uld Homer sang for's daily bread;
Surprising Shakspeare fin'd the wool;
Great Virgil creels and baskets made;
And famous Ben employed the trowel.

"Yet Dorset, Lansdown, Lauderdale,
Bucks, Stirling, and the son of Angus,
Even monarchs, and o' men the wale,
Were proud to be enrolled amang us."

It is true that Homer and Shakspeare might be surprised to find
themselves rubbing elbows with the wigmaker of the High Street. Still,
he shows a fine spirit, and his very strut is respectable.

[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S HOUSE]

In the end of his life, when the author of _The Gentle Shepherd_ by all
his trades, both as poet and shopkeeper, had amassed a fortune, he built
himself a house in the most glorious position which poet could have
chosen. It is on the crest of the hill, a little way below the castle,
and is still to be seen from Princes Street--a distinct feature in the
picturesque and varied line of building. He is said, though on what
authority we are not told, to have applied to the Crown for ground
enough to build a cage for _his burd_, meaning his wife: which is
supposed to be the reason why he built his house in an octagonal shape
like a cage: his wife, however, did not live long enough to inhabit it.
Additions and emendations have been made, so that there is no great
peculiarity in the form of the old square house on the summit of the
green slope, just clear of the rocks of the castle, as it is visible
to-day. When it was built the new town of Edinburgh was not yet dreamed
of, and nothing disturbed the panorama of green fields that lay between
Edinburgh and the Firth. The town wall was falling into ruin, yet still
existed in fragmentary towers and ramparts here and there, and low down
in the depths of the descent, which was not so precipitous there as
under the castle, the high houses and green braes were reflected in the
quiet waters of the North Loch. From thence the fields and scattered
farmhouses, the Calton Hill in unadorned greenness, a church spire and a
cluster of village roofs here and there, led the eye to the shining of
the Scottish Sea, the great water with its islands, the coast of Fife
with its dotted line of little fishing towns, the two green Lomonds
standing softly distinct against the misty line of more distant hills.
It was the same view that moved Fitz-Eustace to ecstasy, still but
little changed in the eighteenth century from what it had been in the
s