The strictness of old-time Sabbath observance is well known. Lord George Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll, was in command of a corps of Fencibles in Edinburgh in the early years of last century. He was skilled in whistling. He sat one Sunday morning at the open window of his hotel in Princes Street, and exercised his favourite art. An old woman passing by to church viewed him with holy horror and shook her fist at him, “Eh! ye reprobate! ye reprobate!” she shouted. It were easy to accumulate anecdotes of the church officers of Edinburgh. I find space for two. In old days Mungo Watson was beadle of Lady Yester’s Church under Dr. Davidson. His pastime was to mount the pulpit and thunder forth what he believed to be a most excellent discourse to an imaginary audience. Whilst thus engaged he was surprised by Dr. Davidson, who shut him up very quickly: “Come down, Mungo, come down, toom barrels mak’ most sound.” In _Jeems the Doorkeeper, a Lay Sermon_, Dr. John Brown has drawn a charming picture of the officer of his father’s church in Broughton Place. The building was crowded, and part of the congregation consisted of servant girls, “husseys” as Jeems contemptuously described them. Some were laced to the point of suffocation, and were not rarely carried out fainting to the vestry. Jeems stood over the patient with a sharp knife in his hand. “Will oo rip her up noo?” he said as he looked at the young doctor; the signal was given, the knife descended and a cracking as of canvas under a gale followed, the girl opened her eyes, and closed them again in horror at the sight of the ruined finery. But we are chronicling very small beer indeed, and here must be an end of these strangely assorted scenes and pictures. CHAPTER THREE TOWN’S COLLEGE AND SCHOOLS The official title of the University of Edinburgh is _Academia Jacobi Sexti_. So “our James,” as Ben Jonson calls him, gave a name to this great seat of learning, and in the form of a charter he gave it his blessing, and there he stopped! Bishop Reid, the last Roman Catholic Bishop of Orkney, left eight thousand merks for a college in Edinburgh, and though that sum sinks considerably when put into current coin of the realm, it is not to be neglected. It was obtained and applied, but the real patrons, authors, managers and supporters for centuries of the University was the good town of Edinburgh through its Town Council. It was _Oure Tounis Colledge_. They appointed its professors and ruled its destinies until almost our own time. The Scottish University Act of 1858 greatly lessened, though it by no means destroyed, their influence.