. On
the Saturday evening of his arrival a note was dispatched by him to
Boswell, who flew to him, and 'exulted in the thought that I now had him
actually in Caledonia.'

Arm in arm they walked up the High Street to Boswell's house in James's
Court, to which he had removed from the Canongate. The first impression
of the Scottish capital was not pleasing, for at ten the beat of the
city drums was heard; and, amid cries of _gardy loo_, what Oldham
euphemistically calls 'the perils of the night,' were thrown over the
windows down on the pavement, in the absence of covered sewers. When
Captain Burt before this time had been in Edinburgh, a 'caddie' had
preceded him on a scouting expedition with cries of 'haud your han','
and among flank and rear discharges he had passed to his quarters. A
zealous Scotsman, as Boswell says, could have wished the doctor to be
less gifted with the sense of smell, however much the sense of the
breadth of the street and the height of the buildings impressed him. His
wife had tea waiting, and they sat till two in the morning. To shew
respect for the sage, Mrs Boswell had given up her own room, which her
husband 'cannot but gratefully mention, as one of a thousand obligations
which I owe her, since the great obligation of her being pleased to
accept of me as her husband.'

Next morning, on the Sunday, Mr Scott and Sir Wm. Forbes of Pitsligo
breakfasted with them, and the host's heart was delighted by the 'little
infantine noise' which his child Veronica made, with the appearance of
listening to the great man. The fond father with a cheerful
recklessness, not realized we fear, declared she should have for this
five hundred pounds of additional fortune.

The best society in the capital was invited to meet Johnson at breakfast
and dinner--Robertson, Hailes, Gregory, Blacklock, and others. James's
Court was rather a distinguished part of the city, and an improvement
upon the former quarters in Chessel's Buildings. The inhabitants, says
Robert Chambers, took themselves so seriously as to keep a clerk to
record their proceedings, together with a scavenger of their own, and
held among themselves their social meetings and balls. Hume had occupied
part of the house before Johnson's visit, though three years had passed
since he had moved to the new town into St David Street. Writing from
his old house to Adam Smith, he is glad to 'have come within sight of
you, and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my win