

In 1771 a dangerous fire occurred in the Lawnmarket, near the head of the old Bank Close. It was first discovered by the flames bursting through the roof of a tall tenement known as Buchanan's. It baffled the efforts of three fire-engines and a number of workmen, and some soldiers of the 22nd regiment. It lasted a whole night, and created the greatest consternation and some loss of life. "The new church and weigh-house were opened during the fire," says the Scots Magazine of 1771, "for the reception of the goods and furniture belonging to the sufferers and the inha-bitants of the adjacent buildings, which were kept under guard." Damage to the extent of several thousand pounds was done, and among those who suffered appear the names of General Lockhart of Carnwath; Islay Campbell, advocate; John Bell, W.S.; and Hume of Ninewells; thus giving a sample of those who still abode in the Lawnmarket.

Lady Stair's Close--Gray of Pittendrum--"Aunt Margaret's Mirror"--The Marshal Earl and Countess of Stair--Miss Ferrier--Sir Richard Steele--Martha Countess of Kincardine--Burns's Room in Baxter's Close--The Bridge' Shop in Bank Street--Ballie MacMorran's ~Story--Sir Francis Grant of Cullen.

Prior to the opening of Bank Street, Lady Stair's Close, the first below Gladstone's Land, was the chief thoroughfare for foot passengers, taking ad-vantage of the half-formed Earthen Mound to reach the New Town. It takes its name from Elizabeth Countess Dowager of Stair, who was long looked up to as a leader of fashion in Edinburgh, admission to her select circle being one of the highest objects of ambition among the lesser gentry of her day, when the distinctions of rank and family were guarded with an angry jealousy of which we have but little conception now. Lady Stair's Close is narrow and dark, for the houses are of great height; the house she occupied still remains on the west side thereof, and was the scene of some romantic events and traditions, of which Scott made able use in his "Aunt Margaret's Mirror," ere it be-came the abode of the widow of the Marshal Earl of Stair, who, when a little boy, had the misfortune to kill his elder brother, the Master, by the accidental discharge of a pistol; after which, it is said, that his mother could never abide him, and sent him in his extreme youth to serve in Flanders as a volunteer in the Cameronian Regiment, under the Earl of Angus. The house occupied by Lady Stair has over its door the pious legend-- " Feare the Lord and depart from evill," with the date 1622, and the initials of its founder and of his wife--Sir William Gray of Pittendrum, and Egidia Smith, daughter of Sir John Smith, of Grothall, near Craigleith, Provost of Edinburgh in 1643. Sir William was a man of great influence in the time of Charles I.; and though the ancient title of Lord Gray reverted to his family, he devoted himself to commerce, and became one of the wealthiest Scottish merchants of that age. But troubles came upon him; he was fined 100,00 merks for corresponding with Montrose, and was imprisoned, first in the Castle and then in the Tolbooth till the mitigated penalty of 35,000 merks was paid. Other exorbitant exactions followed, and these hastened his death, which took place in 1648, Three years before that event, his daughter died, in the old house, of the plague. His widow survived him, and the street was named Lady Gray's Close till the advent of Lady Stair, in whose time the house had a terraced garden that descended towards the North Loch.

Lady Eleanor Campbell, widow of the great marshal and diplomatist, John Earl of Stair, was by paternal descent related to one of the most celebrated historical figures of the seventeenth century, being the grand-daughter of the Lord High Chancellor Loudon, whose talents and influence on the Covenanting side procured him the enmity of Charles I.

In her girlhood she had the misfortune to be united to James Viscount Primrose, of Castlefield, who died in 1706 a man of dissipated habits and intolerable temper, who treated her so barbarously that there were times when she had every reason to feel that her life was in peril. One morning she was dressing herself before her mirror, near an apen window, when she saw the viscount suddenly appear in the room behind her with a drawn rapier in his hand. He had softly opened the door, and in the mirror she could see that his face, set white and savage, indicated that he had nothing less than murder in his mind. She threw herself out of window into the street, and, half-dressed as she was fled, with great good sense, to Lord Primrose's mother, who had been Mary Scott of Thirlstane, and received protection; but no attempt was made to bring about a reconciliation, and, though they had four children, she never lived with him again, and soon after he went abroad.

During his absence there came to Edinburgh a certain foreign conjuror, who, among other occult powers, professed to be able to inform those present of the movements of the absent, however far they might be apart; and the young viscountess was prompted by curiosity to go with a lady friend to the abode of the wise man in the Canongate, wearing over their heads, by way of disguise, the tartan plaid then worn by women of the lower classes. After describing the individual in whose move-ments she was interested, and expressing a desire to know what he was then about, the conjuror led her before a large mirror, in which a number of colours and forms rapidly assumed the appearance of a church with a marriage party before the altar; and in the shadowy bridegroom she instantly recognised her absent husband ! She gazed upon the delineation as if turned to stone, while the ceremonial of the marriage seemed to proceed, and the clergyman to be on the point of bidding the bride and bridegroom join hands, when suddenly a gentleman in whose face she recognised a brother of her own, came forward, and paused. His face assumed an expression of wrath; drawing his sword he rushed upon the bridegroom, who also drew to defend himself; the whole phantasmagoria then became tumultuous and indistinct, and faded com-pletely away. When the viscountess reached home she wrote a minute narrative of the event, noting the day and hour. This narrative she sealed up in presence of a witness and deposited it in a cabinet. Soon after this her brother returned from his travels abroad--which brother we are not told, and she had three: Hugh the Master of Loudon, Colonel John Campbell of Shankeston, and James, who was Colonel of the Scots Greys, and was killed at Fontenoy. She asked him if he heard aught of the viscount in his wanderings. He answered, furiously, "I wish I may never again hear the name of that detestable personage mentioned !" On being questioned he confessed to " having met his lordship under very strange circumstances." While spending some time at Rotterdam he made the acquaintance of a wealthy merchant who had a very beautiful daughter, an only child, who, he informed him, was on the eve of her marriage with a Scottish gentleman, and he was invited to the wedding as a countryman of the bridegroom. He went accordingly, and though a little too late for the commencement of the ceremony, was yet in time to save an innocent girl from becoming the vic-tim of his own brother-in-law, Viscount Primrose
Though the deserted wife had proved her willing-ness to believe in the magic mirror, by having committed to writing what she had seen, yet she was so astonished by her brother's tidings, that she nearly fainted; but something more was to be learned still. She asked her brother on what day the circumstance took place, and having been informed, she gave him her key, and desired him to bring to her the sealed paper. On its being opened, it was then found, that at the very moment when she had seen the roughly-interrupted nuptial ceremony it had actually been in progress.

Primrose died, as we have said, in the year before the Union. His widow was still young and beautiful, but made a resolution never again, after her past experience, to become a wife; but the great Earl Stair, who had been now resident some twenty years in Edinburgh, and whose public and private character was irreproachable, earnestly sued for her hand, yet she firmly announced her intention of remaining unwedded; and in his love and des-peration the Earl bethought him of an expedient indicative of the roughness and indelicacy of the age. By dint of powerfully bribing her household he got himself introduced over-night into a small room where she was wont to say her prayers--such private oratories being common in most of the Edinburgh houses of the time--and the window of which overlooked the High Street. Thereat he showed himself, en déshabillc, to the people passing, an exhibition which so seriously affected the reputation of the young widow, that she saw the neces-sity of accepting him as her husband.

