cinders, gathered from the city dustheap, are feebly smouldering, hospitable fires roared up the chimney." [Illustration: OLD EDINBURGH BY NIGHT.] These houses are built upon the "flat" system, some of the better ones having a court in the centre like French houses, and turrets at the corners for the circular staircases connecting the different flats. Fires and improvements are rapidly sweeping them away, and the traveler regrets or not their disappearance, according as his views may be sentimental or sanitarian. They are truly ill adapted to modern ideas of hygiene, or to those cunning modern devices which sometimes poison their very inventors. While we may smile at our ancestors' free and easy way of pitching things out of the window, we should at least remember that they knew nothing of the modern plague of sewer-gas stealing its insidious way into the apparently best-regulated households. But without entering upon the vexed question of hygiene, the fact is that where there is no reason for propping up a tottering roof except that it once sheltered some bloody, cattle-stealing chieftain of the Border, utilitarian sentiments carry the day; nor ought any enthusiast to deny that the heart-shaped figure on the High street pavement, marking the spot where the Heart of Mid Lothian once stood, is a more cheerful sight than would be presented by the foul walls of that romantic jail. [Illustration: RIDDLE'S CLOSE, WHERE HUME COMMENCED HIS "HISTORY OF ENGLAND."] The modes of life in old Edinburgh have been amply illustrated by many writers. Among the novel-writers, Scott and Miss Ferrier have especially dwelt upon them. The tavern-haunting habits of the gentlemen are pleasantly depicted in the "high jinks" in _Guy Mannering_, and the depth of potations may be estimated by Burns's "Song of the Whistle." As to the ladies, we should not have found their assemblies very hilarious, where partners for the dance were obtained by drawing tickets, and the lucky or unlucky swain danced one solemn minuet with his lady, and was not expected to quit her side during the evening-- Through a long night to watch fair Delia's will, The same dull swain was at her elbow still. The huge stack of buildings called James's Court is associated with the names of Boswell and of Hume. Half of it has been destroyed by fire, and precisely that half in which these two worthies once dwelt, but there is quite enough of it left to show what a grim monster it was, and, for that matter, still is. In Boswell's time it was a fine thing to have a flat in James's Court. Here Boswell was living when Dr. Johnson came to visit him. Boswell, having received a note from Johnson announcing his arrival, hastened to the inn, where he found the great man had just thrown his lemonade out of the window, and had nearly knocked down the waiter for sweetening the said lemonade without the aid of the sugar-tongs.