of other countries), or assembleu in groups. A crier at one end of the Court bawls out the name of any person who may be wanted, as is the custom at the London Stock Exchange and Hall of Commerce: a constant hum fills the whole area. But when the law sittings are terminated - here is a change! Judges and advocates, writers and clients all stay away. The statues of Lord Melville and Lord President Blair have it, then, all to themselves.

numerous.

Connected by various entries and passages with this fine old hall are the Courts of Law, which are very There are four small chambers, or courts, in which the Lords Ordinary sit. There are two larger courts, in which the First and Second Division of the Court, as they are termed, hold their sittings. In another Court-room is held the sittings of the High Court of Justiciary, the supreme criminal tribunal of Scotland. All these various Courts of Law form collectively the Scottish Court of Session, which is separated into two chambers or divisions, of which the first is presided over by the Lord President, and the second by the Lord Justice Clerk. The Lords Ordinary are subordinate to these higher functionaries, and generally attend to the initiatory steps of law proceedings. All the varied powers which in England would be exercised by the Courts of Chancery, Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, Admiralty, Ecclesiastical Courts, and Criminal Courts, are within the scope of the Court of Session, and constitute it a powerful and important body.

The Advocates' Library adjoins, and has a communication with the Parliament House. This is a very valuable establishment. It is one of those privileged libraries, which are empowered to demand a copy of every printed work published in Great Britain or Ireland. By this means a fine library, amounting to upwards of 150,000 volumes, has been accumulated. There are also among the MSS. many valuable works on the civil and ecclesiastical history of Scotland. This library belongs wholly to the Faculty of Advocates, and its current expenses are defrayed by small fees from the advocates; but nothing can exceed the liberality with which it is managed. Inhabitants of the city, who are in any way known as trustworthy, may have books home for perusal at pleasure; while strangers have no difficulty whatever in obtaining access to its treasures. The catalogues, instead of being arranged in one alphabetical series of authors' names, (as in the ill-digested system at the British Museum Library,) are first grouped into a few large divisions, according to the subjects, and then treated alphabetically under those divisions. A MS. A MS. Bible of the eleventh century; a copy of Faust and Guttemberg's first printed Bible; the original solemn League and Covenant, signed in 1580; and a number of other literary treasures, are among the contents of the library. All these books and MSS. have been deposited in galleries and rooms prepared from time to time for their reception, as occasion required; but they are worthy of a finer and more complete building,

The Signet Library is another establishment included within the same large mass of buildings. Though not so extensive as the Advocates', it is said to contain 50,000 volumes, and is particularly rich in works relating to British and Irish history. One of its rooms is a very noble one, far excelling any belonging to the Advocates' Library; indeed, it is one of the finest rooms in Edinburgh. This library is solely supported by the contributions of the Writers to the Signet; but the same spirit of liberality marks its mode of management as in the case of its larger neighbour.

Passing round to the north-west angle of Parliamentsquare, we come to the last building of this remarkable group-the County Hall. This, it is true, is quite detached from the Parliament House and its contiguous buildings; but it forms one of the Parliament-square series. The County Hall is copied from the Temple of Erectheus, at Athens, while the principal entrance is modelled from the choragic monument of Thrasyllus. This practice of taking some notable Greek structure as a model for modern edifices has been much followed at Edinburgh.

We now come back again into the High-street, where the venerable old Church of St. Giles forms the northern boundary of the Parliament-square, having an opening between it and the Police-office on the one side, and another between it and the County Hall on the other. The church is thus isolated. It is one of the most ancient buildings in Edinburgh, though its exterior has been frequently renovated. At what period the actual foundation was made seems to be unknown; but the church is mentioned in the year 1359, in a charter of David II. About a century afterwards, it was made a collegiate church, and as many as forty altars were supported within its walls. As the Scotch have, within the last three centuries, shown but little liking for episcopal and cathedral establishments, this old church has suffered some curious mutations in respect to the arrangement of its interior. After the Reformation, many of the sacred vessels and relics were removed, and the building itself was partitioned off into four places of worship. In 1603 James the Sixth took a farewell of his subjects in this church, before proceeding to take possession of the throne of England. In 1643 the solemn League and Covenant was sworn to within its walls, by the various parties to that agreement. At the present time the old Cathedral is divided into three distinct churches-the High Church, the West Church, and the Tolbooth Church. If we imagine the nave, the choir, and the south transept of a cathedral to form three churches, and the north transept to serve as a common entrance to all ot

them, we may form a tolerably correct idea of this family of churches. Our illustration (Cut, p. 149,) shows the western end of the Church, with part of the High-street, and of Parliament-square. The most noticeable feature about the building is the central tower: the top of it is crowned with open carved stone-work, with arches springing from the four corners, and meeting together in the centre, so as to form a sort of crown. In this respect it somewhat resembles the old church tower of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. As the tower is 160 feet in height, the elegant carved work which thus forms its summit presents a beautiful object as seen from other parts of the city.

