strangling the liberties of his country in the Parliament House, his idiot son and heir was strangling the poor boy that turned the spit in Queensberry House, and was roasting him upon his own fire so that when the family returned to their mansion a cannibal orgie was already in progress. You are glad that history enables you to doubt the story just as you are sorry you must doubt the others. Edinburgh has had a Provost for centuries (since 1667 he has been entitled by Royal command to the designation of Lord Provost), Bailies, Dean of Guild, Town Council, and so forth, but you must not believe for a moment that these were ever quite the same offices. The old municipal constitution of Edinburgh was curious and complicated. I shall not attempt to explain it, or how the various deacons of the trades formed part of it. When it was reformed and the system of self-election abolished, the city officer, Archibald Campbell, is said to have died out of sheer grief, it seemed to him defiling the very Ark of God. The old-time magistrates were puffed up with a sense of their own importance, that of itself invited a “taking down.” It was the habit of those dignitaries to pay their respects to every new President of the Court of Session. President Dundas, who died in 1752, was thus honoured. He was walking with his guests in the park at Arniston, when the attention of Bailie M‘Ilroy, one of their number, was attracted by a fine ash tree lately blown to the ground. He was a wood merchant, and thought the occasion too good to be lost. He there and then proposed to buy it, and not accepting the curt refusals of the President, finally offered to pay a half-penny a foot above the ordinary price. “Sir,” said Dundas in a burst of rage, “rather than cut up that tree, I would see you and all the magistrates of Edinburgh hanging on it.” But the roll of civic dignitaries contains more illustrious names.