mpt to convene a Peace
Congress in Edinburgh, lest the influence of the Castle be too strong
for the delegates. They could not resist it nor turn their backs upon
it, since, unlike other ancient fortresses, it is but a stone's-throw
from the front windows of all the hotels. They might mean never so well,
but they would end by buying dirk hat-pins and claymore brooches for
their wives, their daughters would all run after the kilted regiment and
marry as many of the pipers as asked them, and before night they would
all be shouting with the noble FitzEustace--

'Where's the coward who would not dare
To fight for such a land?'

While I was rhapsodising, Salemina and Francesca were shopping in the
Arcade, buying some of the cairngorms, and Tam O'Shanter purses, and
models of Burns's cottage, and copies of Marmion in plaided covers, and
thistle belt-buckles, and bluebell penwipers, with which we afterwards
inundated our native land. When my warlike mood had passed, I sat down
upon the steps of the Scott monument and watched the passers-by in
a sort of waking dream. I suppose they were the usual professors and
doctors and ministers who are wont to walk up and down the Edinburgh
streets, with a sprinkling of lairds and leddies of high degree and a
few Americans looking at the shop windows to choose their clan tartans;
but for me they did not exist. In their places stalked the ghosts of
kings and queens and knights and nobles; Columba, Abbot of Iona; Queen
Margaret and Malcolm--she the sweetest saint in all the throng; King
David riding towards Drumsheugh forest on Holy Rood day, with his horns
and hounds and huntsmen following close behind; Anne of Denmark and
Jingling Geordie; Mary Stuart in all her girlish beauty, with the four
Maries in her train; and lurking behind, Bothwell, 'that ower sune
stepfaither,' and the murdered Rizzio and Darnley; John Knox, in his
black Geneva cloak; Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora Macdonald; lovely
Annabella Drummond; Robert the Bruce; George Heriot with a banner
bearing on it the words 'I distribute chearfully'; James I. carrying
The King's Quair; Oliver Cromwell; and a long line of heroes, martyrs,
humble saints, and princely knaves.

Behind them, regardless of precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and
the Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Dr. John Brown and Thomas
Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay and Sir
Walter; and is it not a proof of the Wiza