which we hear of, an uncomfortable sort of luxury, even upon the linen of great personages--would there be put forth and inspected by gallants in all their fine array, or by the ladies in their veils, half or wholly muffled from public inspection. Even the cheaper booths that adorned the West Bow or smaller wynds, where the country women bought their kirtles of red or green when they brought their produce to the market, would show more gay colours under their shade in a season than we with our soberer taste in years; and the town ladies, in their hoods and silk gowns, which were permitted even in more primitive times to the possessors of so much a year, must have been of themselves a fair sight in all their ornaments, less veiled and muffled from profane view than more high-born dames and demoiselles. No doubt it would be a favourite walk with all to pass the port and see what was doing among the great people down yonder at Holyrood, or watch a gay band of French knights arriving from Leith with their pennons displayed, full of some challenge lately given by the knights of Scotland, or eager to maintain on their own account the beauty of their ladies and the strength of their spears against all comers. Edinburgh can never have been so amusing, never so gay and bright, as in these fine times; though, no doubt, there was always the risk of a rush together of two parties of gallants, a melee after the old mode of Clear the Causeway, a hurried shutting of shops and pulling forth of halberds. For the younger population, at least, no doubt these risks were almost the best part of the play. [Illustration: OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW] Thus Edinburgh breasted its ridge of rock--a fair sight across all the green country; its sentinel mountain crouching eastward between the metropolis and the sea, its suburbs growing and expanding; this full of the fine people of the Court, that of the quiet wealth and enjoyment which made no extravagant demonstration. It had never been so prosperous, never so much the centre of all that was splendid in the kingdom, as in the reign of the fourth James--the knight of romance, the gayest and brightest representative of the House of Stewart, though unable to defend himself from the tragic fate which awaited every sovereign of his name.