ndles by turning the
melted wax out on the carpet.

Many years after this, but while Boswell was still living in James's
Court, a lad named Francis Jeffrey one night helped to carry the great
biographer home--a circumstance in the life of a gentleman much more of
an every-day or every-night affair at that time than at present. The
next day Boswell patted the lad on the head, and kindly added, "If you
go on as you have begun, you may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet."

The stranger who enters what is apparently the ground-floor of one of
these houses on the north side of High street is often surprised to find
himself, without having gone up stairs, looking from a fourth-story
window in the rear. This is due to the steep slope on which the houses
stand, and gives them the command of a beautiful view, including the New
Town, and extending across the Firth of Forth to the varied shores of
Fife. From his flat in James's Court we find David Hume, after his
return from France, writing to Adam Smith, then busy at Kirkcaldy about
the _Wealth of Nations_, "I am glad to have come within sight of you,
and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from my windows."

Another feature of these houses is the little cells designed for
oratories or praying-closets, to which the master of the house was
supposed to retire for his devotions, in literal accordance with the
gospel injunction. David Hume's flat had two of these, for the spiritual
was relatively better cared for than the temporal in those days: plenty
of praying-closets, but _no drains_! This difficulty was got over by
making it lawful for householders, after ten o'clock at night, to throw
superfluous material out of the window--a cheerful outlook for Boswell
and others being "carried home"!

[Illustration: BUCCLEUGH PLACE, WHERE THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW" WAS
PROJECTED.]

[Illustration: COLLEGE WYND, WHERE SCOTT WAS BORN.]

At the bottom of Byre's Close a house is pointed out where Oliver
Cromwell stayed, and had the advantage of contemplating from its lofty
roof the fleet which awaited his orders in the Forth. The same house was
once occupied by Bothwell, bishop of Orkney, and is associated with the
memory of Anne, the bishop's daughter, whose sorrows are enbalmed in
plaintive beauty in the old cradle-song:

Baloo,[A] my boy, lie still and sleep,
It grieves me sair to see thee weep:
If thou'lt be silent, I'll be glad;
Thy mourning makes my heart full sad.
Baloo, my