Lady Eleanor was happier as Countess of Stair than she had ever been as Viscountess Primrose; but the Earl had one failing--a common one enough among gentlemen in those days--a dispo-sition to indulge in the bottle, and then his temper was by no means improved; thus, on coming home he more than once treated the Countess with violence. Once--we regret to record it of so heroic a soldier--when transported beyond the bounds of reason, he gave her a blow on the face with such severity as to draw blood; and then, all unconscious of what he had done, fell asleep. Poor Lady Stair, overwhelmed by such an insult,and recalling perhaps much that she had endured with Lord Primrose, made no attempt to bind up the wound, but threw herself on a sofa, and wept and bled till morning dawned. When the Earl awoke, her bloody and dishevelled aspect filled him with horror and dismay. " What has hap-pened ? How came you to be thus ?" he exclaimed. She told him of his conduct over-night, which filled him with shame--such shame and compunction that he made a vow never again to take any species of drink, unless it had first passed through her hands; and this vow he kept religiously till the day of his death, which took place on the 9th April, 1747~ at Queensberry House in the Canon-gate, when he was in his seventy-fifth year. He was General of the Marines, Governor of Minorca, Colonel of the Greys, and Knight of the Thistle. He was buried in the family vault at Kirkliston, and his funeral is thus detailed in the Scots Maga-zine for 1747:--
" 1 Six baton men, two and two. 2. A mourn-ing coach with four gentlemen ushers and the Earl's crest. 3. Another mourning coach with three gentlemen ushers, and a friend carrying the coronet on a velvet cushion. 4. Six ushers on foot, with batons and gilt streamers. 5. The corpse, under a dressed canopy, drawn by six dressed horses, with the Earl's achievement, within the Order of the Thistle. 6. Chief mourners in a coach and six. 7. Nine mourning coaches, each drawn by six horses. 8. The Earl's body coach empty. 9. Carriages of nobility and gentry, in order of rank."

A sky-rocket was thrown up in the Canongate when the procession began, as a signal to the garrison in the Castle, when the flag was half hoisted, and minute guns fired, till the funeral was clear of the city.

With much that was irreproachable in her charac-ter, Lady Stair was capable of ebullitions of temper, and of using terms that modern taste would deem objectionable. The Earl of Dundonald had stated to the Duke of Douglas that Lady Stair had expressed her doubts concerning the birth of his nephew-- a much-vexed question, at this time before the House of Lords and Court of Session. In support of what he stated, Dundonald, in a letter to the Lord Justice Clerk, gave the world leave to deem him " a damned villain " if he spoke not the truth. Involved thus unpleasantly with the ducal house of Douglas, Lady Stair went straight to Holyrood Palace, and there, before the Duke, the Duchess, and their attendants, she said that she " had lived to a good age, and never, until now, got entangled in any scandal." She then struck the floor thrice with her cane, each time calling the Earl of Dundonald " a damned villain," after which she withdrew, swelling with rage; but Lady Mary Wortley Montagu mentions in her " Letters," that the Countess of Stair was subject to hysterical fits--the result perhaps of all she had undergone as a wife. After being long the queen of society in Edinburgh, she died in November, 1759~ twelve years after the death of the Marshal. She was the first person in the city, of her time, who had a black domestic servant. Another dowager, the Lady Clestram, succeeded her in the old house in the close. It was advertised for sale, at the upset price of £250, in the Edinburgh Advertiser of 1789; and is described as "that large dwelling-house, sometime belonging to the Dowager Countess of Stair, situated at the entry to the Earthen Mound. The sunk storey consists of a good kitchen, servants' rooms, closets, cellars, &c.; the second of a dining and bed rooms; the third storey of a dining and five bed rooms." It has long since been the abode of the humblest artisans.

The parents of Miss Ferrier, the well-known novelist, according to a writer in Temple Bar for November, 1878~ occupied a flat in Lady Stair's Close after their marriage. Mrs. Ferrier (nee Coutts) was the daughter of a farmer at Gourdon, near Montrose, and was a woman of remarkable beauty, as her portrait by Sir George Chalmers, Bart. (a native of Edinburgh) in 1765 attests. At the time of her marriage, in 1767, she had resided in Holyrood with her aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Mait-land, widow of a younger son of Lord Lauderdale; and the flat the young married couple took in the old close had just been vacated by Sir James Pulteney and his wife Lady Bath.

When Sir Richard Steele, of the Spectator, visited Edinburgh, in 1717, on the business of the Forfeited Estates Commission, we know not whether he resided in Lady Stair's Close, but it is recorded that he gave, in a tavern there, a whimsical supper, to all the eccentric-looking mendicants in the city, giving them the enjoyment of an abundant feast, that he might witness their various oddities. Richard Sheils mentions this circumstance, and adds that Steele confessed afterwards that he had "drunk enough of native drollery to compose a comedy.''Upper Baxter's Close, the adjoining alley, is associated with the name of Robert Burns. There the latter, in 1786, saved from a heartless and hopeless exile by the generosity of the blind poet, Dr. Blacklock, came direct from the plough and the banks of his native Ayr, to share the humble room and bed of his friend Richmond, a lawyer's clerk, in the house of Mrs. Carfrae. But a few weeks before poor Burns had made arrangements to go to Jamaica as joint overseer on an estate; but the publication of his poems was deemed such a success, that he altered his plans, and came to Edinburgh in the November of that year. In one of the numbers of the Lounger appeared a review of the first (or Kilmarnock) edition of his poems, written by Henry Mackenzie, who was thus the means, together with Dr. Blacklock, of kindly bringing Burns before the learned and fashionable circles of Edinburgh. His merited fame had come before him, and he was now caressed by all ranks. His brilliant conversational powers seem to have impressed all who came in contact with him as much as admiration of his poetry. Under the patronage of Principal Robertson, Professor Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, author of the " Man of Feeling," and Sir John Whiteford of that ilk, but more than all of James Earl of Glencairn, and other eminent persons, a new edition of his poems was published in April, 1787; but amid all the adulation he received he ever maintained his native simplicity and sturdy Scottish independence of character. By the Earl of Glencairn he was in-troduced to the members of the Caledonian Hunt, and he dedicated to them the second edition of his poems. In verse he touchingly records his gratitude to the earl:--

" The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour has been;
The mother may forget the child
That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done for me ! "

Burns felt acutely the death of this amiable and accomplished noble, which occurred in 179I.
The room occupied by Burns in Baxter's Close, and from which he was wont to sally forth to dine and sup with the magnates of the city, is still pointed out, with its single window which opens into Lady Stair's Close. There, as Allan Cunningham records, he had but " his share of a deal table, a sanded floor, and a chaff bed, at eighteen pence a week." According to the same biographer, the impres-sion which Burns made at first on the fair, the titled, and the learned, of Edinburgh, " though lessened by intimacy on the part of the men, remained unimpaired on that of the softer sex till his dying day. His company, during the season of balls and festivities, continued to be courted by all who desired to be reckoned gay or polite. Cards of invitation fell thick on him; he was not more welcomed to the plumed and jewelled groups whom her fascinating Grace of Gordon gathered about her, than he was to the grave divines and polished scholars who assembled in the rooms of Stewart, Blair, or Robertson. But Edinburgh offered tables and entertainers of a less staid character, when the glass circulated with greater rapidity, when wit flowed more freely, and when there were neither high-bred ladies to charm conversation within the bounds of modesty, nor serious philosophers nor grave divines to set a limit to the licence of speech or the hours of enjoyment. To those companions, who were all of the better classes, the levities of the rustic poet's wit and humour were as welcome as were the tenderest of his narratives to the accomplished Duchess of Gordon or the beautiful Miss Burnet of Monboddo; they raised a social roar not at all classic, and demanded and provoked his sallies of wild humour or indecorous mirth, with as much delight as he had witnessed among the lads of Kyle, when at mill or forge
His humorous sallies abounded as the ale flowed. While in Edinburgh Burns was the frequent and welcome guest of John Campbell, Precentor of the Canongate Church, a famous amateur vocalist in his time, though forgotten now; and to him Burns applied for an introduction to Bailie Gentle, to the end that he might accord his tribute to the memory of the poet, poor Robert Fergusson, whose grave lay in the adjacent churchyard, without a stone to mark it. Bailie Gentle expressed his entire concurrence with the wish of Burns, but said that " he had no power to grant permission without the consent of the managers of the Kirk funds."

