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16 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT. of the gentler memory of Dandie Dinmont with his iron-grey topcoat and his huge whip, and of Guy Mannering knocking at the door of Paulus WARRISTON CLOSE. WRITERS‘ COURT. Pleydell, Esq., and finding that he is away at High Jinks, it being ‘Saturday at e’en,’ and by the name of Pleydell recalling you a step or two back to his and his creator‘s chosen haunt, the Parliament House, with its ten thousand histories of forensic eloquence, lynx-eyed acuteness; deferred hope, mortified ambition, misapplied genius, worlds of wasted wit, humour, and ingenuity, personal, legal, and political intrigue, justice often omitted in her own sanctuary by ‘ special desire,’ or meted out with severest accuracy,-as much the tempIe of human nature as of law. Then under the wing of the Tron Church, skirting the Bridges, and showing to the eye on one hand the Register House and Post-Office, and on the other the College ; then plunging into the Canongate, once the royal region of the city, and which, long after kings had ceased to haunt it, was fined with old hotels which Gom the street opened up into paved courts and gardens, seeming to retain and conserve the spirit of monarchy and nobility, as the deep cool recesses of the forest retain the morning dew long after it has melted on the wide savannas,-and which bore for its arms the proud escutcheon, Sic ifur
Volume 11 Page 24
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Volume 11 Page 25
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