came up here to his house after his interview with Mary at Holyrood--grim and stern, and unmelted by the tears of a queen. In later days the Pretender rode down the Canongate, his eyes dazzled by the glitter of his father's crown, while bagpipes skirled around, and Jacobite ladies, with white knots in their bosoms, looked down from lofty windows, admiring the beauty of the "Young Ascanius," and his long yellow hair. Down here of an evening rode Dr Johnson and Boswell, and turned in to the White Horse. David Hume had his dwelling in this street, and trod its pavements, much meditating the wars of the Roses and the Parliament, and the fates of English sovereigns. One day a burly ploughman from Ayrshire, with swarthy features and wonderful black eyes, came down here and turned into yonder churchyard to stand, with cloudy lids and forehead reverently bared, beside the grave of poor Fergusson. Down the street, too, often limped a little boy, Walter Scott by name, destined in after years to write its "Chronicles." The Canongate once seen is never to be forgotten. The visitor starts a ghost at every step. Nobles, grave senators, jovial lawyers, had once their abodes here. In the old, low-roofed rooms, half-way to the stars, philosophers talked, wits corruscated, and gallant young fellows, sowing wild oats in the middle of last century, wore rapiers and lace ruffles, and drank claret jovially out of silver stoups. In every room a minuet has been walked, while chairmen and linkmen clustered on the pavement beneath. But the Canongate has fallen from its high estate. Quite another race of people are its present inhabitants. The vices to be seen are not genteel. Whisky has supplanted claret. Nobility has fled, and squalor taken possession. Wild, half-naked children swarm around every door-step. Ruffians lounge about the mouths of the wynds. Female faces, worthy of the "Inferno," look down from broken windows. Riots are frequent; and drunken mothers reel past scolding white atomies of children that nestle wailing in their bosoms--little wretches to whom Death were the greatest benefactor. The Canongate is avoided by respectable people, and yet it has many visitors. The tourist is anxious to make acquaintance with it. Gentlemen of obtuse olfactory nerve, and of an antiquarian turn of mind, go down its closes and climb its spiral stairs. Deep down these wynds the artist pitches his stool, and spends the day sketching some picturesque gable or doorway. The fever-van comes frequently here to convey some poor sufferer to the hospital. Hither comes the detective in plain clothes on the scent of a burglar. And when evening falls, and the lamps are lit, there is a sudden hubbub and crowd of people, and presently from its midst emerge a couple of policemen and a barrow with a poor, half-clad, tipsy woman from the sister island crouching upon it, her hair hanging loose about her face, her hands quivering