Smuggling might almost be called the first of Highland virtues. Archibald Campbell, the city officer, had the misfortune to lose his mother. He procured a hearse, and reverently carried away the body to the Highlands for burial. He brought the hearse back again, not empty, but full of smuggled whisky. This fondness for a trick or practical joke was a feature of old Edinburgh. It lived on to later times. In 1803 or 1804, Playfair, Thomas Thomson, and Sydney Smith instigated by Brougham, proceeded one night to George Street, with the intention of filching the Galen’s Head, which stood over the door of Gardiner, the apothecary. By one climbing on the top of the others their object was all but attained, when, by the dim light of the oil-lamps, Brougham was descried leading the city watch to the spot, his design being to play a trick within a trick. There was a hasty scramble, and all got off. None save Brougham was very young, and even he was twenty-six, and to-day the people are decorous and the place is decorous. Who can now recall what the Mound was like, when it was the chosen locus of the menageries of the day? Fergusson, Lord Hermand, was proceeding along it just having heard of the fall of the “ministry of all the talents”; he could not contain himself. “They are out—by the Lord, they are all out, every mother’s son of them!” A passing lady heard him with absolute horror. “Good Lord, then we shall all be devoured!” she screamed, not doubting but that the wild beasts had broken loose. A word as to weather. The east coast of Scotland is exposed to the chilling fog or mist called haar, and to bitter blasts of east wind, as well as to the ordinary rain and cloud. Edinburgh, being built on hills, is peculiarly affected by those forces, and the broad streets and open spaces of the New Town worst of all. The peculiar build of the old part was partly, at least, meant as a defence from weather. Fergusson boldly says so. “Not Boreas that sae snelly blows Dare here pap in his angry nose, Thanks to our dads, whase biggin stands A shelter to surrounding lands.”