248 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
impartial walls, among such strange bed-fellows as the chances of the night had offered to
its vigilant guardians. The demolition of the Cross, however, rendered the existence of
its unsightly neighbour the more offensive to all civic. reformers. Ferguson, in his
“ Mutual Complaint of the Plainstanes and Causey,” humorously represents it as one of
the most intolerable grievances of the latter, enough to I‘ fret the hardest stane ; ” and at
length, in 1785, its doom was pronounced, and its ancient garrison removed to the New
Assembly Close, then recently deserted by the directors of fashion. There, however, they
were .pursued by the enmity of their detractors. The proprietors of that fasAionabZe district
of the city were scandalised at the idea of such near neighbours as the Town-Rats, and by
means of protests, Bills of Suspension, and the like weapons of modern civic warfare,
speedily compelled the persecuted veterans to beat a retreat. They took refuge in
premises provided for them in the Tolbooth, but the destruction of their ancient stronghold
may be said to have sealed their fate ; they lingered on for a few years, maintaining
an unequal and hopeless struggle against the restless spirit of innovation that had beset
the Scottish capital, until at length, in the year 1817, their final refuge was demolished,
the last of them were put on the town’s pension list, and the truncheon of the constable
displaced the venerable firelock and Lochaber axe.
VIoaETTE-hchaber axe8 from the Antiquarian Museum.
