were spent still keeps its place on the east of the Castle
Hill, surveying from its windows the enriched and amplified yet
unalterable panorama so dear and beautiful to all Scottish eyes.

[Illustration: ALLAN RAMSAY'S MONUMENT]

[Illustration: DOORWAY, LADY STAIR'S CLOSE]

CHAPTER II

THE GUEST OF EDINBURGH

Royal Edinburgh, the city of the Scots kings and Parliament, the capital
of the ancient kingdom, would seem to have become weary somewhere in the
eighteenth century of dwelling alone upon her rock. There were, to be
sure, reasons more prosaic for the construction of the New Town, the
partner and companion of the old historical city. The population had
increased, the desire for comfort and space, and many luxuries unknown
to the early citizens of Edinburgh, had developed among the new. It was
no longer agreeable to the lawyers and philosophers to be crowded up
with the other inhabitants of a common stair, to have the din of street
cries and commotion ever in their ears, and the lowest of the population
always about their feet, as was inevitable when gentle and simple were
piled together in the High Street and Canongate. The old houses might be
noble houses when they were finally got at, through many drawbacks and
abominations--though in those days there was little appreciation even of
the stately beauty of old masonry and ornament--but their surroundings
became daily more and more intolerable. And it was an anachronism to
coop up a learned, elegant, and refined class, living under the
Hanoverian Georges in peace and loyalty, within the circle of walls now
broken down and useless, which had been adapted to protect the subjects
of the old Scottish Jameses from continual attacks.

Happily the nature of the situation prevented any amalgamation or loss
of the old boundaries and picturesque features of the ancient city, in
the new. There was no question of continuation or enlargement. Another
Edinburgh rose at the feet of the first, a sober, respectable, modern,
and square-toed town, with wide streets and buildings solid and strong,
not without pretensions to a certain stateliness of size and design, but
in strong contrast with the architecture and fashion native to the
soil--the high gables and turreted stairs of the past. The old town had
to throw a drawbridge, permanent and massive, over the hollow at her
feet before she could even reach the terraced valley on which the first
lines of habitation were draw