Lady Elphinstone, then Lady Carmichael, was a daughter of Mr. Elliott; and another daughter, Margaret, and cousins Charlotte, &c., and other companions often staying with them, possessed female attractions which could hardly be surpassed in the British empire. They were also frank and unceremonious, and delightful were the forenoons of those days when my early morning toils brought me the privilege of mingling, for the sake of recreation, with such company. To confess the truth, Mr. Elliott's dictations were not so rapid as speedily to exhaust a prolix deed, and I did not exert myself to write so very fast as would expedite the transaction, without due time for deliberation and correctness; and so, between us, it never could be said that the business was spoilt by being hurried, or that we set our ungrateful faces against the law's delay. Had it not been for such co-lateral inducements, I should never have stuck even nominally to this profession as I did. As it was, I did not attend the classes to receive the necessary instruction, but went as an amateur, pretty regularly, to those of medicine and chemistry, for which sciences I had a strong natural predilection; but, indeed, it was, altogether, too much of play or pleasure, and too little of work or study. I almost realised a wish I had entertained in my early school days, on seeing a fountain: “Oh, happy fountain," I whispered to myself, "would I were like you, and had nothing to do but to play! Perhaps no place in Britain has changed so essentially, within the present century, as the Scottish capital. At the time I am writing of, it was in customs, manners, and every element of society, from top to bottom, nearly as different from London, as London was from Pekin. From senators of the College of Justice* to caddies (a sort of ticket-porters, *See Appendix E. or running footmen, generally highlanders,) in the streets, there was a strange spice of eccentricity which led to odd habits and acts, as the rule and not the exception throughout the community. Billiards and luncheons, dinners and hard drinking, tavern suppers and oyster fêtes, and hearing the chimes at midnight after the fashion of which Justice Shallow boasts, formed the general living panorama of the place. My disposition vacillated between thoughtfulness and thoughtlessness: I was either absorbed in the one or misled by the other. In London, the amusements and reoreations had still left me under the protection of the graver and better mood; but in Edinburgh, the gaieties and seductions, ever tempting the other way, were too potent for me to resist. Thus, though it was impossible not to acquire a good deal of intelligence from my social intercourse, during the period I passed there, I never could look back upon the precious time when so much might have been done, without deep and vain regrets that it had been so irretrievably wasted and mis-spent. Being initiated into free-masonry in the Ancient Lodge of the Canongate Kilwinning,-having a pistol bullet fired at me near Mushat's Crag, in consequence of a silly quarrel with a fiery West Indian student, and serving in the splendid corps, the 1st Regiment of Edinburgh Volunteers, commanded by Charles Hope, were the leading events left on my memory during this period, susceptible, if worthy, of public record in my personal journal. And here allow me to remark, or rather to repeat the statement with which I set out,—that I find it irksome to deal so largely in Self-notice; but consistently with my design, I cannot help My-Self, and can only promise relief when I come to broader correspondence with men and things, and a later date whereunto matters more interesting to the present generation belong. Hitherto, I could but exhibit sketches of the past; and scenes in which, with all my desire to do so, the part of Hamlet could not be omitted. Be this my apology for yet a little longer trespass. My Masonic career, which I conscientiously except from the category of ill-employed time, brought me into more familiar acquaintance with Lord Rancliffe, Tom Sheridan (as he was called then, and, I believe, to the day of his death), and other Aides, who were my contemporaneous brethren, though initiated in another Lodge, of which a well-known and popular humourist, Joseph Gillon, W.S., happened to be master. His rich jokes and racy conversation formed a lode-star to the congenial temperament of Sheridan, who, even in his younger days, displayed no small share of his father's wit and brilliancy. These attractions, and the habits of the gude Auld Town, led to occasional tavernresorts, after the sober refections of the Lodges—which were restricted to a slice of bread and cheese and a single glass to drink (not, as in London, rounded off by plenteous banquets)—and convivial enjoyments were carried on with a degree of spirit and animation that could hardly be surpassed. The high jinks of a preceding era were certainly improved upon; for we were not so boisterous, and I should think, from the talents of some of the party, quite as well qualified for the glow and pungency of social hours-merry without coarseness, and jovial without excess. These revels, however, such as they were, did not limit themselves to very early separations. On the contrary, past midnight, or, as the Old Reekie topers denominated them, “the sma' hours” were generally invaded. Against this, the Commander-inChief had remonstrated, and I cannot forget one night when we got back to the adjacent domiciles, Nos. 94 and 95, my companions tapped gently at their door, and were astonished, dismayed, to see it thrown open, and the gaunt figure of Lord Moira standing in his dressing-gown, with a wax light in each hand, ready to admit them. I skulked into the other side of the iron rail, and heard the sonorous admonition, "Walk in, gentlemen! You are aware that I have ordered my servants not to sit up after twelve o'clock, and, therefore, when you choose to stay out so late, it must be my office to be your porter." Conceive the picture which this scene would have furnished to an artist of grave or comic subjects! EDINBURGH-STORIES. CHAPTER VIII. EDINBURGH-STORIES. But now the trumpet, terrible from far, And echoing hills (Pentland) the loud alarm repeat. ADDISON. HAVING presented the gallant Commander-in-Chief, en déshabille, it may not be amiss to enliven my page with a few other anecdotes of an individual who played so conspicuous a part in the later politics and history of the country. And I must begin with the notice of a dog of mine, because thereby hangs a tale. His lordship, I need hardly relate, married the Countess of Loudon, one of the wealthiest and noblest matches in Scotland. After his return to his residence in Queen-street, with his bride, it so happened that a perverse pointer, which Mr. Elliott had permitted me to keep in his stables behind the house, at the end of a very short piece of garden ground, either took it into his head to begin, or vehemently to continue, a bad custom, hitherto unchecked by any neighbour whom it might annoy,-viz., that of howling a serenade throughout the livelong night. This was worse than marrowbones and cleavers, or the nuptial clangors of street-bands, and I was not surprised at an application from his lordship to abate the nuisance; which was immediately done, and Ponto |