pe that those in authority will never attempt to convene a peace
congress in Edinburgh, lest the influence of the Castle be too strong
for the delegates. They could not resist it nor turn their backs upon
it, since, unlike other ancient fortresses, it is but a stone's throw
from the front windows of all the hotels. They might mean never so
well, but they would end by buying dirk hat-pins and claymore brooches
for their wives, their daughters would all run after the kilted
regiment and marry as many of the pipers as asked them, and before
night they would all be shouting with the noble Fitz-Eustace,

"Where's the coward who would not dare
To fight for such a land?"

While I was rhapsodizing, Salemina and Francesca were shopping in the
Arcade, buying some of the cairngorms, and Tam O'Shanter purses, and
models of Burns's cottage, and copies of "Marmion" in plaided covers,
and thistle belt-buckles, and bluebell penwipers, with which we
afterwards inundated our native land. When my warlike mood had passed,
I sat down upon the steps of the Scott monument and watched the
passers-by in a sort of waking dream. I suppose they were the usual
professors and doctors and ministers who are wont to walk up and down
the Edinburgh streets, with a sprinkling of lairds and leddies of high
degree and a few Americans looking at the shop windows to choose their
clan-tartans; but for me they did not exist. In their places stalked
the ghosts of kings and queens and knights and nobles: Columba, Abbot
of Iona; Queen Margaret and Malcolm--she the sweetest saint in all the
throng; King David riding towards Drumsheugh forest on Holy Rood-day,
with his horns and hounds and huntsmen following close behind; Anne of
Denmark and Jingling Geordie; Mary Stuart in all her girlish beauty,
with the four Maries in her train; and lurking behind, Bothwell, "that
ower sune stepfaither," and the murdered Rizzio and Darnley; John
Knox, in his black Geneva cloak; Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora
Macdonald; lovely Annabella Drummond; Robert the Bruce; George Heriot
with a banner bearing on it the words "I distribute chearfully;" James
I. carrying The King's Quair; Oliver Cromwell; and a long line of
heroes, martyrs, humble saints, and princely knaves.

Behind them, regardless of precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and the
Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Dr. John Brown and Thomas
Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay and S