f turning the rebellious country into a desert. These proud
Scotsmen had supported the Union: they had perceived its necessity and
its use: but there was a point at which all their susceptibilities took
fire, and Whig lords and politicians were at one with every high-handed
Tory of the early times.

Allan Ramsay must also have seen, though he says nothing of it, the
brief occupation of Edinburgh by the unfortunate Prince Charles Edward,
and at a distance the pathetic little Court in Holyrood, the Jacobite
ladies in their brief glory, the fated captains of that wild little
army, in which the old world of tradition and romance made its last
outbreak upon modern prose and the possibilities of life. One would
imagine that for a man who had lived through that episode in the heart
of the old kingdom of the Stewarts, and whose house lay half-way between
the artillery of the castle, where a hostile garrison sat grimly
watching the invaders below, and the camp at Holyrood--there would have
been nothing in his life so exciting, nothing of which the record would
have been more distinct. But human nature, which has so many
eccentricities, is in nothing so wonderful as this, that the most
remarkable historical scenes make no impression upon its profound
everyday calm, and are less important to memory than the smallest
individual incident. The swarm of the wild Highlanders that took sudden
possession of street and changehouse, the boom of the cannon overhead
vainly attempting to disperse a group here and there or kill a rebel,
and the consciousness which one would think must have thrilled through
the very air, that under those turrets in the valley was the most
interesting young adventurer of modern times, the heir of the ancient
Scots kings, their undoubted representative--how could these things fail
to affect the mind even of the most steady-going citizen? But they did,
though we cannot comprehend it. Allan has a word for every little
domestic event in town or suburbs, but there is not a syllable said
either by himself or his biographers to intimate that he knew what was
going on under his eyes at that brief and sudden moment, the "one
crowded hour of glorious life," which cost so much blood of brave men,
and which the hapless Prince paid for afterwards in the disenchanted
tedium of many a dreary year.

[Illustration: SMOLLETT'S HOUSE]

It was before this time, however, that Ramsay reached the height of his
fame and of his produ