desert rejoiced and blossomed like the rose. Religious principles chose to reside within the troubled land, bringing moral virtues in their train; and they begot a national character for knowledge, industry, and enterprise, and for every domestic and public virtue, which has made her children an acceptable people to all

the nations of the earth."

Great as were the national advantages which the Reformation brought in its train, the individual blessings which it bestowed were no less precious. It broke the seal which had previously been fixed upon the word of God, and enabled all to study for themselves the solemn truths relating to their immortal destinies which that volume contains. Men were taught to abandon vain oblations and superstitious rites for a pure and living faith in Christ. They learned their true relations to their Creator; the holiness of the Divine character, the perfection of his moral law, the unbroken obedience in thought, word, and deed, which it required; the radical corruption of their nature, and the necessity of a great and vital change to be accomplished by the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit. Thus renewed and Divinely taught, the burdened conscience felt peace, while those who had ineffectually toiled by weary penance and monastic vigils to recommend themselves to the favour of their Creator, had the fetters struck off from their souls, and, influenced by the faith which works by love, sprang forward to run the arduous, but happy race of evangelical obedience.

CHAPTER XV.

JAMES VI. AND CHARLES I

IN October, 1579, king James VI. summoned a parliament to assemble at Edinburgh, and made his first public entry to his capital. He was received at the Westport by the magistrates, under a pall of purple velvet, and was appropriately entertained by a representation of the Judgment of Solomon, an allegory designed to flatter the vanity of the young king. Various other splendid pageants and equally appropriate allegories followed, as the king passed down the High-street, until on his approach to St. Giles's Church he was addressed in Hebrew by an allegorical personage, styled Dame Religion, who desired his attendance at church. He entered St. Giles's accordingly, and listened to a sermon preached there by one of the reforming clergy.

In 1530, the marriage of the king to Anne of Denmark, and her reception on her arrival in Edinburgh, led to many gay festivities, as well. as to some of the singular displays of learning and scholastic disputations for which the king

at all times showed a special favour. On the coronation of the queen, the principal of the college addressed her in an oration of two hundred Latin verses; and on her entry to the capital, similar learned and lengthy orations were delivered by a curious variety of allegorical personages. A few days after, the magistrates entertained the ambassadors and Danish nobles who had accompanied her to Scotland, at a splendid banquet given in the great hall of the Mint House, which still stands in the Cowgate, though long since divested of much of its ancient magnificence, and now applied to the humble purposes of a broker's store-room.

Within the last half of the present century, the spirit of modern improvement and innovation has obliterated many venerable memorials of the times of queen Mary and James vi. A glance at one or two of these may help to recal some idea of the manners of these olden periods. King James was brought up as the pupil of George Buchanan; and while his teacher duly instilled into him all requisite learning—if not indeed rather more than his capacities enabled him to turn to any good account-he was at the same time accustomed to a freer intercourse with the citizens than had been usual with former princes. When he came to the throne, a very limited exchequer, and the risks to which he was frequently exposed during the collisions of rival factions, both inclined him to turn the hospitalities of

his civic acquaintances to account; it was accordingly no uncommon thing, when the larder at Holyrood was exhausted, or its precincts rendered unsafe by factions at court, for the king to take up his lodgings with some wealthy burgher in the High-street.

One of these old resorts of king Jamie was a substantial quadrangular building in Niddry's Wynd,called Lochart's-court, whither, as Moysie, an officer of the royal household, informs us in his Memoirs, both the king and queen withdrew in 1591, when the earl of Bothwell had rendered the palace somewhat too hot for them; and the officers of state following their majesty's prudent example, " the chancellor lodged himself in Alexander Clark's house, at the same wyndhead."

The king's host was Nicol Udward, the builder of the civic mansion, and styled in its writs (6 a citizen of auld descent in the burgh." Over one of the mantel-pieces was a fine piece of oak carving, containing the arms of this welldescended burgher, with the following quaint anagram peculiarly characteristic of the period: 66 VA D'UN VOL À CHRIST,"

Go with one flight to Christ,-a pious effusion which it will be seen is made out of the Latinized name of the owner, NICHOLAUS EduARTUS. A secret subterranean dungeon also existed in the same mansion, entered only by a concealed trap-door, which we may presume served the wealthy citizen for a place of concealment of his hoards.

Another favourite haunt of king James was a little booth at the west end of St. Giles's Church, where the famous royal goldsmith, George Heriot, had his forge and workshop. This homely resort of the king, demolished within the last few years, measured only seven feet square, yet there the financial difficulties of the court of Holyrood were most frequently put to rights, and if tradition is to be credited, king James made no objection to wind up such negotiations by partaking of a flagon of the goldsmith's wine in his little booth. By the transactions settled in this amicable fashion between George Heriot and his royal master, much of that wealth was acquired which was afterwards devoted to the founding of the celebrated scholastic institution at Edinburgh which bears the goldsmith's name.

The same period witnessed the foundation of the University of Edinburgh, with its single college, which retains the name of king James as its founder. In reality, however, the king contributed little more than his name. The first contributor towards the establishment of this celebrated seat of learning was Robert Reid, bishop of Orkney, who in 1558 bequeathed the sum of 8,000 marks, Scots' money, towards founding a college in Edinburgh for the education of youth. He died at Dieppe, when returning from witnessing the marriage of queen Mary to the dauphin; and according to some authorities his original bequest greatly exceeded the above sum, but was appropriated by the