fond friend and wise patron of Wordsworth, who died in February 1827, Scott wrote that he was "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew." Amid a society such as is indicated by those names Scott passed his life. The brilliant days of the Canongate indeed were gone, when all those wynds and closes that fringe the historic avenue from the Castle to Holyrood were as clean as wax, and when the loveliest ladies of Scotland dwelt amongst them, and were borne in their chairs from one house of festivity to another. But New street, once the home of Lord Kames, still retained some touch of its ancient finery. St. John street, where once lived Lord Monboddo and his beautiful daughter, Miss Burnet (immortalised by Burns), and where (at No. 10) Ballantyne often convoked admirers of the unknown author of _Waverley_, was still a cleanly place. Alison Square, George Square, Buccleuch Place, and kindred quarters were still tenanted by the polished classes of the stately, old-time society of Edinburgh. The movement northward had begun, but as yet it was inconsiderable. In those old drawing-rooms Scott was an habitual visitor, as also he was in many of the contiguous county manors,--in Seton House, Pinkie House, Blackford, Ravelstone, Craigcrook, and Caroline Park, and wherever else the intellect, beauty, rank, and fashion of the Scottish capital assembled; and it is certain that after his marriage, in December 1797, with Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, the scenes of hospitality and of elegant festival were numerous and gay, and were peopled with all that was brightest in the ancient city, at first beneath his roof-tree in Castle street and later beneath his turrets of Abbotsford.