it on either side. From time immemorial it had been the scene of brawls, bickers, tulzies, and bruilzies innumerable, for the Edinburgh mob has ever been the most turbulent in history. It needed little to stir the passions of rival factions in those days. A chance encounter, a jostle, an angry word, followed by a blow -and then the clansmen's swords were out, and there was a sharp combat like that between the Leslies and the Setons in which Roland Graeme took part. In the early part of the sixteenth century a street fight between the Douglases and Hamiltons, known as "Cleanse the Causeway,"

"When the streets of high Dunedin Saw broadswords flash and torches redden, "

almost assumed the dimensions of a pitched battle; and on two occasions James VI. was in some danger of being assaulted by his rebellious subjects, once in 1591, when he sought refuge in a skinner's booth and stood there "shaking for fear"; and a few years later, when he was besieged in the Tolbooth itself, and vowed on his escape that he would raze the accursed city to the ground.

though it has undergone extensive repairs - altered little since the day when John Knox "danged the pulpit to blads" in its southern aisle, and denounced the idolatries of the Moabitish woman. Like the High Street, St Giles' has been the centre of some of the most stirring episodes of the national history, and has reflected the varying forms of faith and manners. Mass has been celebrated there by priests at one or another of its forty altars; preachers in breastplates and jack-boots have expounded the Scripture from its pulpits; cannon have been mounted on the north porch and fired against the Castle; and it was the scene of Jenny Geddes' practical protest against Episcopacy when she hurled her cutty-stool at the head of the preacher of the day, with the famous words, "Deil colic the wame o' ye,-dost thou say Mass in my lug!" In less stormy times St Giles' has been the temple of silence and reconciliation, and here repose the remains of the cruel Duke of Albany, the "good Regent Murray, "the great Marquis of Montrose and his life-long enemy, Argyll.

rood-the main avenue between the palace and the the city. No one would imagine from the present condition of this unlovely and unsavoury highway that it was formerly the most fashionable quarter of Edinburgh, and lined with the houses of almost every Scottish family of distinction, dukes and earls, lords of session, generals and statesmen. But this was before the Court migrated to the Castle, and when Holyrood was the favourite palace of Scottish kings. Canongate was the appanage and property of the Abbey, with rich lands and benefices, and with its own magistrates and tolbooth; and the street itself was at once the Strand and Piccadilly of the time. But it had fallen from its high estate even in Allan Ramsay's day, who calls it "a puir eldrich hole"; and still worse days were in store for it when the tide of fashion set in the direction of the New Town. There is little left nowadays to remind the visitor of its former splendours; and even the few historical mansions which time and the Town Council have spared have sadly degenerated from their former magnificence. Queensberry House, once a stately building in the style of a French chateau, was dismantled and sold by "Old Q"-the degenerate Douglas anathematised by Burns, and by Thackeray after him—in 1801, and is now a House of Refuge for the Destitute. Moray House, yet more interesting, built in 1628, is

Though the city magistrates destroyed the Cross, they allowed the Tolbooth to stand where it was, blocking up half the High Street, until 1817. It was the Bastille of Edinburgh- a grim and sombre building, probably the most atrocious prison that ever existed. Within, it was full of dark and noisome cells-" airless, waterless, drainless — a living grave." Fresh air and exercise were denied to the unhappy debtors, who languished in these walls for years, and who, according to a Scottish judge, were doomed

to realise the full meaning of squalor carceris, and were literally to rot in jail. It was a fortunate day for Scotland when "the Heart of Midlothian finally ceased to beat." Not far from the Tolbooth stood the Town-Guard House "a long, low, ugly building, like a black snail crawling up the High Street." The Guard (described by Sir Walter in a locus classicus) was composed of discharged veterans from Highland regiments grim, weather-beaten, hard-featured; full of strange Gaelic oaths, and redolent of snuff and whisky. They wore coats of faded red or dingy black, and carried muskets and bayonets; but their peculiar weapon was the old genuine Lochaber axe "one could see Bannockburn in it." They claimed great antiquity of descent, and three of them were believed by the populace to have been among Pilate's bodyguard! There was a perpetual feud between them and the young bloods of the University; and Robert Fergusson's poems are full of references to the testy humour and brutal conduct of these "Town Rottens (rats) or "Black Banditti," who used their weapons roughly, and maltreated any unfortunate reveller who was noisy or quarrelsome in his cups. The Town-Guard were destined to be swept away like other picturesque survivals, and in 1817 their place was taken by the new police. Their last public appearance was in the procession which inaugurated the Scott monument in 1844.

