MARCH 20

I BELIEVE, that had I given myself up entirely to the direction of my friend the Laird, I should have known, up to this hour, very little about any part of Edinburgh more modern than the Canongate, and perhaps heard as little about any worthies she has produced since the murder of Archbishop Sharpe. He seemed to consider it a matter of course, that, morning after morning, the whole of my time ought to be spent in examining the structure of those gloomy tenements in wynds and closes, which had, in the old time, been honoured with the residence of the haughty Scottish barons, or the French ambassadors and generals, their constant visitors. In vain did I assure him, that houses of exactly the same sort were to be seen in abundance in the city of London, and that even I myself had been wearied of counting the fleurs-de-lis carved on every roof and chimney-piece of a green-grocer's habitation in Mincing-lane. Of such food, in his estimation, there could be no satiety; every land had its coat-of-arms, and every quartering called up to his memory the whole history of some unfortunate amour, or still more unfortunate marriage—in so much that, had I taken accurate notes of all his conversation, I am persuaded I might, before this time, have been in a condition to fill more sheets than you might be likely to peruse, with all the mysteries of the causes celebres, or, to speak more plainly, of the Scandalous Chronicle of Scotland.—What horrors of barbarism—what scenes of murder, rape, incest—seem to have been the staple commodities of week-day life among these ferocious nobles! But, in good truth, I did not come to Scotland to learn such things as these; and although a little sprinkling of them might be very well in its way, I soon found it expedient to give my good friend a slight hint, that I wished he could contrive to afford me something else for the main woof of my meditations… … He begins to understand my drift, and will, I think, learn to accommodate himself to my humour, pas-a-pas.