reign the Excise Office has had many a shift, and the building in Nether Bow many other strange occupants. While the character of the latter has been steadily declining, the prosperity of the Excise has been as uniformly increasing. The office was shifted to a more commodious house in the Cowgate, pulled down subsequently for the southern piers of George IV. Bridge; then to a house in Chessel’s Court, in the Canongate, where the notorious Deacon Brodie committed his great robbery; next to Sir Lawrence Dundas’ mansion in St. Andrew Square; afterwards to Bellevue House, in Drummond Place, since pulled down; and subsequently to where it is now. Two closes passed underneath the old Excise Office tenement; one was Baron Grant’s Close, and the other Society Close. The Baron’s fame has not descended to these days, and his name only lives on the wynd that once was his. But the other close has had rather a remarkable history. On its west side there was a curious old house with the following inscription over its main door:--“R. H. Hodie mihi eras tibi cur igitur curas.” The date was obliterated by time. A curious turnpike stair led to the flats above. The tenement was the property of Aleson Bassendyne, the famous old Scottish topographer, who issued, in 1574, a beautiful folio Bible. The close at first bore his name; subsequently it was called after a Baron of Exchequer belonging to the house of Panmure, and last of all Society Close, from the circumstances that in a large stone mansion which the judge occupied, at the foot of the close, was afterwards housed the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge founded in 1701, and erected into a body corporate by Queen Anne. There were many other buildings in the narrow wynd of great age and much interest, but they have been swept away. Now that these buildings have been removed, the obstruction presented to the traffic of the street by John Knox’s house and church is more observable. But we would suffer much greater inconvenience ere we consented to the removal of the house of our venerable Reformer. APPENDIX XVII. AN ACCOUNT OF THE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST JOHN BROWN _alias_ HUMPHRY MOORE AT THE OLD BAILEY IN APRIL, 1784. Humphry Moore was indicted for feloniously stealing, on the 5th of February last, twenty guineas, value £21, and four pieces of foreign gold coin called doubloons, value £14 8s., the property of John Field, in the dwelling-house of John Brown.