Carved and gilded coaches rumbled slowly over the rough causeway, and sedans borne by liveried chairmen were bearing the owners to morning visits. The street was crowded with passengers and loungers dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. The heads of the ladies were covered by hoods of silk and velvet, while the wives of citizens were forced to content themselves with a plaid muffler pinned under the chin. Gentlemen still wore the plain Scottish bonnet, or the vast cavalier hat, looped up and plumed; snug burgesses and staring countrymen thronged past, attired (conform to Act of the Estates) in linsey-woolsey, hodden-grey, tartan, coarse blue bonnets, and ribbed galligaskins, a style of dress which formed a strong contrast to the splendid vestments of their superiors, whose silks and velvets, slashed and laced, were glittering everywhere in the sun. A few officers of the Fusilier Guards in their gilt breast-plates, scarlet coats, and white scarfs, cavaliers of Claver'se regiment, and other "bucks of the first fashion," in all the magnificence of laced taffeta, long rapiers, perfumed scarfs, and tall feathers, were lounging about the pillars of the Venetian arcade, in front of Blair's Coffee House, or jested and flirted with those passing fair ones who flaunted their long trains under the cool shade of the Mahogany-lands, as certain old balconied edifices that have long since disappeared were named. Jangling in mid air under the gothic crown of the old cathedral, the musical bells rang merrily, mingling with the busy hum that floated upward from the dense population below. The gift of Thomas Moodie, a citizen, these bells had been hung there in 1681. In one of the recesses formed by the buttresses of the church, a man was reading to a crowd, that listened intently, around the barrel on which he had perched himself. It was the _Caledonius Mercurius_, from the columns of which he was detailing some of Louis XIVths religious persecutions under the intolerant Mazarine, which now and then brought a muttered execration from the listeners. Paunchy and gorbellied citizens, whose shops were in the gloomy recesses of the Luckenbooths, the cruicks of the Bow, or cellars of the Lawnmarket, were grouped about the city cross, which, with its tall octagon spire and unicorn, was for ages one of the chief beauties of the city. On one side of it stood the Dyvours-stane, whereon sat a row of those unfortunates, who for misfortune or roguery were, by act of the council, compelled to appear there each market day at noon, in the bankrupt's garb--a yellow bonnet, and coat, one half yellow, the other brown, under pain of three months' imprisonment. On the other side groaned a wretched woman, who, for the heinous enormity of drinking the devil's health had just undergone the triple punishment of having her tongue bored, her cheek branded, and her back scourged.