then more imposing, owing to the uninterrupted range of buildings on
each side, which, broken only at the space where the North Bridge
joins the main street, formed a superb and uniform Place, extending
from the front of the Luckenbooths to the head of the Canongate, and
corresponding in breadth and length to the uncommon height of the
buildings on either side."

Since then this great Place has become more majestic, as well as more
open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer
than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before
us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to
twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh
still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no doubt he must have
caught the aspect of the previous sketch on some king's birthday or
other public holiday, the 4th of June perhaps, that familiar festival in
other regions, when the guns of the Castle were saluting and the smoke
hanging about those heights like a veil.

It was one of the privations of Scott's life as it began to fall into
its last subdued and suffering stage that he had to give up his
Edinburgh house and the cheerful company which had so long made his
winters pleasant. He loved the country and his home there at all
seasons, as the readers of the poetical chapters of friendly dedication
and communing addressed to different friends between the cantos of
_Marmion_ will well remember: but yet the yearly change, the natural
transfer of life in the short days to the cheerful surroundings of town,
the twinkling of those very lights, the assembling of bright faces, the
meeting of old friends, were always dear to him, and this sacrifice was
not one of the least which he made during the tremendous struggle of his
waning years.

[Illustration: GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH]

With no other name could we so fitly close the story of our ancient
capital, a story fitfully told with many breaks and omissions, yet
offering some thread of connection to link together the different eras
of a picturesque and characteristic national life. Had space and
knowledge permitted, there is, in the records of Scottish law alone,
much that is interesting, along with a still larger contribution of wit
and humour and individual character, to the elucidation of the period
which passed between the end of the history of Edinburgh under her
native kings and the be