at they were in
Orkney, and had grown quite as well as the planes of public
thoroughfares grow elsewhere. After an abortive attempt or two made in
other quarters, I was successful in procuring lodgings for a few days in
the house of a respectable widow lady of the place, where I found
comfort and quiet on very moderate terms. The cast of faded gentility
which attached to so many of the older houses of Kirkwall,--remnants of
a time when the wealthier Udallers of the Orkneys used to repair to
their capital at the close of autumn, to while away in each other's
society their dreary winters,--reminded me of the poet Malcolm's "Sketch
of the Borough,"--a portrait for which Kirkwall is known to have
sat,--and of the great revolution effected in its evening parties, when
"tea and turn-out" yielded its place to "tea and turn-in." But the
churchyard of the place, which I had seen, as I passed along, glimmering
with all its tombstones in the uncertain light, was all that remained to
represent those "great men of the burgh," who, according to the poet,
used to "pop in on its card and dancing assemblies, about the eleventh
hour, resplendent in top-boots and scarlet vests," or of its
"suppression-of-vice sisterhood of moral old maids," who kept all their
neighbors right by the terror of their tongues. I was somewhat in a
mood, after my chill and hungry voyage, to recall with a hankering of
regret the vision of its departed suppers, so luxuriously described in
the "Sketch,"--suppers at which "large rounds of boiled beef smothered
in cabbage, smoked geese, mutton hams, roasts of pork, and dishes of
dog-fish and of Welsh rabbits melted in their own fat, were diluted by
copious draughts of strong home-brewed ale, and etherealized by gigantic
bowls of rum punch." But the past, which is not ours, who, alas, can
recall! And, after discussing a juicy steak and a modest cup of tea, I
found I could regard with the indifferency of a philosopher, the
perished suppers of Kirkwall.

I quitted my lodgings for church next morning about three-quarters of an
hour ere the service commenced; and, finding the doors shut, sauntered
up the hill that rises immediately over the town. The thick gloomy
weather had passed with the night; and a still, bright, clear-eyed
Sabbath looked cheerily down on green isle and blue sea. I was quite
unprepared by any previous description, for the imposing assemblage of
ancient buildings which Kirkwall presents full in the f