churchyard at South Leith, and was anxious to have it properly walled in ere the end, which he clearly foresaw, arrived. It was finished just in time, and with a certain stoical relief this strange mortal departed to take possession. [Illustration: HENRY MACKENZIE, “THE MAN OF FEELING”, From an Engraving after Andrew Geddes] Another well-known Edinburgh character was Henry Mackenzie. Born in 1745 he lived till 1831, and connects the different periods of Edinburgh literary splendour. His best service to literature was his early appreciation of Burns, but in his own time the _Man of Feeling_ was one of the greatest works of the day, and the _Man of the World_ and _Julia de Roubigné_ followed not far behind. To this age all seems weak, stilted, sentimental to an impossible degree, but Scott and Lockhart, to name but these, read and admired with inexplicable admiration. In ordinary life Mackenzie was a hard-headed lawyer, and as keen an attendant at a cock main, it was whispered, as Deacon Brodie himself. He told his wife that he’d had a glorious night. “Where?” she queried. “Why, at a splendid fight.” “Oh Harry, Harry,” said the good lady, “you have only feeling on paper.” Tobias Smollett, though not an Edinburgh man, had some connection with the place. His sister, Mrs. Telfer, lived in the house yet shown in the Canongate, at the entrance to St. John Street. Here, after long absence, his mother recognised him by his smile. Ten years afterwards he again went north, and again saw his mother; he told her that he was very ill and that he was dying. “We’ll no’ be very lang pairted onie way. If you gang first, I’ll be close on your heels. If I lead the way, you’ll no’ be far ahint me, I’m thinking,” said this more than Spartan parent. But when you read the vivacious Mrs. Winifred Jenkins in the _Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_, you recognise how good a thing it was for letters that Smollett visited Edinburgh. It is a little odd, but I have no anecdotes to tell (the alleged meeting between him and old John Brown in Haddington Churchyard is a wild myth) of that characteristic Edinburgh figure, Robert Fergusson, the Edinburgh poet, the native and the lover. He struck a deeper note than Allan Ramsay, has a more intimate touch than Scott, is scarcely paralleled by R. L. Stevenson, who half believed himself a reincarnation of “my unhappy predecessor on the causey of old Edinburgh” . . . “him that went down—my brother, Robert Fergusson.” “Auld Reekie! thou’rt the canty hole, A bield for mony a cauldrife soul Wha’ snugly at thine ingle loll Baith warm and couth, While round they gar the bicker roll To weet their mouth.”