In the brilliant reign of their son, James IV., Edinburgh consisted of a steep ascent of “stane-sclated” houses climbing the mile and a quarter of ridge from Holyrood to the Castle; and the closes and the pleasure gardens of the “lands” ran down to the edge of the Nor’ Loch, which lay dark and deep, and guarded the town on the north. The city wall, built in 1240 to keep out the “auld enemy,” guarded the town to the south, and climbed over the ridge and met the loch, leaving Holyrood out in the cold,--for consecrated ground was considered safe, and in no need of lay assistance. And here Holyrood lay, the huge Norman Abbey with its open arches, Salisbury Crags and the green slopes of Arthur’s Seat behind it, and country in front of it stretching down to the shores of the Forth. James IV. was crowned at Scone; but it was at Edinburgh he usually held his Court, and what a brilliant Court it must have been! To Edinburgh, as in Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_, there journeyed, in James IV.’s days, knights from all over Europe, to take part in the famous tournaments held below the Castle Rock or on the open spaces beside Holyrood, and to try and win the lance tipped with pure Scottish gold with which the King rewarded the best tilter. There gathered in Edinburgh, in the days of James IV., not only the flower of chivalry, but men of science, and men of art, and men of learning. Up at the Castle, Borthwick, the Master Gunner, was forging the “Seven Sisters” under James’s supervision. Down at Leith the King delighted in visiting the shipping yards, and seeing the great progress of Scottish trade. At the Provost’s house at St. Giles’s, young Gavin Douglas, son of the great Earl of Angus, was translating Virgil into Scottish verse. In the city, Walter Chepman and Andro Myllar were sending forth that new wonder into the land,--printed books. James not only granted them a patent to print, but endowed their types and bought their books; and in 1510 he granted the estate of Priestfield[7] to Walter Chepman, who paid the crown suit for it by “delivery of a pair of gloves on St. Giles’s day.”[8] Sir Andrew Wood, that splendid old sailor and gallant figure in Scottish history, must have been often seen about the streets of Edinburgh and at the Court, and must often have held consultation with the King about James’s darling scheme of a Scottish Navy. Lingering with groups of courtiers in the beautiful precincts of Holyrood, there were many of the great Scottish nobles whose town houses were in the Edinburgh closes,--Angus and Argyle, Mar and Morton, and fifty more. There was the much-travelled friar and Laureate, William Dunbar, “flyting” with his rival poet, “gude Maister Walter Kennedy.” “As a courtier,” writes Mr. Oliphant Smeaton in his _Life of Dunbar_,[9] “Dunbar boarded at the King’s expense, and received each year his robe of red velvet fringed with costly fur. He was required to be present at every public function, and, if it