Within the last forty years, a curious custom prevailed among the gentlemen of the long robe in Edinburgh—a custom which, however little it might be thought of then, would certainly make nine modern advocates out of ten shudder at every curl just to think of it. This was the practice of doing all their business, except what required to be done in the court, in taverns and coffee-houses. Plunged in these subterranean haunts, the great lawyers of the day were to be found, surrounded with their myrmidons, throughout the whole afternoon and evening of the day. It was next to impossible to find a lawyer at his own abode, and, indeed, such a thing was never thought of. The whole matter was to find out his tavern, which the cadies upon the street—those men of universal knowledge—could always tell, and then seek the oracle in his own proper _hell_, as Æneas sought the sibyl. At that time a Directory was seldom applied to; and even though a stranger could have consulted the celebrated Peter Williamson’s (supposing it then to have been published), he might, perhaps, by dint of research, have found out where Lucky Robertson lived, who, in the simple words of that intelligencer, “_sold the best twopenny_;” or he might have been accommodated, more to his satisfaction, with the information of who, through all the city, “_sett lodgings_” and “_kept rooms for single men_;” but he would have found the Directory of little use to him in pointing out where he might meet a legal friend. The cadies, who, at that time, wont to be completely _au fait_ with every hole and bore in the town, were the only directories to whom a client from the country, such as Colonel Mannering or Dandie Dinmont, could in such a case apply. The peculiar haunt of Mr. Crosbie was Douglas’s tavern in the Anchor Close, then a respectable and flourishing house, now deserted and shut up. Here many revelries, similar to those described in the novel, took place; and here the game of High Jinks was played by a party of convivial lawyers every Saturday night. The situation of the house resembles that of Clerihugh, described in “Guy Mannering,” being the second floor down a steep _close_, upon the north side of the High Street. Here a club, called the _Crochallan Corps_, of which Robert Burns was a member when in Edinburgh, assembled periodically, and held bacchanalian orgies, famous for their fierceness and duration.