have increased very considerably in wealth and trade. We can see from the books of the royal treasurers, which are preserved in the Register House at Edinburgh, that Stirling then possessed tradesmen and artists of a high order, who purveyed articles of luxury to the court, such as could not now be produced in Stirling. Without some considerable resources, the town could never have produced citizens able to found such hospitals as those of _Spittal_ in the reign of James V. and _Cowan_ in the reign of Charles I. Yet, it is probable that what trade it enjoyed in these reigns, was chiefly the result of its being the residence of the courtiers, and of the noblemen and gentlemen of the country around. Spottiswood the historian, characterises it, in 1585, as a town, ‘little remarkable for merchandise.’ It had then a number of booths or shops, formed of the vaults on which all houses were built in those days; and what is a remarkable enough feature, all the shop-windows were defended by stauncheons, as in some places of Ireland at the present day. The border thieves, who accompanied the expedition of the banished protestant lords in the year just quoted, made but little, Spottiswood says, of the ‘_booths_;’ it was in the stables of the nobility that they got their best prey. It was easy to conceive, however, that at the time when the houses of the courtiers in Broad Street were comparatively new; when the houses of the Earls of Mar and Stirling were occupied by their respective proprietors in the splendid style of those days; and when the buildings of the castle and the adjacent royal gardens were in their first and best state, Stirling must have been a very handsome town, without the assistance of shops; but, in all probability, the town never possessed, throughout those times of its greatest splendour, above three thousand inhabitants. It was found, in 1755, to contain only 3951; and assuredly, when the circumstances of the country at large are considered, the number must have rather encreased than decreased, during the preceding hundred and fifty years. This is rendered the more probable by the fact that, in 1792, the population had encreased to 4698, and that it is at present supposed to be nearly double that number.