Let us stand in the High-street, opposite the old Church, and look around us. We are in the midst of a tolerably wide and long thoroughfare, but we have only to go back one generation to the period when the old Tolbooth obstructed the street, standing out as an isolated block of buildings, like our odious "Middle-row, Holborn." We have before us a Map of Edinburgh, published about a century ago, in which the Luckenbooths is represented as a long narrow pile of buildings, having the Tolbooth at its western end, and a small avenue between them: a little to the east of this is the Cross, and still further east the Town Guard-house-all situated in the High-street, and all isolated from other buildings. The Parliament Close is represented as having the Parliament House at the south-west corner, but there are apparently no other official buildings at that spot. The wynds and closes, as represented branching out of this street, in all their full number antecedent to various pullingsdown and improvements, cannot fail to strike any one who looks at this old map.

The cumbrous mass of buildings here alluded to as having formed the Tolbooth and the Luckenbooths, was destroyed in 1817, very soon after Sir Walter Scott wrote his 'Heart of Midlothian;' and we may therefore refer to him as the most graphic of eyewitnesses respecting it, in recent times :-"The Tolbooth rears its ancient front in the very middle of the High-street, forming, as it were, the termination of a huge pile of buildings called the Luckenbooths, which, for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors had jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town; leaving for passage a narrow street on the north, and on the south, into which the prison opens, a narrow crooked lane, winding between the high and sombre walls of the Tolbooth and the adjacent houses on the one side and the buttresses and projections of the old cathedral upon the other. To give some gaiety to this sombre passage (well known by the name of the 'Krames,') a number of little booths or shops, after the fashion of cobblers' stalls, are plastered, as it were, against the Gothic projections and abutments; so that it seems as if the traders had occupied with nests, bearing the same proportion to the building, every buttress and coign of vantage, as the martlet did in Macbeth's castle. Of later years these booths have degenerated into mere toy-shops, where the little loiterers chiefly

interested in such wares are tempted to linger But in the times we write of, the hosiers, the glovers, the hatters, the mercers, the milliners, and all who dealt in the miscellaneous wares now termed haberdashers' goods, were to be found in the narrow alley."

Who can forget the events of which Scott makes the Tolbooth the scene? The skill with which this vivid writer works up the true story of Captain Porteous with the fiction of Effie Deans and her worthless lover, makes it difficult for a reader to separate the one from the other. Porteous was Captain of the Edinburgh City Guard, and one of his duties was to preserve the peace of the city during the execution of criminals. On one occasion two culprits, Wilson and Robertson (the 'Geordie Robertson' of Scott's novel) were proceeding to the "condemned sermon" just before their approaching execution, when Wilson, by a most daring act of courage, furnished an opportunity for Robertson to escape. Wilson was hanged, but cut down by the excited mob, whereupon Porteous shot him dead with a musket, and afterwards caused his guard to fire upon the enraged people, by which many lives were lost. For his reckless conduct in this affair, Porteous was tried, found guilty of murder, and ordered for execution. The 8th September, 1736, was to be the day of execution; but on that day a reprieve was received from the crown. This so exasperated the people, who had conceived the most intense hatred against Porteous, that they took the law into their own hands. At night a drum was heard beating to arms. The populace assembled, took possession of the city gates, cut off all communication between the Guard House and the Castle, and invested the Tolbooth, where Porteous was drinking with some boon companions, rejoicing over his recent escape. The mob endeavoured to batter down the door of the old prison; but this being too strong for them, they fairly set it on fire, made a breach, entered the prison, and dragged out Porteous. The Madge Wildfire, who aided in firing the Tolbooth, and the Effie Deans, who was found imprisoned within it, we may leave to Scott's imagination; but the seizure of Porteous himself was a real and a tragical incident, and so were the marching with him down the West Bow to the Grass-market, and the subsequent execution.

Sir Walter Scott could not fail to feel an interest in the old building which had furnished him with such stirring materials for one of his stories. Accordingly, when the Tolbooth was pulled down in 1817, he obtained possession of the gate, which he forthwith transferred to Abbotsford, where it still remains as an entrance to the kitchen court.

