Three months later, in the early sweetness of May, Cosmo Livingstone stood upon an “outside stair,” one of those little flights of stone steps, clearing the half-cellar shops of the lowest story, which are not unfrequent in the High Street of Edinburgh, and which make a handy platform when any thing is to be seen, or place of refuge when any thing is to be escaped from. A little further down, opposite to him, was the Tron Church, with its tall steeple striking up into the sunny mid-day heavens; and above, at a little distance, the fleecy white clouds hung over the open crown of St. Giles’s, with the freshness of recent rain. Many bystanders stood on the other “stair-heads,” and groups of heads looked out from almost every window of the high houses on every side. The High Street of Edinburgh, lined with expectant lookers-on, darkening downwards towards the picturesque slope of the Canongate, with its two varied and noble lines of lofty old houses, black with time, between which the sunshine breaks down in a moted and streamy glory, as into a well, is no contemptible object among street sights; and the population of Edinburgh loves its streets as perhaps only the populations of places rich in natural beauty can love them. A man who has seen a crowd in the High Street might almost be tempted to doubt, indeed, whether the Scottish people were really so reserved and grave and self-restraining as common report pronounces them. The women on the landings of the stairs shrilly claiming here and there a Tam or a Sandy, or else discussing in chorus the event of the moment; the groups of men promenading up and down upon the pavement with firm-set mouth and gleaming eyes--the mutter of forcible popular sentiment saying rather more than it means, and saying that in the plainest and most emphatic words; and the stir of general excitement in a scene which has already various recollections of tumults which are historical, make altogether a picturesque and striking combination, which is neither like a Parisian mob nor a London one, yet is quite as characteristic as either. It was not, however, a mob on this day, when Cosmo Livingstone stood on the stair-head in front of a little bookseller’s shop, the owner of which, in high excitement, came every minute or two to the door, uttering vehement little sentences to the little crowd on his steps:-- “We’ll have it oot o’ them if we have to gang to St. Stephen’s very doors for’t!” cried the shopkeeper. “King William had better mind his crown than mind his wife. We’re no’ to lose the Bill for a German whimsey. Hey, laddies! dinna make so muckle clatter--they’re coming! do ye hear them?”