and WYNDS ;* but to a traveller like myself, who has threaded the passages of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, these wynds lose a good deal of their characteristic effect: for, after all, obscure and narrow as they may be, there is nothing in Edinburgh like the Black Gate at Newcastle. It was my good fortune once to visit these wynds and closes, under the auspices of the author of Reekiana ;t-but what a

A close is a small place or square. A wynd is a narrow passage. Not fewer than seventy-five closes are enumerated by Mr. Chambers in his map of the Old Town, and not above ten wynds. There is a publication, in two parts, 1816, 4to. each part 17. 1s. called Twelve Etchings of Views of Edinburgh, in which many of these wynds are introduced. These etchings want force and effect.

+ Two spots, or wynds, made a particular impression upon me, from causes widely different; they are, however, on the same side of the way, and not far apart. The one was where formerly had been the White Horse Inn, and which Dr. Johnson and Lord Stowell had made their head-quarters on their first arrival at Edinburgh. What a spot it is! What an inn it must have been! Does the reader recollect an alley or passage, headed by two iron posts, or old cannon, in St. Giles's, nearly opposite the eastern extremity of Oxford Street? But this latter is palatial to it. The other spot, or wynd, is terminated by a respectable residence, which had been the banking-house of the British Linen Company-some thirty years ago. The entrance to the Wynd is overhung by houses of at least two centuries' growth, leaving scarcely the width of two yards for the passage. The principal egress or road to Leith was then almost opposite this passage. It was getting towards dark, when a man, bent upon the murder of his object, placed himself at the extremity of this wynd, to watch the arrival of the clerk from the Leith Bank, to make a deposit of £4,000 with the bank below. Seeing his victim cross the way, and make for the wynd, he hastened to meet him; and drawing a large baker's knife from his breast-of which the handle was surrounded by a quantity of cobbler's wax, to prevent his shirt sleeve from being blood-stained

morning for our visitation!—rain, smoke, and darkness commingling. Every object seemed to be tinted with a more dingy hue: decay and desolation wore a more shuddering aspect; and the poverty of some of the inmates seemed to be more squalid and distressing. It was with him that I visited the interior of what had once been the palace of Mary of Guise, the mother of the unfortunate Mary: a present abode of more darkness and wretchedness than any I had previously seen.* A poor female was dwelling in a room, or rather cage, or hole, to the left. Although there was hardly light to discover, from the dress, of what sex the occupant might be, yet I could not help being struck with the tones of resignation, and even of cheerfulness, which marked her voice. I only wished I could have trebled the gratuity which I slipped into her hand at parting. What changes do a few centuries make !-but at

he went straight up to his man, and with one unerring blow fixed the knife in his heart. He fell without a struggle or a groan-and within fifteen paces of a sentinel, who was guarding the bankinghouse at the very moment of the assassination. His pocket, or rather pocket-book, was rifled, and all the notes and specie made away with. A girl, coming down a dark stair-case from one of the upper flats, tumbled over the dead body, as it lay in the passage with the knife in its breast, and was the first to give the alarm. The murderer was never detected, although strong suspicions fell upon a surgeon at Stirling, who soon afterwards made away with himself. Many of the larger bank-notes were recovered, in a field near Leith.

* The house is situated towards the western extremity of the High Street, nearly opposite the West Bow. One wonders how a regal residence could have had such a narrow and dismal entrance. The arms and date of the Queen-Mother are over the door-to be seen after a good deal of anxious peering.

Edinburgh, one century has produced a metamorphosis scarcely exceeded by any recorded in the pages of Ovid.

I am getting on too fast, for I have carried the reader to the top of the High Street, instead of begging him to stop two minutes in the Canongate area, to notice, first, the house of the Earl of Moray, (not the Regent Murray)—which is represented in the OPPOSITE PLATE; and of which the architecture is sufficiently frightful; and, secondly, the residence of the redoubted John Knox. But one at a time. Murray's house (as Mr. R. Chambers fully agreed with me) could not have been built before the time of James I: perhaps about the year 1620. It is remarkable for two things-and may be so for two hundred more. The one, that under the window of the drawing-room, seen in the OPPOSITE PLATE, the famous and unfortunate Graham, first Marquis of Montrose, was conveyed in his carriage to the place of execution, where a gallows of thirty feet in height was prepared to receive him.* As his carriage passed under the window, (so the report

* This first MARQUIS OF MONTROSE was without doubt one of the most extraordinary characters for bravery, which Scotland ever produced. Had Graham commenced his career by an adhesion to the royal cause, his character had been well nigh perfect. This is said in reference to that rare and precious virtue, political consistency. The first Marquis of Montrose was a Republican, at his outset. But be this as it may, his execution was MUrder. He thought no more of a battle than a schoolboy thinks of a game of marbles. War-not in its ferocious and sanguinary sense-was his delight. If he could "fly like Peterborough from pole to pole," he could fight with all the dogged determinedness of Cromwell and Van Tromp. His first onsets were usually terrible.

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