22 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
treading a measure in Holyrood :-Knox, the most powerful preacher since
Paul, w& thundering in the pulpit of St. Giles’ ; George Buchanan collecting
materials for his temble Detecfio, and afterwards for his superb Histoory 4
. Scotland; Bothwell passing through its streets like a grim spectre ; Murray
and Morton conducting its councils ; Kirkcaldy of Grange leading its troops ;
Lindsay of the Byres and Sir James Melville leaving it with troubled looks
for Lochleven on a melancholy embassy I It was the centre then of great
events, and formed a nucleus of extraordinary men. Gavin Douglas, Drummond
of Hawthornden, and Sir David Lindsay were alse long resident in Edinburgh.
In the next age, under the reigning trio of Stewarts-bad, worse,
and worst-the Crafty, the Careless, and the Cantankerous-Charles I.,
Charles II., and James II.,-there appeared in and about Edinburgh
some very remarkable persons on all sides : Montrose, Lauderdale, Rothes,
Mackenzie, Argyll, Dalzell, Claverhouse, Monmouth, and Perth ; Baillie
of Jerviswoode, Henderson of Leuchars, Sharp, Leighton, Samuel Rutherfurd,
Gillespie, William Carstairs, Sir Patrick Hume of Burnet, and latterly
the noble army of martyrs, who, dragged along Edinburgh streets to suffer
at the Grassmarket, seemed surrounded by unseen seraphim, and waited
for by fiery chariots, and who, dying themselves, left behind a deathless
glory which hovers over the place still. Sparser shine the luminaries in
the beginning of the eighteenth century, although we can note, apart from
distinguished natives, one immortal stranger pacing its streets and marking
its bulwarks well, seeking to number the martyrs in the bypast persecution,
but failing in the attempt, and referring us to ‘ the roll of their number kept
under the altar and before the throne’-Daniel Defoe namely, the most
ingenious and creative spirit then extant in Britain. On him, as on a stepping-
stone, we pass to Allan Ramsay, the poetic periwig-maker, who may be
called emphatically the AuZd--Reekie Laureate, and who in his best poem
goes no farther from her than the Pentlands and Habbie’s Howe. Then we
see somewhat earlier, but still contemporary, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun,
the heroic patriot, who may be taken as a worthy representative of the
Scottish Parliament and its many illustrious men. Ruddiman too and
Pitcairn were eminent among scholars. Then we meet two very distinguished
poets, one born in Edinburgh, and the other educated there,
and who sailed thence to London with Wiktey in his pocket,-Robert Blair
of Th Grave, and James Thomson of 2% Sasons. Nearer the middle
of the century we find poor Robert Fergusson, who was &us d in cufe an
Edinburgh bard, in which city too he now reposes, with one bright smile from
THE OLD TOWN. 23
‘blithe-hearted Bums,’ in the form of an epitaph resting like unsetting sunshine
on his grave; and Hamilton of Bangor, who there joined the ranks of
Prince Charlie, and became volunteer laureate to the Jacobite cause. Nor
PERCUSSOX‘S GRAVH.
let David Mallett (or MalIoch) be quite forgot, who, having been born in
Crieff, and having studied in Aberdeen, acted as a tutor in Edinburgh ere he
went to London, to make and lose a tiny and dubious fame; while with
greater respect we name Armstrong, author of the Arf of Praemhg HeaZth,
who studied Medicine in Edinburgh, although it was in Liddesdale that he
received the boons of birth and genius. Further on we light on a glorious
cluster of celebrities, among the finest Edinburgh has yet seen :-David
Hume, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Smith, author of the
WeaZfh of Natibns (whose grave is near to Fergbsson’s, in the Canongate
churchyard), John Home, John Erskine, John Logan, Dr. Webster, and
others almost as renowned; with Robert Bums shooting across like a
comet, Henry Mackenzie appearing like a young star, Jupiter Carlyle
hovering on the skirt of the horizon, not to speak of the transit at
one time of Samuel Johnson, the most celebrated, and at another, of the
greatest man then living, Edmund Burke. To this period- too beIong Lord
Kames, Lord Hailes, Lord Auchinleck, and the immortal Baszy in the upper
stratum of Edinburgh society, and Gilbert Stuart and William Smellie
the lower. About this time too some ladies of undying repute as authors
