shop in the
Luckenbooths, his head covered with the quaint three-cornered hat of the
period, beneath which peeped his tie-wig, was one of the familiar sights
of Edinburgh, to be pointed out to strangers with a pride and an
affection that never diminished. In his little villa on the Castlehill
he entertained his friends in true Horatian style, and with a
hospitality every whit as warm, though it was every whit as simple as
that which the great Roman promised Maecenas, he made them free of what
was in his power to give.

Foibles he had,--and who is without them? faults, too,--for what
character lacks them? yet his very foibles and his faults leaned to
virtue's side. Vain he certainly was, deny the fact who can? his
egotism, also, may have jarred on some whose individuality was as strong
as his own, but whose liberality in making allowances for human
weaknesses was less. Nay, he may even in some respects have been 'near'
with regard to certain little things, though this was the result of his
humble upbringing, where, in the household economy of the Crichtons, a
pound was a fortune. But once break through the crust of his
old-fashioned formalism with the thrust of some pressing appeal for aid,
and instantly we touch the core of a ready and warm sympathy--a sympathy
as catholic in the radius of its beneficence as it was munificent in the
measure of its benefactions. To the poor, to the suffering, to the widow
and the orphan, to the fatherless and the friendless, Allan Ramsay was
ever the readiest to help where help was really needed; and if his
vanity liked the fact to be made public property, wherein lay the harm?
Do our published subscription-lists to-day not testify to the existence
of the same foible in nine-tenths of us? To the improvident, however, to
the lazy, to the genteel beggar, and to the thousand and one forms
mendicity--supported by mendacity--takes to extort money, Allan was as
adamant. 'Gang your wa's,' he would say to such; 'gar your elbuck earn
what your mooth eats, and ye'll be a better man.'

Allan has had the misfortune to be rated by what he did not do in the
way of charity, rather than by what he did. Because he esteemed charity
to begin at home, and that he should provide for his own before
participating in any schemes for providing for others, he has been rated
as selfish and miserly. The opposite is the case. Prudent, careful, and
economical,--into no speculation would he go from which he did not s