"Tell them," said Burns, " it is the Ayrshire ploughman who makes the request." The authority was obtained, and a promise given, which we believe has been sacredly kept, that the grave should remain inviolate.

After a stay of six months in Edinburgh, Burns set out on a tour to the south of Scotland, accom-panied by Robert Ainslie, W.S.; but elsewhere we shall meet him again. Opposite the house in which he dwelt is one with a very ancient legend, Blissit. be . the . Lord . in . all . His .giftis . nov. and . evir. In 1746 this was the inheritance of Martha White,. only child of a wealthy burgess who became a banker in London. She became the wife of Charles ninth Earl of Kincardine, and afterwards Earl of Elgin, "undoubted heir male and chief of all the Bruces in Scotland," as Douglas records. The countess, who died in 1810, filled, with honour to herself, the office of governess to the unfortunate Princess Charlotte of Wales.

One of the early breaches made in the -vicinity of the central thoroughfare of the city was Bank Street, on the north (the site of Lower Baxter's Close), wherein was the shop of two eminent cloth merchants, David Bridges and Son, which became the usual resort of the whole literati of the city in its day. David Bridges junior-had a strongly developed bias towards literary studies, and, according to the memoirs of Professor Wilson, was dubbed by the Blackwood wits, " Director-General of the Fine Arts." His love for these and the drama was not to be controlled by his connection with mercantile business; and while the senior partner devoted himself to the avocations of trade in one part of their well-known premises, the younger was employed in adorning a sort of sanctum, where one might daily meet Sir Walter Scott and his friend Sir Adam Fergusson (who, as a boy, had often sat on the knee of David Hume), Professor Wilson, J. G. Lockhart, Sir David Wilkie, and other eminent men of the day. His writings, spread over the periodical literature of his time-- particularly the Edinburgh Magazine and Annual Register--are very numerous, and he was the first among modern Scotsmen who made art the subject of systematic criticism; and from the purity and clearness of his style, his perfect knowledge of the subject, and the graceful talent he possessed of mingling illustration with argument, he imparted an interest to a subject, which, to many, might appear otherwise unattractive. And when it is con-sidered that it was to the acting of the great Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble, Kean, and Miss O'Neil, that he had to apply those rules which his taste and study had suggested, it is not to be wondered at that in exercises of this sort he took particular delight and obtained great excellence. He was secretary of the Dilettante Society of Edinburgh.

The establishment of the Bridges is thus re-ferred to in Peter's " Letters to his Kinsfolk":--
"Wastle immediately conducted me to this dilet-tanti lounge, saying, that here was the only place where I might be furnished with every means of satisfying my curiosity. On entering, one finds a very neat and tasteful-looking shop, well-stocked with all the tempting diversities of broad-cloth and bombaseens, silk stockings and spotted handkerchiefs. A few sedate-looking old-fashioned cits are probably engaged in conning over the Edinburgh newspapers of the day, and perhaps discussing mordicus the great question of Burgh Reform.... After waiting for a few minutes, the younger partner tips a sly wink across his counter, and beckons you to follow him through a narrow cut in its mahogany surface, into the unseen recesses of the establishment. A few steps downward, and in the dark, land you in a sort of cellar, below the shop proper, and here by the dim religious light, which enters through one or two well-grated peeping holes, your eyes soon discover enough of the furniture of the place to satisfy you that you have reached at last the sanctum sanctorum of the fine arts. Plaster of Paris casts of the head of the famous Hercules, the Dancing Fawn, the Lao-coon, and the Hermaphrodite, occupy conspicuous stations on the counters, one large table is entirely covered with a book of Canova's designs, Turner's ' Liber Studiorum,' and such like manuals; and in the corners where the little light there is streams brightest, are placed, upon huge piles of corduroy and kerseymere, various wooden boxes, black, brown, and blue, wherein are locked up from all eyes, save those of privileged and initiated frequenters of the scene, various pictures and sketches, chiefly by living artists, and presents to the proprietor. Mr. Bridges, when I asked him on my first visit what might be the contents of these mysterious receptacles, made answer in a true technico-Caledonian strain --'Oh, Doctor Morris, they are just a wheen bits, and (added he, with a most knowing com-pression of his lips) let me tell you what, Doctor Morris, there's some no that ill bits among them.' One proved to be an exquisitely finished sketch by Sir William Allan, ' Two Tartar robbers divid-ing their spoil.' This led to a proposal to visit the artist's ateher, and we had no great distance to walk, for Mr. Allan lives in the Parliament Close, not a gun-shot from where we were."

Mr. Bridges married Flora Macdonald of Scalpa (sister of the heroic Sir John Macdonald, whose powerful hand, with a few of the Scots Guards, closed the gates of Hougomont), and died in November, 1840.

One of the finest specimens of the wooden- fronted houses of 1540 was on the south side of the Lawnmarket, and was standing all unchanged, after the lapse of more than 338 years, till its demolition in 1878-9. As may be ob-served, its north front, each storey of which advances a little over that below, is not deficient in elegance, there being Doric pilasters of timber interspersed with the windows of one floor, and some decorations on the gable presented to the street. The west front is plainer, in consequence apparently of re-pairs; but we there see the covered space in front of the place for merchandise on the ground floor."

A little east of the building, in the first or smaller part of Riddell's Close, which, like all others on the south side, ran down towards the Cow-gate, a lofty tenement towers upward, with a turret stair, dated 1726. This was the first residence of David Hume, and there it was he wrote the first pages of his History. In 1751 he came hither from his paternal place Ninwells, near Dunse, and soon after he wrote to Adam Smith:--" Direct to me in Riddell's Land, Lawnmarket.... I have now at last, being turned forty, to my own honour, to that of learning, and to that of the present age, arrived at the dignity of being a householder ! About seven months ago I got a house of my own, and completed a regular family, consisting of a head--myself--and two inferior members, a maid and a cat. My sister has just joined me, and keeps me company. With frugality, I can reach, I find, cleanliness, warmth, light, plenty, and contentment."In the following year he succeeded Ruddiman as Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates.

On the opposite side of this small dark court is a more ancient house, having a curious wainscoted room, the ceiling, walls, and every panel of which are elaborately decorated in Norrie's style of art; and therein abode Sir John Smith of Grothall (already mentioned), Provost of Edinburgh, and whose name was long borne by the alley. He was one of the commissioners chosen, in 1650 to convey the loyal assurances of the realm to Charles II and Breda, and to have the Covenant duly subscribed by him.

In the inner part of Riddell's Close stands the house of Bailie John Macmorran, whose tragic death made a great stir at its time, threw the city into painful excitement, and tarnished the reputa-tion of the famous old High School. The conduct of the scholars there had been bad and turbulent for some years, but it reached a climax on the 15th of September, 1595. On a week's holiday being refused, the boys were so exasperated, being chiefly "gentilmane's bairnes," that they formed a compact for vengeance in the true spirit of the age; and, armed with swords and pistols, took possession at midnight of the ancient school in the Blackfriars Gardens, and declining to admit the masters or any one else, made preparation to stand a siege setting all authority at defiance.

