that had lain with deadly pressure on so many victims--the large thighs and round calves, indicating so much power--it was the face, embodying a petrified scowl, and the wide-staring eyes, so fixed and spectre-like, to which the attention was chiefly directed. As the stream moved on with recurring pauses, when some, more intent than others, held back to have a moment or two's more time, it was curious to view the ever-varying emotions of the spectators. Many were there who could not in any other circumstances have looked upon a corpse at all, and you might have seen some half-irresolute adventurers who, as they neared, feared the sight, and would have backed out but that they were compelled to proceed, when the unsteady eye, anxious to avert itself, was caught by the horrible charm and fixed. No one, so far as we could see, however nervous, either shut the eyes or turned them away altogether; nor could you detect a single trace of pity--the prevailing expression, a malign satisfaction, strangely and staringly returned, as it were, by the grin of the corpse, which had the advantage of eternal persistency. Extraordinary as all this moving scene was,--and certainly nothing of the kind had ever been witnessed in Edinburgh before,--it was rendered more so by the occurrence among the close stream of a few women, amounting in all, we understood, to seven or eight, who, having made their way up-stairs, not perhaps with the intention of going altogether forward, were moved on and could not escape. The caught virgins, true to their nature, struggled so well in the net of their curiosity, that you would have said they were really anxious to get back, and yet somehow their struggles seemed unaccountably rather to help them on; but at any rate it was certain they were modest, and shrank at the thought of the coming sight, for they held down their heads to avoid the stare of the men, and when they arrived at the point, only looked with a squint, sufficient at once for entire gratification as well as for immunity from the charge of not being feminine and delicate. It is doubtful, notwithstanding, however influenced by the sense of the _nil dulcius quam omnia scire_, whether they would venture again upon such another Junonian venture; for the males, who reserve to themselves the exclusive right of witnessing such spectacles, bestowed on them such and so many tokens of indignation as might have cured them for ever of their original sin.