the bowls are ‘upon the sea homeward.’ Ten pair cost £6, 4_s._ 3_d._ Scots. It is scarcely necessary to add that the Company’s connection with the Cowgate was dissolved long ago, and even the house has for thirty years ceased to exist, having been taken down to make way for George the Fourth’s Bridge. The only remaining memorial of the Company at that spot is to be found in the name, Merchant Street, applied to a half-extinguished line of buildings behind the Cowgate, and our title to the ground-rents of that part of the city. By and by, the Company became engaged in matters more amiable than the seizing of goods of unfreemen. Wealthy members died, leaving _mortifications_ (in the happy Scottish sense) to the Company, for the succour of decayed brethren. It is remarkable that, on the first such occasion, in 1693, when three thousand five hundred pounds, accruing from a legacy left by Patrick Aikenhead, a Scotch merchant at Dantzig, for pious uses in Edinburgh, came into possession of the Merchant Company, they had not a decayed member requiring the benefit. Not long after the last date, the Company became engaged in the erection of a hospital for the nurture and education of the female children of their less prosperous members. Though originated by a certain Mrs Hare, widow of an Edinburgh apothecary, but a scion of the noble house of Marr, the principal labour and expense attending this foundation fell upon the Merchant Company of Edinburgh. Their zeal in the affair is amply shewn in their books, where the entries of contributions for ‘_the Lasses_’ are for some years incessant. Twenty-eight years later, when George Watson died, leaving no less than twelve thousand pounds sterling for the benefit of children of the other sex, the Merchant Company came to have the management of a second foundation of the same kind. I believe its administration in both hospitals has, generally speaking, been unexceptionable. It is, however, worthy of observation, that the Company itself has never supplied a sufficiency of children requiring the benefits. It has conducted these institutions to a considerable extent on the principle of _Vos non vobis_.