The doors were not only shut but barricaded and strongly guarded within; all attempts to storm the boy-garrison proved impracticable, and all efforts at reconciliation were unavailing. The Town Council lost patience, and sent Bailie John Macmorran, one of the wealthiest merchants in the City (though he had begun life as a servant to the Regent Morton), with a posse of city officers, to enforce the peace. On their appearance in the school-yard the boys became simply outrageous, and mocked them as " buttery carles," daring any one to approach at his peril. " To the point likely to be first attacked," says Steven, in his history of the school, " they were observed to throng in a highly excited state, and each seemed to vie with his fellow in threatening instant death to the man who should forcibly attempt to displace them. William Sinclair, son of the Chancellor of Caithness, had taken a conspicuous share in this barring out, and he now appeared foremost, encouraging his confederates," and stood at a window overlooking one of the entrances which the Bailie ordered the officers to force, by using a long beam as a battering ram, and he had nearly accomplished his perilous purpose, when a ball in the forehead from Sinclair's pistol slew him on the spot, and he fell on his back.

Panic-stricken, the boys surrendered. Some effected their escape, and others, including Sinclair and the sons of Murray of Springiedale, and Pringle of Whitebank, were thrown into prison. Macmorran's family were too rich to be bribed, and clamoured that they would have blood for blood. On the other hand, "friends threatened death to all the people of Edinburgh if they did the child any harm, saying they were not wise who meddled with scholars, especially gentlemen's sons," and Lord Sinclair, as chief of the family to which the young culprit belonged, moved boldly in his behalf, and procured the intercession of King James with the magistrates, and in the end all the accused got free, including the slayer of the Bailie, who lived to become Sir William Sinclair of Mey, in 1631, and the husband of Catharine Ross, of Balnagowan, and from them the present Earls of Caithness are descended.

When the brother of the Queen Consort, the Duke of Holstein, visited Edinburgh in March, 1593, and as Moyse tells us, "was received and welcomed very gladly by Her Majesty, and used every way like a prince," after sundry entertain-ments at Holyrood, Ravensheugh, and elsewhere, a grand banquet was given him in the house of the late Bailie Macmorran by the city of Edin-burgh. The King and Queen were present, " with great solemnity and merriness," according to Birrel. On the 3rd of June the Duke ernbarked at Leith, under a salute of sixty pieces of cannon from the bulwarks, and departed with his gifts, to wit 1,000 five-pound pieces and 1,000 crowns, a hat and string valued at 12,000 pounds (Scots?), and many rich chains and jewels.

The Bailie's initials, I. M., are on the pediments that ornament his house, which after passing through several generations of his surname, be-came the residence of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. " By him," says Wilson, " it was sold to Sir Roderick Mackenzie, of Preston Hall, appointed senator of the College of Justice in 1702, who resided in the upper part of the house at the same time that Sir John Mackenzie Lord Royston, third son of the celebrated Earl of Cromarty, one of the wittiest and most gifted men of his time, occupied the low flat. Here, in all probability, his witty and eccentric daughter Anne was born and brought up. This lady, who married Sir William Dick of Prestonfield, carried her humorous pranks to an excess scarcely conceivable in our decorous days; sallying out occasionally in search of adventures, like some of the maids of honour of Charles II.'s Court, dressed in male attire, with her maid for a squire. She seems to have possessed more wit than discretion." Riddell's Close was of old an eminently aristocratic quarter.

Lower down the street Fisher's Close adjoined it, and therein stood, till 1835, the residence of the ducal house of Buccleuch, which was demolished in that year to make way for Victoria Terrace. On the east side of an open court, beyond the Roman Eagle Hall--a beautiful specimen of an ancient saloon--stood the mansion of William Little of Craigmillar (bearing the date 1570), whose brother Clement was the founder of the university library, for in 1580, when commissary of the city, he be-queathed " to Edinburgh and the Kirk of God," all his books, 300 volumes in number. These were chiefly theological works, and were transferred by the town council to the university. Clement Little was not without having a share in the troubles of those days, and on the 28th of April, 1572, with others, he was proclaimed at the market cross, and deprived of his office, for rebellion against Queen Mary; but the proclamation failed to be put in force. His son was Provost of the city in 1591. Clement and William Little were buried in the Greyfriars' churchyard, where a great-grandson of the latter erected a tomb to their memory in 1683.3 * Little's Close appears as Lord Cullen's in Edgar's map of 1742, so there had also resided that famous lawyer and judge, Sir Francis Grant of Cullen, who joined the Revolution party in 1688, who distinguished himself in the Convention of 1689 by his speech in favour of conferring the crown of Scotland on William and Mary of Orange, and thus swayed the destinies of the nation. He was raised to the bench in 1709. His friend Wodrow has recorded the closing scene of his active life in this old alley, on the 16th of March, 1726. "Brother," said the old revolutionist, to one who informed him that his illness was mortal, " you have brought me the best news ever I heard ! " " And," adds old Robert Wodrow, "that day when he died was without a cloud "

The Story of Deacon Brodie-His Career of Guilt-Hanged on his own Gibbett-Mauchine's Close, Robert Gourlay's House and the other Old Houses therein- The Bank of Scotland, 1695- Assassination of Sir George Lockhart-Taken Red Hand-Punishment of Chiesly
FROM such a character as Sir Francis Grant of Cullen, a single-minded and upright man, the transition is great indeed to the occupant who gave his name to the next close--a name it still retains--a notorious character, who had a kind of dual existence, for he stood high in repute as a pious, wealthy, and substantial citizen, until the daring robbery of the Excise Office in 1788 brought to light a long-continued system of secret house-breaking and of suspected murder, unsurpassed in the annals of cunning and audacity.

William Brodie, Deacon of the Wrights and Masons of Edinburgh, was the son of Convener Francis Brodie, who had an extensive business as a cabinet maker in the Lawnmarket; and in 1781 the former was elected a Deacon Councillor of the city. He had unfortunately imbibed a taste for gambling, and became expert in making that taste a source of revenue; thus he did not scruple to have recourse to loaded dice. It became a ruling passion with him, and he was in the habit of re-sorting almost nightly to a low gambling club, kept by a man named Clark, in the Fleshmarket Close. He had the tact and art to keep his secret profligacy unknown, and was so successful in blinding his fellow-citizens that he continued a highly reputable member of the Town Council until within a short period of the crime for which he was executed, and, according to "Kay's Portraits," it is a singular fact, that little more than a month previously he sat as a juryman in a criminal case in that very court where he himself soon after received sentence of death.

For years he had been secretly licentious and dissipated, but it was not until 1786 that he began an actual career of infamous crime, with his fellow-culprit, George Smith, a native of Berk-shire, and two others, named Brown and Ainslie. He was in easy circumstances, with a flourishing business, and his conduct in becoming a leader of miscreants seems unaccountable, yet so it was. In and around the city during the winter of 1787 there were committed a series of startling rob-beries, and no clue could be had to the perpetrators. Houses and shops were entered, and articles of value vanished as if by magic. In one instance a lady was unable to go to church from indisposition, and was at home alone, when a man entered with crape over his face, and taking her keys, opened her bureau and took away her money, while she remained panic-stricken; but as he retired she thought, " surely that was Deacon Brodie !" But the idea seemed so utterly inconceivable, that she preserved silence on the subject till subsequent events transpired. As these mysterious outrages continued, all Edinburgh became at last alarmed, and in all of them Brodie was either actively or passively con-cerned, till he conceived the--to him--fatal idea of robbing the Excise office in Chessel's Court, an undertaking wholly planned by himself. He visited the office openly with a friend, studied the details of the cashier's room, and observing the key of the outer door. hanging from a nail, contrived to take an impression of it with putty, made a model there--from, and tried it on the lock by way of experiment, but went no further then.

