kii PR EFA CE.
recbrds’, as well as to niany others, whose obliging assistance has in vaGous ways lightened
the labour of the work. In
searching for the charters and title-deeds of old mansions, by which alone accurate and
trustworthy information could in many cases be obtained, I have met with the frankest
co-operation from strangers, to whom my sole introduction was the object of research i
while the just appreciation of such courtesy has been kept alive by the surly or supercilious
rebuffs with which I was occasionally arrested in similar inquiries. Some of the latter have
been amusing enough. On one occasion access to certain title-deeds of an ancient property
was denied in a very abrupt manner, while curiosity was whetted meanwhile by the information,
somewhat testily volunteered, that the deeds were both ancient and very curious.
All attempts to mollify the dragon who guarded these antiquarian treasures proving
unavailing, the search had to be abandoned ; but I learned afterwards, that the old tenement
which had excited my curiosity-and which, except to an antiquary, seemed hardly
worth a groat-was then the subject of litigation between two Canadian clairnanh to’ the
heirship of the deceased Scottish laird; and the unconscious archEeologist had been set
down as the agent of some Yankee branch of the Quirk-Gammon-and-Snap school of legal
practitioners I
If is impossible, indeed, to do more than allude to these.
In acknowledging the assistance I have been favoured with, I must not omit to notice
that of my friend Mr Jamea Drummond, A.R.S.A., to whose able pencil the readers owe
the view in the interior of St Giles’s Church, which forms the vignette at the head of the
last chapter. To the Rev. John Sime, I am also indebted for the drawing of the groundplan
of St Giles’s Church, previous to the recent alterations, an engraving of which illustrates
the Appendix ; and to the very accurate. pencil of Mr William Douglas, for several
of the inscriptions which illustrate that peculiar feature of our ancient buildings. The
remainder of the vignettes are from my own sketches, unless where other sources are stated,
and for the correctness of these I am responsible, nearly the whole of them having been
drawn on the wood with my own hand.
- It may be desirable to state, that the historical sketch comprised in the first seven
chapters of the Work was written, and heady all through the press, before I found t h e to
arrange a large collection of materials in the form in which they are now presented in the
Second Part. I have accordingly, in one or two cases, somewhat modified my earlier views.
The opinion expressed on p. 50, for example, as to the total destruction of the whole private
buildings of the town in 1544, I am now.shtisfied is erroneous,’-and various edifices are
