MODERN EDINBURGH,

CHAPTER I.

EDINBURGH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. MODERN EDINBURGII derives not a little of the singular charm which almost every visitor recognises in it, from the striking contrast presented by the union of the old and new. The modern town, if spread out on a level area, would be nearly as formal as the blocks of an American city of the west; but while this symmetrical arrangement is relieved by the varying undulations of its remarkable site, it is sufficiently strongly marked to afford one of the most striking contrasts, when the stranger crosses the beautifully terraced bed of the old North Loch, and enters within the picturesque precincts of the ancient city.

The history of most large towns, like that of the great metropolis itself, exhibits to us the results of a gradual growth and extension, arising simply from the yearly additions to its suburban streets; but Edinburgh has progressed only at long intervals, as it were by a

succession of bounds, when it has leaped from one height to another, and then hastened to occupy the new acquisition. When Edinburgh first became a walled town, in 1450, it occupied only the upper area of the Castle-hill, but a most rapid extension followed during the next fifty years. The very construction of the civic walls would seem to have awakened a desire to

escape beyond their confines. The period, moreover, was one of great prosperity; and so the New Town of the fifteenth century arose in the open valley to the south, with the Cowgate as the chief thoroughfare of this fashionable suburb, which appears, within the single half century to have nearly equalled in extent the old intra-mural capital.

"This expansion of the town," says the author of the "Traditions of Edinburgh," "is to be considered a proof of the prosperity of Scotland during the reigns of James III. and his successor, testifying that our country saw no brighter period till the reign of George II.—an era by far the most splendid in her annals. The first wall was built, as may be gathered from the grant for its erection, under the dread of invasion from England. But so secure had the kingdom afterwards become in its own internal strength, that Edinburgh was suffered to luxuriate into twice its original extent, without any measures being taken for additional defence. The necessity of enclosing the Cowgate after the fatal field of Flodden, seems to have come upon the citizens in the most unexpected