On the 5th of March, Brodie, Smith, Ainslie, and Brown, met in the evening about eight to make the grand attempt. The Deacon was attired in black, with a brace of pistols; he had with him several keys and a double picklock. He seemed in the wildest spirits, and as they set forth he sang the well-known ditty from the " Beggar's Opera"--
"Let us take the road,
Hark! I hear the sound of coaches!
The hour of attack approaches;
To your arms brave boys, and load,
" See the ball I hold; Let chemists toil like asses--
Our fire their fire surpasses,
And turns our lead to gold ! "

The office was shut at night, but no watchman came till ten. Ainslie kept watch in Chessel's Court, Brodie inside the outer door, when he opened it, while Smith and Brown entered the cashier's room. All save the first carried pistols, and Brodie had a whistle by which he was to sound an alarm if necessary. In forcing the second or inner door, Brown and Smith had to use a crowbar, and the coulter of a plough which they had previously stolen for the purpose. Their faces were craped; they had with them a dark lantern, and they burst open every desk and press in the room. While thus engaged, Mr. James Bonnar, the deputy-solicitor, returned unexpectedly to the office at half-past eight, and detection seemed imminent indeed ! " The outer door he found shut, and on opening it a man in black (Brodie) hurriedly passed him, a circumstance to which, not having the slightest suspicion, he paid no attention. He went to his room up-stairs, where he remained only a few minutes, and then returned, shutting the outer door behind him. Perceiving this, Ainslie became alarmed, gave a signal and retreated. Smith and Brown did not observe the call, but thinking themselves in danger when they heard Mr. Bonnar coming down-stairs, they cocked their pistols, de-termined not to be taken."

Eventually they got clear off with their booty, which proved to be only sixteen pounds odd, when they had expected thousands ! They all separated --Brown and Ainslie betook themselves to the New Town, Brodie hurried home to the Lawnmarket, changed his dress, and proceeded to the house of his mistress, Jean Watt, in Liberton's Wynd, and on an evening soon after the miserable spoil was divided in equal proportions. By this time the town was alarmed, and the police on the alert. Brown (alias Humphry Moore), who prove the greatest villain of the whole, was at that time under sen-tence of transpor-tation for some crime committed in his native country, England, and having seen an advertisement offering reward and pardon to any per-son who should discover a recent robbery at the shop of Inglis and Horner, one of the many transactions in which Brodie had been engaged of late with Smith and others, he resolved to turn king's evidence, and on the very evening he had secured his share of the late transaction he went to the Procurator Fiscal, and gave information, but omitted to mention the name of Brodie, from whom he expected to procure money for secrecy. He conducted the police to the base of the Craigs, where they found concealed under a large stone a great number of keys intended for future operations in all directions. In consequence of this, Ainslie, Smith and his wife and servant, were all arrested. The Brodie fled, and Brown revealed the whole affair. Mr. Williamson, king's messenger for Scotland traced the Deacon from point to point till he reached Dover, where after an eighteen days' pursuit he disappeared; but by a sort of fatuity, often evinced by persons similarly situated, he gave clues to his own discovery. He remained in London till the 23rd of March. He took his passage on board the Leith smack Endeavour for that port, disguised as an old man in bad health, and under the name of John Dixon; but on getting out of the Thames, according to some previous arrangement, he was landed at Flushing, and from thence reached Ostend. On board the smack he was rash enough to give in charge of a Mr. Geddes letters addressed to three persons in Edinburgh, one of whom was his favourite mistress in Cant's Close. Geddes, full of suspicion, on reaching Leith gave the docu-ments to the authorities. Mr. Williamson was once more on his track, and discovered him in Amsterdam through the treachery of an Irishman named Daly, when he was on the eve of his departure for America; and on the 27th of August, 1788~ he was arraigned with Smith in the High Court of Jus-ticiary, when he had as counsel the Hon. Henry Erskine, known then as " Plead for all, or the poor man's lawyer," and two other advocates of eminence, who made an attempt to prove an alibi on the part of Brodie, by means of Jean Watt and her servant. but the jury, with one voice, found both guilty, and they were sentenced to be hanged at the west end of the Luckenbooths on the 1st October, 1788. Smith was deeply affected; Brodie cool, determined, and indifferent. His self-possession never forsook him and he spoke of his approaching end with levity, as "a leap in the dark," and he only betrayed emotion when he was visited, for the last time, by his daughter Cecil, a pretty child of ten years of age. He came on the scaffold in a full suit of black, with his hair dressed and powdered. Smith was attired in white linen, trimmed with black. "Having put on white night-caps," says a print of the time, " Brodie pointed to Smith to ascend the steps that led to the drop, and in an easy man-ner, clapping him on the shoulder, said, 'George Smith, you are first in hand.' Upon this Smith, whose behaviour was highly penitent and resigned, slowly ascended the steps, followed by Brodie, who mounted with briskness and agility, and examined the dreadful apparatus with attention, particularly the halter destined for himself ;" and well might he do so with terrible interest, as he was to be the first to know the excellence of an improvement he had formerly made on that identical gibbet--the substitution of what is called the drop, for the ancient practice of the double ladder. The ropes proving too short, Brodie stepped down to the platform and entered into easy conversation with his friends.

This occurred no less than three times, while the great bell of St. Giles's was tolling slowly, and the crowd of spectators was vast. Brodie died without either confessing or denying his guilt; but the conduct and bearing of Smith were very different. In consequence of the firmness and levity of the former, a curious story became quickly current, to the effect that in the Tolbooth he had been visited by Dr. Pierre Degraver, a French quack, who undertook to restore him to life after he had hung the usual time, and that, on the day before the exe-cution, he had marked the arms and temples of Brodie, to indicate where he would apply the lancet. Moreover, it was said that having to lengthen the rope thrice proved that they had bargained secretly with the execu-tioner for a short fall. When cut down the body was instantly given to two of his own workmen, who placed it on a cart, and drove at a furious rate round the back of the Castle, with the idea that the rough jolting might produce resuscitation ! It was then taken to one of his workshops in the Lawnmarket, where Degraver was in attendance; but all attempts at bleeding failed; the Deacon was gone, and nothing remained but to lay him where he now lies, in the north-east corner of the Chapel-of-ease burying-ground. His dark lantern and sets of false keys, presented by the Clerk of Justiciary to the Society of Antiquaries, are still preserved in the city.

He had at one time been Deacon Convener or chief of all the trades in the city, an office of the highest respectability. His house in Brodie's Close is still to be found in nearly its original state. the first door up a turnpike stair; and this door, remarkable for its elaborate workmanship, is said to have been that of his own ingenious hand. The apartments are all decorated; and the principal one which is of great height, contains a large painting over the stone fireplace of the Adoration of the Wise Men.

A few steps from this was the old Bank Close (so-called from the Bank of Scotland having been in it), a blind alley, composed wholly of solid, handsome, and massive houses, some of which were of great antiquity, and of old named Hope's Close, from the celebrated Sir Thomas Hope, King's Advocate in the time of Charles I., prior to whom it had borne the name of Mauchine's Close. about the year 1511.

Here, on the site of the present Melbourne Place, stood a famous old mansion, almost unique even in Edinburgh, named Robert Gourlay's House, with the legend, above its door, " O Lord in the is al my traist 1569," and it is somewhat singular that the owner of this house was neither a man of rank nor of wealth, but simply a messenger-at-arms belonging to the Abbey of Holyrood, an office bestowed upon him by the Commen-dator, Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney. In 1574 Robert Gourlay was an elder of the kirk, and in that year had to do his public penance therein "for transporting wheat out of the countrie." In 1581 when the Re-gent Morton was about to suffer death, he was placed in Gourlay's house for two days under a guard; and there it was that those remarkable conferences took place between him and certain clergymen, in which, while protesting his innocence of the murder of Darnley, he admitted his foreknowledge of it. Among many popular errors, is one that he in-vented the " maiden" by which he suffered; but it is now known to have been the common Scottish guillotine, since Thomas Scott was beheaded by it on the 3rd of April, 1566.

