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A change at length began. Our northern country had settled to sober courses in the reign of George II., and the usual results of industry were soon apparent. Edinburgh by-and-by felt much like a lady who, after long being content with a small and inconvenient house, is taught, by the money in her husband’s pockets, that such a place is no longer to be put up with. There was a wish to expatiate over some of the neighbouring grounds, so as to get more space and freer air; only it was difficult to do, considering the physical circumstances of the town, and the character of the existing outlets. Space, space!—air, air! was, however, a strong and a general cry, and the old romantic city did at length burst from its bounds, though not in a very regular way, or for a time to much good purpose.

NEWHAVEN FISHWIFE.

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A project for a new street on the site of Halkerston’s Wynd, leading by a bridge to the grounds of Mutrie’s Hill, where a suburb might be erected, was formed before the end of the seventeenth century.[2] It was a subject of speculation to John, Earl of Mar, during his years of exile, as were many other schemes of national improvement which have since been realised—for example, the Forth and Clyde Canal. The grounds to the north lay so invitingly open that the early formation of such a project is not wonderful. Want of spirit and of means alone could delay its execution. After the Rebellion of 1745, when a general spirit of improvement began to be shown in Scotland, the scheme was taken up by a public-spirited provost, Mr George Drummond, but it had to struggle for years with local difficulties. Meanwhile, a sagacious builder, by name James Brown, resolved to take advantage of the growing taste; he purchased a field near the town for £1200, and feued it out for a square. The speculation is said to have ended in something like giving him his own money as an annual return. This place (George Square) became the residence of several of the judges and gentry. I was amused a few years ago hearing an old gentleman in the country begin a story thus: ‘When I was in Edinburgh, in the year ’67, I went to George Square, to call for Mrs Scott of Sinton,’ &c. To this day some relics of gentry cling to its grass-green causeways, charmed, perhaps, by its propinquity to the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links. Another place sprang into being, a smaller quadrangle of neat houses, called Brown’s Square.[3] So much was thought of it at first that a correspondent of the Edinburgh Advertiser, in 1764, seriously counsels his fellow-citizens to erect in it an equestrian statue of the then popular young king, George III.! This place, too, had some distinguished inhabitants; till 1846, one of the houses continued to be nominally the town mansion of a venerable judge, Lord Glenlee. We pass willingly from these traits of grandeur to dwell on the fact of its having been the residence of Miss Jeanie Elliot of Minto, the authoress of the original song, The Flowers of the Forest; and even to bethink ourselves that here Scott placed the ideal abode of Saunders Fairford and the adventure of Green Mantle. Sir Walter has informed us, from his own recollections, that the inhabitants of these southern districts formed for a long time a distinct class of themselves, having even places of polite amusement for their own recreation, independent of the rest of Edinburgh. He tells us that the society was of the first description, including, for one thing, most of the gentlemen who wrote in the Mirror and the Lounger. There was one venerable inhabitant who did not die till half the New Town was finished, yet he had never once seen it!