And this is how, within about forty years of its first conception, the New Town of Edinburgh spread itself over the plain and superseded the crumbling cluster of seven centuries. And this is how modern Edinburgh presents that curious spectacle, unknown in any other town, of two distinct divisions, divided topographically as well as historically and socially--Old Edinburgh and New Edinburgh. CHAPTER VIII THE EDINBURGH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS CIRCLE Benevolence, charitableness, tolerance, sympathy with those about him in their joys and their sorrows, kindly readiness to serve others when he could, utter absence of envy or real ill-will,--these are qualities that shine out everywhere in his life and in the succession of his writings.... Positively, when I contemplate this richness of heart in Scott, and remember also how free he was from those moral weaknesses which sometimes accompany and disfigure an unusually rich endowment in this species of excellence ... positively, I say, with all this in my mind, I can express my feeling about Scott no otherwise than by declaring him to have been one of the very best men that ever breathed. PROFESSOR MASSON’S _Edinburgh Sketches and Memories_. It is easy to trace Sir Walter Scott’s Edinburgh life from door to door. The house in the College Wynd, in which, on August 15, 1771, he was born, was pulled down in his lifetime. Sir Walter once pointed out its site to Mr. Robert Chambers during one of their walks together, and told him that his father had “received a fair price for his portion of it”; and, when Mr. Chambers naturally suggested that more money might have been made and the public much more gratified had Scott’s birthplace been retained to be shown,--“Ay, ay,” said Sir Walter, “that is very well; but I am afraid I should have required to be dead first, and that would not have been so comfortable, you know.”