On the 7th of January, 1582, Moyse tells us in his Memoirs, " there came a French ambassador through England, named La Motte (Fenelon), he was lodged in Gourlay's house near Tolbooth, and had an audience of his Majesty; with him there also came another ambassador from England, named Mr. Davidson, who got an audience also that same day in the king's chamber of presence." This was probably a kinsman of De la Motte,. the French ambassador, who was slain at Flodden. He left Edinburgh on the 10th of February.

Herein resided Sir William Drury during the siege of the Castle in 1573, and thither, on its surrender, was brought its gallant defender before death, with his brother Sir James Kirkaldy and others; and it was here that in later years the great Argyle is said to have passed his last hours in peaceful sleep before his execution. So Robert Gourlay's old house had a terrible history. By this time the house had passed into the posses-sion of Sir Thomas Hope. Hence it has been con-jectured that Argyle's last sleep took place in the Laigh Council Room, whither, Wodrow says, he was brought before execu-tion.

John Gourlay, son of Robert, erected a house at the foot of this an-cient close. It bore the date 1588~ with the motto, Sps~ altera vitae. Herein was the Bank of Scotland first established in 1695, and there its business was conducted till 1805, when it was removed to their new office, that stu-pendous edifice at the head of the entrance to the Earthen Mound. Lat-terly it was used as the University printing-office; and therein, so lately as 1824, was in use, as a proof press, the identical old wooden press which accom-panied the Highland army, in 1745, for the publi-cation of gazettes and manifestos.

Robert Gourlay's house passed from the possession of Sir Thomas Hope and Lord Aberuchill into that of Sir George Lockhart (the great legal and political rival of Sir George Mackenzie), Lord President of the Session in 1685, and doomed to fall a victim to private revenge. Chiesly of Dalry, an unsuccess-ful litigant, enraged at the president for assigning a small aliment of £93 out of his estate,a fine one south-westward of the city--to his wife, from whom we must suppose he was separated, swore to have vengeance. He was perhaps not quite sane; but anyway, he was a man of violent and ungovernable passions. Six months before the event we are about to relate he told Sir James Stewart, an advo-cate, when in London, that he was "determined to go to Scotland before Candlemas and kill the president !" "The very imagination of such a thing," said Sir James, " is a sin before God."

" Leave God and me alone," was the fierce response " we have many things to reckon betwixt us, and w will reckon this too !" The Lord President was warned of his open threats, but unfortunately took no heed of them. On Easter Sunday, the 31st March, 1689, the assassin loaded his pistols, and went to the choir of St. Giles's church, from whence he dogged him home to the Old Bank Close, and though accompanied by Lord Castlehill and M: Daniel Lockhart, shot him in the back just as he was about to enter his house--the old one whos history we have traced. Lady Lockhart--aunt of the famous Duke of Wharton--was confined to her bed with illness, but sprang up on hearing the pistol-shot; and on learning what had occurred, rushed forth in her night-dress and assisted to convey in the victim, who was laid on two chairs, and instantly expired. The ball had passed out at the left breast. Chiesly was instantly seized. " I am not wont to do things by halves," said he, grimly and boastfully " and now I have taught the president how to do justice ! " He was put to the torture to discover if he had any accomplices; and as he had been taken red hand, he was on Monday sentenced to death by Sir Magnus Price, Provost of the city, without much formality, according to Father Hay, and on a hurdle he was dragged to the Cross, where his right hand was struck off when alive; then he was hanged in chains at Drumsheugh, says another account; between the city and Leith at the. Gallowlee, according to a third, with the pistol tied to his neck. His right hand was nailed on the West Port. The manor house of Dalry, latterly the property of Kirkpatrick, of Allisland, was after this alleged to be haunted, and no servant herein would venture, after dark, alone into the back kitchen, as a tradition existed that his body-- which his relations had unchained and carried off, sword in hand, under cloud of night--was buried somewhere near that apartment. " On repairing the garden-wall at a later period," says Dr. Wilson, " an old stone seat which stood in a recess of the wall had to be removed, and underneath was found a skeleton entire, except the bones of the right hand--without doubt the remains of the .assassin, that had secretly been brought thither from the Gallowlee." But Dr. Chambers also writes of a skeleton, found a century after, " when removing the hearth-stone of a cottage in Dalry Park, with the remains of pistol near the situation of the neck. No doubt was entertained that these were the remains of Chiesly, huddled into this place of concealment, probably in the course of the night in which they had been abstracted from the gallows." This pistol is still preserved.

In this close "the great house pertaining to the Earl of Eglintoun," with its coach-house and stables, is advertised for sale in the Evening Courant of April, 1735.

Gosford's Close--The Town House of the Abbot of Cambuskenneth--Tennant's House--Mansion of the Hays--Liberton's Wynd--Johnnie Dowie's Tavern--Burns and His Songs--The Place of Execution--Birthplace of "The Man of Feeling"--The Mirror Club--Forrester's Wynd--The Heather Stacks in the Houses--Peter Williamson--Beith's Wynd--Habits of the Lawnmarket Woollen Traders--" Lawnmarket Gazettes"--Melbourne Place-The County Hall--The Signet and Advocates' Libraries.

BELOW the scene of this tragedy opened Gosford's Close (in the direct line of the King's Bridge) wherein for ages stood a highly-decorated edifice belonging to the Augustinian abbey of Cambus kenneth, near Stirling. It would seem to have been of considerable size, and from the mass of sculptured fragments, all beautiful Gothic carvings, found in the later houses of the close, must have been a considerable feature in the city. " The building was in all likelihood," we are told, " the town mansion of the abbot, with a beautiful chapel attached to-it, and may serve to remind us how little idea we can form of the beauty of the Scottish capital before the Reformation, adorned as it was with so many churches and conventual buildings, the very sites of which are now unknown. Over the doorway of an ancient stone land in Gos-ford's Close, which stood immediately east of the Old Bank Close, there existed a curious sculptured lintel containing a representation of the crucifixion, and which may with every probability be regarded as another relic of the abbot's house that once occupied its site."

This lintel is still preserved, and the house which it adorned belonged to Mungo Tennant, a wealthy citizen, whose seal is appended to a rever-sion of the half of the lands of Leny, in 1540. It also bears his arms, with the then common legend --Soli. Deo. Honor-. et. Gloria.

In the lower story of this house was a strongly -arched cellar, in the floor of which was a concealed trap-door, admitting to another lower down, hewn out of the living rock. Tradition averred it was a chamber for torture, but it has more shrewdly been supposed to have been connected with the smugglers, to whom the North Loch afforded by boat such facilities for evading the duties at the city gates, and running in wines and brandies.

This vault is believed to be still remaining untouched beneath the central roadway of the new bridge. On the first floor of this mansion the fifth Earl of Loudon, a gallant general officer, and his daughter, Lady Flora (latterly countess in her own right) afterwards Marchioness of Hastings, resided when in town. Here, too, was the mansion of Hume Rigg of Morton, who died in it in 1788. It is thus de-scribed in a note to Kay's works:--" The dining and drawing-rooms were spacious; indeed, more so than those of any private modern house we have seen. The lobbies were all variegated marble, and a splendid mahogany staircase led to the upper storey. There was a large green behind, With a statue in the middle, and a summer-house at the bottom; but so confined was the entry to this elegant mansion that it was impossible to get even a sedan chair near to the door." On the 20th January, 1773 at four A.M, there was a tempest, says a print of the time, " and a stack of chimneys on an old house at the foot of Gosford's Close, possessed by Hugh Mossman, writer, was blown down, and breaking through the roof in that part of the house where he and his spouse lay, they both perished in the ruins.

