"there was no blowing of tiles about the streets to knock people on the heads as they passed; no stacks of chimneys and gable-ends of houses falling in to bury the inhabitants in their ruins, as was often found in London and other of our paper-built cities in England."[1] "The High Street is the stateliest street in the world," said another writer; "being broad enough for five coaches to drive up a-breast, while the houses are proportionately high."[2] According to Topham it surpassed "the famous street in Lisle, La Rue Royale."[3] "It would be undoubtedly one of the noblest streets in Europe," wrote Smollett, "if an ugly mass of mean buildings, called the Luckenbooths, had not thrust itself into the middle of the way."[4] Pennant had the same tale to tell. "As fine a street as most in Europe, was spoilt by the Luckenbooth Row and the Guard House."[5] Carlyle, when he came to Edinburgh as a boy-student, in the year 1809, had seen "the Luckenbooths, with their strange little ins and outs, and eager old women in miniature shops of combs, shoe-laces, and trifles."[6] One venerable monument had been wantonly removed, while so much that was mean and ugly was left to encumber the street. In 1756 those "dull destroyers," the magistrates, had pulled down "Dun-Edin's Cross."[7] From the bottom of the hill "by the very Palace door," up to the gates of the Castle the High Street, even so late as Johnson's time, was the home of men of rank, of wealth, and of learning. It did not bear that look of sullen neglect which chills the stranger who recalls its past glories. The craftsmen and the nobles, the poor clerks and the wealthy merchants, judges, shopkeepers, labourers, authors, physicians, and lawyers, lived all side by side, so that "the tide of existence "which swept up and down was as varied as it was full. The coldness of the grey stone of the tall houses was relieved by the fantastic devices in red or yellow or blue on a ground of black, by which each trader signified the commodities in which he dealt. As each story was a separate abode, there were often seen painted on the front of one tall house half-a-dozen different signs. Here was a quartern loaf over a full-trimmed periwig, and there a Cheshire cheese or a rich firkin of butter over stays and petticoats.[8] To the north, scarcely broken as yet by the scattered buildings of the infant New Town,
- ↑ Defoe's Tour through Great Britain; Account of Scotland (ed. 1727), iii. 29, 30, 33.
- ↑ J. Mackie's Journey through Scotland, p. 65.
- ↑ Letters from Edinburgh, p. 8.
- ↑ Humphry Clinker, ii. 220.
- ↑ Tour in Scotland, i. 52.
- ↑ Carlyle's Reminiscences, ii. 5.
- ↑ See Marmion, note in the Appendix on Canto V., Stanza 25.
- ↑ Letters from Edinburgh, p. 28.
