toleration, it seems difficult to realise that earlier Edinburgh, where,
we learned from old parochial records of 1605, Margaret Sinclair was
cited by the Session of the Kirk for being at the 'Burne' for water on
the Sabbath; that Janet Merling was ordered to make public repentance
for concealing a bairn unbaptized in her house for the space of twenty
weeks and calling said bairn Janet; that Pat Richardson had to crave
mercy for being found in his boat in time of afternoon service; and that
Janet Walker, accused of having visitors in her house in sermon-time,
had to confess her offence and on her knees crave mercy of God AND the
Kirk Session (which no doubt was much worse) under penalty of a hundred
pounds Scots. Possibly there are people yet who would prefer to pay a
hundred pounds rather than hear a sermon, but they are few.

It was in the early seventeen hundred and thirties when Allan Ramsay,
'in fear and trembling of legal and clerical censure,' lent out the
plays of Congreve and Farquhar from his famous High Street library. In
1756 it was, that the Presbytery of Edinburgh suspended all clergymen
who had witnessed the representation of Douglas, that virtuous tragedy
written, to the dismay of all Scotland, by a minister of the Kirk. That
the world, even the theological world, moves with tolerable rapidity
when once set in motion, is evinced by the fact that on Mrs. Siddons'
second engagement in Edinburgh, in the summer of 1785, vast crowds
gathered about the doors of the theatre, not at night alone, but in the
day, to secure places. It became necessary to admit them first at three
in the afternoon and then at noon, and eventually 'the General Assembly
of the Church then in session was compelled to arrange its meetings with
reference to the appearance of the great actress.' How one would have
enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after one of her most splendid
flights of tragic passion, 'That's no bad!' We have read of her dismay
at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but her self-respect must have
been restored when the Edinburgh ladies fainted by dozens during her
impersonation of Isabella in The Fatal Marriage.

Since Scottish hospitality is well-nigh inexhaustible, it is not
strange that from the moment Edinburgh streets began to be crowded
with ministers, our drawing-room table began to bear shoals of engraved
invitations of every conceivable sort, all equally unfamiliar to our
American eyes.

'The Purse-Bearer