In the storey below, Miss Mallay Rigg, sister to Rigg of Morton, also perished." So lately as 1773 the Ladies Catharine and fifth Marquis, resided there too, in the third floor of the front " land " or tenement. " Indeed," says Wilson, '-the whole neighbourhood was the favourite resort of the most fashionable and distinguis among the resident citizens, and a perfect nest of advocates and lord's of session" In the year 1794 the hall and museum of the Society of Antiquaries were at the bottom of this ancient thoroughfare.

Next it was Liberton's Wynd, the avenue of which is still partially open, and which was removed to make way for the new bridge and other buildings. Like many others still extant, or demolished, this alley, called a wynd as being broader than a close, had the fronts of its stone mansions so added to and encumbered by quaint projecting out-shot Doric gables of timber, that they nearly met over-head, excluding the narrow strip of sky, and, save at noon, all trace of sunshine. Yet herein stood Johnnie Dowie's tavern, one of the most famous in the annals of Convivialia, and a view of which, by Geikie, is preserved by Hone in his " Year Book." Johnnie Dowie was the sleekest and kindest of landlords; nothing could equal the benignity of his smile when he brought " ben " a bottle of his famous old Edinburgh ale to a well-known and friendly customer. The formality with which he drew the cork, the air with which he filled the long slender glasses, and the regularity with which he drank the healths of all present in the first, with his douce civility at withdrawing, were as long re-membered by his many customers as his "Nor' Loch trouts and Welsh rabbits," after he had gone to his last home, in 1817 leaving a fortune to his son, who was a major in the army. With a laud-able attachment to the old costume he always wore a cocked hat, buckles at the knees and shoes, as well as a cross-handled cane, over which he stooped in his gait. Here, in the space so small and dark, that even cabmen would avoid it now there came, in the habit of the times, Robert Fer-gusson the poet, David Herd the earliest collector of Scottish songs, " antiquarian Paton," and others forgotten now, but who were men of local note in their own day as lords of session and leading advocates. Here David Martin, a well-known portrait painter, instituted a Club, which was quaintly named after their host, the " Dowie College, ' and there his far more celebrated pupil Sir Henry Raeburn often accompanied him in his earlier years; and, more than all, it was the favourite resort of Robert Burns, where he spent many a jovial hour with Willie Nicol and Allan Masterton. " Three blyther lads" never gladdened the old place; and so associated did it become with Burns, that, according to a writer in the "Year Book,". "his name was assumed as its distinguishing and alluring cogn-omen. Until it was finally closed, it was visited nightly by many a party of jolly fellows............... Few strangers omitted to call in to gaze upon the coffin' of the bard-this was a small, dark room, ,which would barely accommodate, even by squeezing, half a dozen, but in which Burns used to sit.

Here he composed one or two of his best songs, and here were preserved to the last the identical seats and table which had accommodated him." In his edition of Scottish songs published in 1829, five years before the demolition of the tavern, Chambers notes that in the ale-house was sung that sweetest of all Burns's love songs:-
0, poortith cauld, and restless love,
Ye wreck my peace between ye;
Yet poortith a' I could forgie,
An 'twere na for my Jeanie,
Oh, why should fate sic pleasure have,
Life's dearest bonds untwining?
Or why sae sweet a flower as love
Depend on fortune's shining?
The moment the clock of St. Giles's struck not another cork would Johnnie Dowie draw. His unvarying reply to a fresh order was, " Gentlemen, it is past twelve, and time to go home." In the same corner where Burns sat Christopher North has alluded to his own pleasant meetings with Tom Campbell. A string of eleven verses in honour of his tavern were circulated among his customers by Dowie, who openly ascribed them to Bums. Two of these will suffice, as what was at least a good imitation of the poet's style:-
O Dowie's ale! thou art the thing
That gars us crack and gars us sing,
Cast by our cares, our wants a' fling
Frae us wi' anger;
Thou e'en makist passion tak the wing,
Or thou wilt hang her.
How blest is he wha has a groat,
To spare upon the cheering pot;
He may look blythe as ony Scot
That e'er was born;-
Gices a' the like, but wi' a coat,
And guide frae scorn."
Now these men are all gone,"
wrote one, who, alas has followed them; "

their very habits are be-coming matters of history, while, as for their evening haunt, the place which knew it once knows it no more, the new access to the Lawn-market, by George IV. bridge, passing over the area where it stood."

Liberton's Wynd is mentioned far back as in a charter by James III., in 1477, and in a more subsequent time it was the last permanent place of execution, after the demolition of the old Tolbooth.

Here at its head have scores of un-happy wretches looked their last upon the morning sun--the pre-eminent Irish murderers, Burke and Hare, among them. The socket of the gallows-tree was removed, like many other objects of greater interest, in 1834.

Before quitting this ancient alley we must not omit to note that therein, in the house of his father Dr. Josiah Mackenzie (who died in 1800) was born in August, 1745, Henry Mackenzie, author of the " Man of Feeling," one of the most illus-trious names connected with polite literature in Scotland. He was one of the most active members of the Mirror Club, which met sometimes at Cleri-heugh's in Writer's Court; sometimes in Somer's, opposite the Guard-house in the High Street; sometimes in Stewart's oyster-house, in the old Fleshmarket Close; but oftener, perhaps, in Lucky Dunbar's, a house situated in an alley that led between Liberton's .Wynd and that of Forrester's Wynd. This Club commenced its publication of the Mirror in January, 1729, and terminated it in May, 1780. It was a folio sheet, published weekly at three-half pence. The Lounger, to which Lord Craig contributed largely, was commenced, by the staff of the Mirror, on the 6th of February, 1785, and continued weekly till the 6th of January, 1787. Among the members of this literary Club were Mr. Alexander Abercrombie, afterwards Lord Aber-crombie; Lord Bannatyne; Mr. George Home, Clerk of Session; Gordon of Newhall; and a Mr. George Ogilvie : among their correspondents were Lord Hailes, Mr.Baron Hume, Dr. Beattie, and many other eminent literary men of the time; but ,of the 101 papers of the Lounger, fifty-seven are the production of Henry Mackenzie, including his genial review of Burns's poems, already referred to.

In Liberton's Wynd, we find from the Edinburgh Advertiser of 1783, that the Misses Preston, ,daughters of the late minister of Markinch, had a boarding school for young ladies, whose parents " may depend that the greatest attention will be paid to, their morals, behaviour, and every branch of education."
In this quarter Turk's Close, Carthrae's, For-rester's, and Beith's Wynds, all stood on the slope between Liberton's Wynd and St. Giles's Church; but every stone of these had been swept away many years before the great breach made by the new bridge was projected. Forrester's Wynd occurs so often in local annals that it must have been a place of some consideration. The Diurnal of Occurrents" records, that in 1566, John Sinclair, Bishop of Brechin, Dean of Restalrig, and Lord President of the College of justice, died in Forrester's Wynd, in the house of James Mossman, probably the same man who was a goldsmith in Edinburgh at, that time, and whose father, also James Mossman, enclosed with the present four arches the crown of Scotland, by order of James V., when Henry VIII. closed the crown of England. In consequence of the houses being set on fire by the Castle guns under Kirkcaldy, in 1572, it was ordered that all the thatched houses between Beith's Wynd and St. Giles's should be unroofed, and that all stacks of heather should be carried away from the streets and burned, and " that ilk man in Edinburgh have his lumes '(vents) full of watter in the nycht, under pain of deid!" (" Diurnal.") This gives us a graphic idea of the city in the sixteenth century, and of the High Street in particular, "with the majority of the buildings on either side covered with thatch, en-cumbered by piles of heather and other fuel accumulated before each door for the use of the inhabitants, and from amid these, we may add the stately ecclesiastical edifices, and the substan-tial mansions of the nobility, towering with all the more imposing effect, in contrast to their homely neighbourhood."
Concerning these heather stacks we have the following episode in "Moyse's Memoirs:"-"On the 2nd December , 1584, a Baxter's boy called Robert Henderson (no doubt by the instigation of Satan) desperately put some powder and a candle to his father's heather-stack, standing in a close opposite the Tron, and burnt the same with his father's house, to the imminent hazard of burning the whole town' for which, being apprehended most mar-vellously, after his escaping out of town, he was next day buritt quick at the cross of Edinburgh as an example."

