The rapid expansion of Edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped to Raeburn's early success. When he was eight years old the building of the North Bridge, which was to connect the old city with the projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated. The new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its inhabitants. It was probably the opening for an artist offered by these altered circumstances which had brought Martin to Edinburgh, and certainly Raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with them. An attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper classes, Raeburn could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him. Amongst these was John Clerk, younger of Eldin, later a famous advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the Penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its interest in the arts. And this would lead to other introductions. [1] Sir David Wilkie, Sir William Allan, and others were pupils of Graham. III. The influences which affected Raeburn and the models upon which he formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. Allan Ramsay, having painted many portraits in Edinburgh before he went to London in the same year as Raeburn was born, would be, one would think, the most likely source of inspiration. Except Runciman, who occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad but somewhat empty manner, and Seaton, an artist of whom little is known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a certain distinction--can they have been an influence with Raeburn?--the Scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much influenced by Ramsay, and Martin had been his favourite pupil. Raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. Beyond giving the youth the entree to his studio and lending him a few pictures to copy, Martin does not seem to have been of much direct assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the painter to the Prince of Wales for Scotland unjustly accused the jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been allowed to make. Rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's growing powers. Raeburn's debt to Ramsay and Martin was therefore inconsiderable and indirect. It is not traceable in the technique or arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length