has never
given up the keen criticism of every sham and seeming which exaggerated
the absolutism of its natural character, and along with the destruction
of false sentiment imposed a proud restraint and restriction upon much
also that was true.

[Illustration: EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW]

[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S SHOP]

To come down from the age when Mary still reigned in Holyrood and Knox
in St. Giles's--and Edinburgh saw every phase of passion and tragedy,
wild love, hatred, revenge, and despair, with scarcely less impassioned
devotion, zeal, and fury of Reformation, and all the clang of opposed
factions, feuds, and frays in her streets--to the age when the
Parliament House and its law courts were the centre of Edinburgh, when
Holyrood was the debtors' sanctuary, and St. Giles's a cluster of parish
churches, even its distinctive name no longer used: and when the
citizens clustered about the Cross of afternoons no longer to see the
heralds in their tabards and hear the royal proclamations, but to tell
and spread the news from London and discuss the wars in the Low
Countries, and many a witty scandal, gibes from the Bench and repartees
from the Bar, the humours of the old lords and ladies in their "Lodging"
in the Canongate, and the witticisms of the favourite changehouse--is as
great a leap as if a whole world came between. The Court at St. Germains
retained the devotion of many, but Anne Stewart was on the throne, and
rebellion was not thought of, while everything was still full of hope
for the old dynasty, so that Edinburgh was at full leisure to talk and
jeer and gossip and make encounter of wits, with nothing more exciting
in hand. In this tranquil period, his apprenticeship being finished, a
certain young man from the west, by the name of Allan Ramsay, opened a
shop in the High Street "opposite Niddry's Wynd" as a
"weegmaker"--perhaps, if truth were known, a barber's shop, in all ages
known as the centre of gossip wherever it appears. It is odd, by the
way, that a place so entirely dedicated to the service of the male
portion of the population, and where women have no place, should have
this general reputation; but so it has always been. He had spent his
early years as a shepherd on Crawford Moor in the Upper Ward of
Clydesdale, and no doubt had there learned every song that floated about
the country-side. "Honest Allan" was in every respect a model of the
well-doing and prosperous Edinburgh shopkeeper of his