Poor fellow! all his thoughtless pleasures were transient indeed!

Next comes St. Giles's church, which, not to be out of fashion, has lately put on an entirely new suit of stone-thus losing all just claim to its familiar appellation of "Auld Saunt Giles." In the southern aisle of the Old Church (for this is a group of three churches) are the tombs of the sagacious, but unscrupulous, Regent Murray; and of the greater Napier, whose invention of logarithms advanced the science of calculation, as much as Watt's discovery of the steam engine did that of mechanics. There is an inscription on the exterior wall of the church next the High Street, ruuning thus

SEP.

FAMILIE NAPERORV INTERIVS

HIC SITVM
EST.

In this neighbourhood, formerly stood a cluster of lumbering old buildings, which will long be remembered with interest. Adjacent to the north side of St. Giles were the Luckenbooths, a projecting row of old stone buildings, consisting chiefly of shops. And at the north-west corner

of the same church, the tall, narrow, oblong edifice called the Tolbooth, better known as the Heart of Midlothian, stretched directly across the High Street. The executions took place here on a platform looking towards the Castle.

Opposite to the present Royal Exchange, also in the Street, rose the Cross of Edinburgh, where many a momentous proclamation was made, and where the merchants assembled to transact their affairs:

The lawyers eke to Cross repair

Their wigs to shaw, an' toss an air :
While busy agent closely plies,

An' a' his kittle cases tries.

Even after it was taken down, the men of business for a long while insisted on meeting at the spot, instead of retiring to the less disturbed precincts of the Exchange.

Eastward still, and on the same side of the causeway rose another well known building, the Town Guard-house, the head quarters of

that black banditti

The City Guard.

These gentry seem to have been always peculiarly obnoxious to the random mob of Edinburgh, who took every possible opportunity of annoying and insulting them :

the City Guard

In military art weel lear'd,

Wi' powder'd pow, an' shaven beard,

Gang thro' their functions;

By hostile rabble seldom spar'd
O' clarty unctions.

That they succeeded, however, in inspiring fear as well as hatred, is evident from the following.

Gude fouk! as ye come frae the fair,

Bide yont frae this black squad;

There's nae sic savages elsewhere

Allow'd to wear cockad' !

Than the strong lion's hungry maw,

Or tusk o' Russian bear,

Frae their wanruly fellin' paw

Mair cause ye hae to fear

Your death that day.

Still passing down the High Street, the next object of interest is the Tron Kirk, which, like its neighbour St. Giles, has been recased with stone;

it can boast also of a more harmonious bell than

that

Wanwordy crazy dinsome thing,

which excited so much indignation in Fergusson:

For when I've toom'd the meikle cap,
An' fain wou'd fa' oure in a nap;

Troth I cou'd doze as sound's a tap
Were't no for thee,

That gies the tither weary chap
To wauken me.

Lower down, on the opposite side, at the extremity of the Netherbow, a house projects into the In this John Knox lodged for some time, and from one of its windows he was in the habit of preaching to the populace below. At the protruding corner of the house there is a rude image of the Scottish Reformer in his pulpit, the whole of which is duly and carefully painted, as occasion requires, by the present tonsorian proprietor. The dates of Knox's birth and death are recorded on the pannel of the pulpit, and on one side of the image is a device representing the sun, on the disk of which the name of God is inscribed in three languages, Greek, Latin, and English. It was, per

haps, from this very abode that he was summoned before Queen Mary and her councillors to answer for a sermon, in which he had inveighed against the massacre perpetrated at Vassy, by the Duke of Guise's servants. The firmness of the Protestant champion elicited from the Queen's attendants the involuntary exclamation

"He is not afraid!"

To which the old man retorted—“ Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman affright me? I have looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been affrighted above measure."

Along this identical street, which I have trodden so lately, he was often seen passing to his church with difficulty, according to the graphic description in Melvill's Diary:-" I saw him every day that he taught, go slowly and warily with a furring of martins round his neck, a staff in the one hand, and good godly Richard Bellenden, his servant, holding up his other armpit, from the abbey to the parish church; and there, by the same Richard and another, lifted up to the pulpit, where he was obliged to lean at his first entrance; but before he had done his sermon, he was so active and vigorous that he was "like to ding the pulpit in blads, and fly out of it." His remains are de