om old parochial records of 1605, Margaret
Sinclair was cited by the Session of the Kirk for being at the Burne
for water on the Sabbath; that Janet Merling was ordered to make
public repentance for concealing a bairn unbaptized in her house for
the space of twenty weeks and calling said bairn Janet; that Pat
Richardson had to crave mercy for being found in his boat in time of
afternoon service; and that Janet Walker, accused of having visitors
in her house in sermon-time, had to confess her offense and on her
knees crave mercy of God _and_ the Kirk Session (which no doubt was
much worse) under penalty of a hundred pounds Scots. Possibly there
are people yet who would prefer to pay a hundred pounds rather than
hear a sermon, but they are few.

It was in the early seventeen hundred and thirties when Allan Ramsay,
"in fear and trembling of legal and clerical censure," lent out the
plays of Congreve and Farquhar from his famous High Street library. In
1756 it was that the Presbytery of Edinburgh suspended all clergymen
who had witnessed the representation of "Douglas," that virtuous
tragedy written, to the dismay of all Scotland, by a minister of the
Kirk. That the world, even the theological world, moves with tolerable
rapidity when once set in motion, is evinced by the fact that on Mrs.
Siddons' second engagement in Edinburgh, in the summer of 1785, vast
crowds gathered about the doors of the theatre, not at night alone,
but in the day, to secure places. It became necessary to admit them
first at three in the afternoon, and then at noon, and eventually "the
General Assembly of the Church then in session was compelled to
arrange its meetings with reference to the appearance of the great
actress." How one would have enjoyed hearing that Scotsman say, after
one of her most splendid flights of tragic passion, "That's no bad!"
We have read of her dismay at this ludicrous parsimony of praise, but
her self-respect must have been restored when the Edinburgh ladies
fainted by dozens during her impersonation of Isabella in "The Fatal
Marriage."

Since Scottish hospitality is well-nigh inexhaustible, it is not
strange that from the moment Edinburgh streets began to be crowded
with ministers, our drawing-room table began to bear shoals of
engraved invitations of every conceivable sort, all equally unfamiliar
to our American eyes.

"The Purse-Bearer is commanded by the Lord High Commissioner and the
Marchioness of Heatherdale to