It is but a step from the site of the Tolbooth to the Parliament House, which fortunately escaped in the great fire of 1824. The exterior has been spoilt and disfigured by the tasteless renovators in the last century, and its turrets and pinnacles, its ornamental windows, and its fine balustrade -venerable with the grey tint of 170 years were removed, as Lord Cockburn tells us, by an ignorant mason, "to make room for the bright freestone and contemptible decorations which now disgrace it." The outer hall, however, with its fine oak roof, its stained glass, and its busts and pictures of legal luminaries, is one of the noblest rooms in the kingdom. It now serves as a lobby for barristers and clients, - the salle des pas perdus of the Scottish bar, but was formerly the Temple of Themis itself, as Carlyle saw it on his first visit to Edinburgh in 1809. He describes it more suo as an immense and crowded hall,"a scene of chaotic din and hurly-burly, and a boundless buzz of talk,"—with advocates wrangling and gesticulating before red velvet figures seated on little thrones against the wall.

These judges in red velvet, some of whom at least young Carlyle saw thus administering justice in a Babel of sounds, live for us still in Lord Cockburn's immortal portrait-gallery. Their peculiarities of voice and manner, their caustic utterance, their stupendous powers of drinking, have all been painted for us by a master - hand in a style as

was said that "if Hermand had made the heavens he would have allowed no fixed stars." His simplicity and innate goodness of heart charmed even the fastidious Lockhart, who tells a delightful story to illustrate the judge's impulsive and almost boyish temperament.1 Outside his Court Hermand was the best of good fellows and the prince of boon companions. No potations, however long and deep, seemed to have the slightest effect on his seasoned brain and iron constitution. Once when some of the younger members of the Antemanum Club protested against more wine being ordered, Hermand mournfully exclaimed, "What shall we come to at the last? I believe I shall be left alone on the face of the earth-drinking claret." But he might have found a congenial spirit to keep him company in Charles Hay-Lord Newton, otherwise called "the Mighty"-a burly man with a -a burly man with a huge paunch and a purple face, who for half a century presided over the Antemanum, like a second Duke Hildebrand over the revels in Alsatia. "His daily and flowing cups," said Lord Cockburn, "raised him far above the evil days of sobriety upon which he had fallen, and made him worthy of having quaffed with the Scandinavian heroes.'

It is an easy and natural transition from the judges to the wine club, from the court of justice to the tavern, for

they are closely and intimately connected at a time when for most members of the legal profession the day began with a morning "whet" just to fortify the intellect, to be followed by the "meridian" at noon, and to be concluded with a Bacchanalian revel protracted till the small hours of the morning. Some excuse may be found for this universal devotion to tavern life in the harshness of the northern winter in Edinburgh. "It is one of the vilest climates under heaven," wrote Stevenson, as if he shivered at the remembrance of it; "you are liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea-fogs out of the east, or to be powdered with the snow as it comes flying southwards from the Highland hills." It was small wonder that a Scotsman's ideal of enjoyment should have been a warm cosy corner by the fireside in one of the innumerable "howfs" or "laighs" (taverns and

oyster cellars) which studded the closes on either side of the High Street; or that every poet from Allan Ramsay to Fergusson and Burns should have sung of the delights of the joyous evenings at John Dowie's or the Crochallan Club, with the high jinks, the uproarious mirth, the hilarious songs, when the air was thick with the steam from the

punch-bowls. Another reason for the popularity of the tavern was the cramped space and limited accommodation in the