The Tolbooth and the Luckenbooths, the sides of the Cathedral, and the Parliament Close, were in the last century, the places of business of most of the booksellers and goldsmiths of Edinburgh. It appears to have been in the early part of the preceding century that the Old Kirk was first degraded by having shops or stalls stuck up between its buttresses on the

...

north side. These were not actually removed till 1817. "Long before their destruction," says Mr. Chambers, "the booksellers at least had found the 'cabined space' of six or seven feet too small for the accommodation of their fast-increasing wares, and removed to larger spots in the stupendous tenements of the square. . . . One of the largest of these booths, adjacent to the north side of the New or High Street, and having a second story, was occupied, during a great part of the last century, by Messrs. Kerr and Dempster, goldsmiths. The first of these gentlemen had been member of Parliament for the city, and was the last citizen who ever held that office. Such was the humility of people's wishes in those days respecting their houses, that this respectable person actually lived, and had a great many children, in the small space of the flat over the shop, and the cellar under it, which was lighted by a grating in the pavement of the square. The subterraneous part of his house was chiefly devoted to the purposes of a nursery, and proved so insalubrious in this capacity, that all his children died successively at a particular age, with the exception of his son Robert, who, being born much more weakly than the rest, had the good luck to be sent to the country to be nursed, and afterwards grew up to be the well-known author of the 'Life of Robert Bruce,' and other works." (Traditions of Edinburgh.)

Before the destruction of some old houses, where part of the Advocates' Library now stands, the shop of old George Heriot the goldsmith once stood-the wealthy old man, who built the Hospital named after him, and who plays so prominent a part in Scott's 'Fortunes of Nigel.' It was only seven feet square! From the above sketch the reader will easily see that there is no part of Edinburgh more likely to be rich in indications of the past and the present, than this central portion of the High Street and its adjacent openings. But we must pass on, and pursue our ramble eastward towards Holyrood.

As at present existing, the portion of the Highstreet from the High Church to the Canongate is broken by the two wide and beautiful openings of the North Bridge and the South Bridge, extending respectively over the two valleys lying on either side of the central ridge. But in older times there were no such wide openings. Nothing occurred but narrow wynds and closes. There were upwards of sixty of these closes in the small distance here indicated; rather more numerous on the northern than on the southern side of the way. The greater part of these, indeed, still remain, but marvellously changed in respect to their inhabitants. Mean and dirty as they now appear, these are the closes which actually lodged the gentry of Edinburgh in past times; while the High Street itself was also occupied by the better classes. In fact, there was hardly any saying where the line was drawn between the rich and the poor; for a man of birth and family would often occupy the upper flats of a house, the lower part of which was in very humble hands. At the corner of Strichen's Close,

next adjoining to Blackfriars Wynd, was a house which, just before the Reformation, was occupied by the Abbot of Melrose; the garden behind it reached down to the Cowgate. The house was afterwards occupied by Sir George Mackenzie in the time of Charles II., and in the eighteenth century by Lord Strichen. Blackfriars Wynd was a very centre of genteel houses two or three centuries ago. At the junction of it with the High Street stood the house of Lord President Fentonbarns.

There is a little knot of narrow wynds, near the east end of the south side of High Street, whose history would be well worth examining, if we could know all the changes which have been there witnessed. These include Tweeddale's Close, Foulis Close, and Hyndford's Close. All of them, narrow and insignificant as they now seem, once contained houses for the great and high-born: nay, some of those houses still remain, though much lowered in the rank of their occupants. If we enter Hyndford's Close, a cul-de-sac, we there see a house that has something about it which speaks of aristocratic families in by-gone times: in this house once lived the Earl of Hyndford; then the Earl of Selkirk; and afterwards Dr. Rutherfordwho was Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh, and uncle to Sir Walter Scott. Tweeddale Close, now Tweeddale Court, contains the mansion once occupied by the Marquis of Tweeddale, whose garden extended thence down to the Cowgate. How changed since!-The British Linen Company's Bank after wards occupied the mansion; and the extensive publishing firm of Oliver and Boyd now occupies both mansion and gardens: the printing-press gives life to a spot where courtly usages were once prevalent. In Foulis Close is a house, once occupied by Lord Foulis ; there is also an old weather-beaten kind of paperwarehouse, where the Waverley Novels were first printed: the window of a room lies invitingly for inspection, where Sir Walter is said to have revised the proof-sheets of his earlier novels, at a time when profound secresy was observed as to the name of the author.

We might linger among these old closes and wynds for days (though the present inhabitants might wonder what on earth we could be about), and still find something new, or rather something old, to say about them. To proceed, however, We find, nearly opposite the closes last described, a jutting bulk of houses which narrow the street considerably. This narrowed portion, extending from the High Street to the junction with the Canongate at Leith Wynd, forms the Netherbow, where was formerly the Netherbow Port, a city gate separating Edinburgh proper from the burgh of Canongate. At the west end of this Netherbow is 'John Knox's Corner,' where the stern old Reformer is said to have held forth to the people. Let those who wish to obtain a last glimpse of John Knox's house, speed thither forthwith. Its days are numbered. A 'free kirk' is about to be built on the spot; and Knox's house, with some others adjoining it, are to be levelled with the dust!