There was still extant in 1850 a small fragment of Forrester's Wynd, a beaded doorway in wall, with the legend above it-
"O.F. OUR INHERITANCE, 1623."

In all the old houses in Edinburgh," says Arnot, " it is remarkable that the superstition of the time had guarded each with certain cabalistic characters or talismans engraved upon its front. These were generally composed of some texts of Scripture, of the name of God, or perhaps an emblematical representation of the crucifixion."

Forrester's Wynd probably took its name from Sir Adam Forrester of Corstorphine, who was twice chief magistrate of the city in the 14th century.
After the "Jenny Geddes" riot in St. Giles's, Guthrie, in his " Memoirs," tells us of a mob, con-sisting of some hundreds of women, whose place of rendezvous in 1637 was Forrester's Wynd, and who attacked Sydeserf, Bishop of Galloway, when on his way to the Privy Council, accompanied by Francis Stewart, son of the Earl of Bothwell, " with such violence, that probably he had been tom in pieces, if it had not been that the said Francis, with the help of 'two pretty men that attended him, rescued him out of their barbarous hands, and hurled him in at the door, holding back the pursuers until those that were within shut the door. Thereafter, the Provost and Bailies being assembled in their council, those women beleaguered them, and threatened to bum the house about their ears, unless they did presently nominate, two commissioners for the town," &c. Their cries were " God defend all those who will defend God's cause! God confound the service-book and all maintainers thereof !"

From advertisements, it would appear that a character who made some noise in his time, Peter Williamson, " from the other world," as he called himself, had a printer's shop at the head of this wynd in 1772. The victim of a system of kidnapping encouraged by the magistrates of Aberdeen, he had been carried off in his boyhood to America, and after almost unheard-of perils and adventures, related in his autobiography, published in 1758, he returned to Scotland, and obtained some small damages from the then magistrates of his native city, and settled in Edinburgh as a printer and publisher. In 1766 he started The Scots Spy, pub-lished every Friday, of which copies are now, extremely rare. He had the merit of establishing the first penny post in Edinburgh, and also pub-lished a " Directory," from his, new shop in the Luckenbooths, in 1784. He would appear for these services to have received a small pension from Government when it assumed his institution of the penny post. He died in January, 1799.

The other venerable alley referred to, Beith's Wynd, when greatly dilapidated by time, was nearly destroyed by two fires, which occurred in 1786 and 1788. The former, on the 12th December, broke out near Henderson's stairs, and raged with great violence for many hours, but by the assistance of the Town Guard and others it was suppressed, yet not before many families were burnt out. The Parliament House and the Advocates' Library were both in imminent peril, and the danger ap-peared so great, that the Court of Session did not sit that day, and preparations were made for the speedy removal of all records. At the head of Beith's Wynd, in 1745, dwelt Andrew Maclure, a writing-master, one of that corps of civic volunteers. who marched to oppose the Highlanders,. but which mysteriously melted away ere it left the West Port. It was noted of the gallant Andrew, that having made up his mind to die, he had affixed a sheet of paper to his breast, whereon was written, in large text-hand, " This is the body of Andrew Maclure ; let it be decently interred," a notice that was long a source of joke among the Jacobite wits.

With this wynd, our account of the alleys in connection with the Lawnmarket ends. We have elsewhere referred to the once well-known Club formed by the dwellers in the latter, chiefly woollen traders. They have been described as being " dram-drinking, news-mongering, facetious set of citizens, who met every morn about seven o'clock and after proceeding to the post-office to ascertain the news (when the mail arrived), generally adjourned to a public-house and refreshed themselves with a libation of brandy." Unfounded articles o intelligence that were spread abroad in those day were usually named " Lawnmarket Gazettes," in allusion to their roguish or waggish originators.

At all periods the Lawnmarket was a residence for men of note, and the frequent residence of English and other foreign ambassadors; and so long as Edinburgh continued to be the seat of the Parliament, its vicinity to the House made it a favourite and convenient resort for the members of the Estates.
On the ground between Robert Gourlay's house and Beith's Wynd we now find some of those por-tions of the new city which have been engrafted on the old. In Melbourne Place, at the north end of George IV.Bridge, are, among other offices, those of the Royal Medical Society, Property Invest-ment Society, and the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures, built in an undefined style of architec-ture, new to Edinburgh. Opposite, with its back to the bridge, where apart of the line of Liber-ton's Wynd exists, is built the County Hall, pre-senting fronts to the Lawnmarket and to St, Giles's. The last of these possesses no common beauty, as it has a very lofty portico of finely-fluted columns, overshadowing a flight of steps leading to the main entrance, which is modelled after the choragic monument of Thrasyllus, while the ground plan and style of ornament is an imitation of the Temple of Erechtheius at Athens. It was erected in 1817, and contains several spacious and lofty court-rooms, with apartments for the Sheriff and other func-tionaries employed in the business of the county. The hall contains a fine statue of Lord Chief Baron Dundas, by Chantrey.

Adjoining it and stretching eastward is the library of the Writers to the Signet. It is of Grecian architecture, and possesses two long pillared halls of beautiful proportions, the upper having Corinthian columns, and a dome wherein are painted the Muses. It is 132 feet long by about 40 broad, and was used by George IV. as a drawing-room, on the day of the royal banquet in the Parliament House. Formed by funds drawn solely from contributions by Writers to H.M. Signet, it is under a body of curators. The library contains more than 60,000 volumes, and is remarkably rich in British and Irish history.
Southward of it and lying parallel with it, nearer the Cowgate, is the Advocates' Library, two long halls, with oriel windows on the north side.

This library, one of the five in the United Kingdom en-titled to a copy of every work printed in it, was founded by Sir George Mackenzie, Dean of Faculty in 1682, and contains some 200,000 volumes, forming the most valuable collection of the kind in Scotland. The volumes of Scottish poetry alone exceed 400. Among some thousand MSS. are those of Wodrow, Sir James Balfour, Sir Robert Sibbald, and others. In one of the lower compartments may be seen Greenslneld's statue of Sir Walter Scott, and the original volume of Waverley; two volumes of original letters written by Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I.; the Confession of Faith signed by James VI. and the Scottish nobles in 1589-90; a valuable cabinet from the old Scottish mint in the Cowgate; the pennon borne by Sir William Keith at Flodden; and many other objects of the deepest interest. The office of librarian has been held by many distinguished men of letters; among them were Thomas Rud-diman in 17O2; David Hume, his successor, in 1752; Adam Fergusson; and David Irving, LL.D.
A somewhat minor edifice in the vicinity forms the library of the Solicitors before the Supreme Court.