and in one of the corners there lay a damp heap, gathered
up like the lair of some wild beast, on which some one seemed to have
slept, mayhap months before. The partitions were crazed and tottering;
the walls blackened with smoke; broad patches of plaster had fallen from
the ceilings, or still dangled from them, suspended by single hairs; and
the bars of the grates, crusted with rust, had become red as foxtails.
Mr. M'Craw nodded his head over the gathered heap of straw. "Ah," he
said--"got in again, I see! The shutters must be looked to." "I
daresay," I remarked, looking disconsolately around me, "you don't find
it very easy to get tenants for houses of this kind." "_Very_ easy!"
said Mr. M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I thought,
with also a good deal of Highland _hauteur_--as was of course quite
natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-agent, when dealing with the
owner of a domicile that would not let, and who made foolish
remarks--"No, nor easy at all, or it would not be locked up in this way:
but if we took off the shutters you would soon get tenants enough." "Oh,
I suppose so; and I daresay it is as difficult to sell as to let such
houses." "Ay, and more," said Mr. M'Craw: "it's all sellers, and no
buyers, when we get this low." "But do you not think," I perseveringly
asked, "that some kind, charitable person might be found in the
neighbourhood disposed to take it off my hands as a free gift! It's
terrible to be married for life to a baggage of a house like this, and
made liable, like other husbands, for all its debts. Is there no way of
getting a divorce?" "Don't know," he emphatically replied, with somewhat
of a nasal snort; and so we parted; and I saw or heard no more of Peter
M'Craw until many years after, when I found him celebrated in the
well-known song by poor Gilfillan.[7] And in the society of my friend I
soon forgot my miserable house, and all the liabilities which it
entailed.

I was as entirely unacquainted with great towns at this time as the
shepherd in Virgil; and, excited by what I saw, I sadly tasked my
friend's peripatetic abilities, and, I fear, his patience also, in
taking an admiring survey of all the more characteristic streets, and
then in setting out for the top of Arthur's Seat--from which, this
evening, I watched the sun set behind the distant Lomonds--that I might
acquaint myself with the features of the surrounding country, and the
effect of the city as a whole. A