close to St Giles’s Church. Fixing our attention, meanwhile, on the class of traders called merchants, we find that their booths were in general small places, situated behind the open arcade which then ran along the greater part of the High Street on both sides. The whole front of one of these booths, consisting of folding boards, was opened by day—one board being drawn up, another let down, one or more folded back sideways, so as to display the interior to the passer-by. On a bench or counter within the front-wall, goods were laid out to attract attention; in some instances, there were also stands set out for the display of wares under the shelter of the arcade in front. As the merchant sat in his open booth, there were sights presented to him different from what he would now see: amongst others, rival nobles meeting on the causey, with their respective bands of armed followers, and fighting out their quarrels with sword and buckler, and the more deadly hagbut, to quell which our traders were enjoined by civic statute of 1529, to keep each in his booth ‘ane axe, or twa, or three, after as they have servants,’ and to be ready to use them. If we are to believe Dunbar, he saw ‘the gait’ filthy, and full of clamorous beggars, milk, shell-fish, and puddings sold at the Cross and the Tron, and vile crafts everywhere more prominent than his own respectable merchandise. In the town of Berne, in Switzerland, you can see precisely the same structural arrangements still existing along both sides of the principal street, which further reminds one of ancient Edinburgh by its name of _Kramgasse_. At length, in the progress of improvement, there were some shops formed in a certain part of the High Street, having those open arcaded spaces in front closed up, leaving only a window and a door; and these places of business, by way of distinction, acquired the name of _luckenbooths_—that is, closed booths, a term, as you are all aware, which still gives a name to the portion of street referred to. Berne is now in exactly the same circumstances in this respect as Edinburgh was two hundred years ago, for there also we find a few shops of more ambitious character than their neighbours, with the fronts built up. It is very interesting thus to trace in continental towns of the present day a reflex of things long ago prevalent in our own city. I was amused, at Nuremberg, to find the Frauenkirke barnacled all round with little shops or _krames_, as I remember St Giles’s to have been, each petty shop, moreover, having its miniature house above, in one or more stories, affording a stifling accommodation to the traders, as was the case with several of the krame-shops of the old Parliament Close.