nto God's keeping.

On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a Sunday; only taverns,
toyshops, and other holiday magazines, keep open doors. Everyone looks
for his handsel. The postmen and the lamplighters have left, at every
house in their districts, a copy of vernacular verses, asking and
thanking in a breath; and it is characteristic of Scotland that these
verses may have sometimes a touch of reality in detail of sentiment and
a measure of strength in the handling. All over the town, you may see
comforter'd schoolboys hastening to squander their half-crowns. There
are an infinity of visits to be paid; all the world is in the street,
except the daintier classes; the sacramental greeting is heard upon all
sides; Auld Lang Syne is much in people's mouths; and whisky and
shortbread are staple articles of consumption. From an early hour a
stranger will be impressed by the number of drunken men; and by
afternoon drunkenness has spread to the women. With some classes of
society, it is as much a matter of duty to drink hard on New-year's Day
as to go to church on Sunday. Some have been saving their wages for
perhaps a month to do the season honour. Many carry a whisky-bottle in
their pocket, which they will press with embarrassing effusion on a
perfect stranger. It is not expedient to risk one's body in a cab, or
not, at least, until after a prolonged study of the driver. The streets,
which are thronged from end to end, become a place for delicate
pilotage. Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy and
quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out and
cannoning one against another; and now and again, one falls, and lies as
he has fallen. Before night, so many have gone to bed or the police
office, that the streets seem almost clearer. And as _guisards_ and
_first-footers_ are now not much seen except in country places, when
once the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at the Tron railings,
the festivities begin to find their way indoors and something like quiet
returns upon the town. But think, in these piled _lands_, of all the
senseless snorers, all the broken heads and empty pockets!

Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and
one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention. But the
great generation, I am afraid, is at an end; and even during my own
college days, the spirit appreciably declined. Skating and sliding, on
the other hand, are h