with the cadets of old families - Grants, Elphinstones, and Ogilvies-in lucrative and responsible positions. Society, as it grew richer, became more liberal and tolerant. Now that the Kirk was the established Church of the country, and no longer a persecuted sect, it grew less rigid and austere in its observances. The theatre was no longer tabooed, and ministers flocked to see Sarah Siddons on the stage, even while the General Assembly was in solemn conclave. Social life, also, grew more refined and civilised. There was a general exodus from the cramped and inconvenient flats in the wynds and closes of the High Street to the New Town across the valley, which was "spreading its white arms to the sea" in long vistas of squares and terraces. Immoderate drinking went out of fashion; the taverns and oystercellars were deserted; and in their new and roomier quarters advocates and business men began to taste the pleasures of domestic life, and preferred to pass their evenings with their families and by their own fireside. A new and distinguished group of men of letters had appeared: Jeffrey, Horner, Allen, Brougham, and other young lions of 'The Edinburgh Review,' added lustre to the brilliant debates of the Speculative Society. It was disdiscovered, also, that Scotland had artists of her own in no way inferior to those south of the Tweed; and in 1808 all Edinburgh flocked to see an exhibition of portraits by Raeburn and landscapes by Nasmyth. Above all, Walter Scott was enchanting English and Scottish alike with his poems and romances, and removing the last particle of national prejudice. By the magic of his pen he created a new army of hero-worshippers, who flocked to Scotland to identify Ellen's Isle or the site of the Tolbooth. The Highlands became the fashionable playground of society; and it was not long before-as Lockhart expressed it-" every London citizen made Loch Lomond his washpot and threw his shoe over Ben Nevis." It is a curious fact that during the French War and the long administration of William Pitt, public feeling in Edinburgh was far more Tory than in London itself. As far as practical politics went, Jacobitism had faded into the limbo of lost causes and impossible loyalties, and was now little more than "a romantic embroidery on Scottish life-a peg to hang poetic sentiment upon. upon." Throughout his long reign George III. was regarded with affectionate respect by his subjects in Edinburgh a respect in no way diminished by his choice of Lord Bute as his favourite minister, of John Hunter as his surgeon, and of Allan Ramsay as his portrait-painter. For sixty years, on each succeeding Fourth of June, long tables were laid out in the Outer House of Parliament, which was crowded by excited loyal 1 Sir Henry Craik's Century of Scottish History, vol. ii. pp. 47, 52 et seq. ists "roaring, drinking, toasting, and quarrelling," and the King's health was drunk to the accompaniment of volleys of musketry and the crash of splintered wine-glasses. "For a week afterwards," says Lord Cockburn, who did not approve of what he calls this abominable festival, "the Court reeked with the wreck and fumes of that scandalous night." City affairs were managed by the Town Council, of whom Lord Cockburn speaks as a respectable American politician might speak of Tammany Hall, omnipotent, corrupt, impenetrable a sink of political and municipal iniquity, but staunchly Conservative and devoted to Henry Dundas (Lord Melville), who in those days was "the absolute Dictator of Scotland." For many years the Whigs were in a small minority in Edinburgh, and were viewed with the same dislike and suspicion as the Papists in the days of Elizabeth. Even the faithful few, such as Henry Erskine, Dugald Stewart, John Clerk, and Lord Cockburn himself, who assembled annually on Charles Fox's birthday, had their names taken down by the sheriff's officers. The French Revolution was the all-pervading subject of the day, and every Whig was suspected of being a Jacobin at heart. The spirit of Toryism asserted itself even in matters of dress: trousers were considered Jacobinical, and so late as 1820 there were old loyalists who thanked God that they had always stuck to the Constitution and shoe - buckles. Party feeling was in fact extremely bitter and unscrupulous; and the ever-present fear of a French invasion accentuated the Tory distrust of their political opponents. From 1803 to 1814 Edinburgh was practically an armed camp. Volunteers were enrolled by thousands,-including professors, judges, doctors, and all the élite of society,drilling by torchlight in the winter evenings, and parading on Heriot's green or Bruntsfield Links. The general enthusiasm was immense, and the stirring episode of the false alarm of a French fleet, told in the last chapter of Scott's 'Antiquary,' was entirely founded on fact. On the night of February 2, 1804, the beacon on on Home Castle was fired by mistake, and the signal repeated from point to point on the hills along the Border. All through the night militia and volunteers from Berwick, Roxburgh, and Stirling, kept pouring in to the alarm-posts along the coast. The Selkirkshire Yeomanry made a forced march of between twenty and thirty miles to reach their appointed place of assembly at Dalkeith; and the men of Liddesdale requisitioned their neighbours' horses and ponies, that they might arrive the sooner, and marched into Kelso early the following morning, with their band playing their favourite air of "Little Jock Elliot." A widowed mother, who had sent her son's arms and accoutrements that he might not be late, was complimented by Sir Walter on her readiness and forethought. "1 "Sir," she replied in the spirit of a Roman matron, none can know better than yourself that he is the only prop of my old age; but I would rather see him dead on that hearth than hear that he had been a horse's length behind his companions in defence of his King and country.' These stirring incidents sufficiently illustrate the strong patriotism and public spirit which now animated the Border clans-the same men whose ancestors a few generations back would probably have been harrying the Saxon on their own account, and would have received the French invaders with open arms. And it may be remarked that this patriotism was no ephemeral fit of enthusiasm or transitory flash of loyalty. The Highland regiments have consistently shown the same steadfast devotion to their sovereign as they displayed to the chieftains of their clans in the good (or bad) old times. From Fontenoy to Waterloo, from Balaclava to Omdurman, their "thin red line" has faced death on the battlefield—often against appalling odds-with an unflinching courage which has endeared their kilts and tartans to English and Scottish alike. With them it is the natural courage of the race,— "the dormant ferocity of a warlike nation,' that needs but an adequate motive to call it into action. Burns has expressed this in two famous stanzas: 1 Antiquary, note H. The last years of the eighteenth century marked an epoch in the national life, just as the Union and the abolition of the Scottish Parliament had done a hundred years previously. It was the end of another old song, the disappearance of all the distinctive features of old Scottish society and those strangely original types of characterhomely, frank, convivial-with courtly manners and a singular bluntness of speech, and with a friendly camaraderie among the various tenants of the crowded "lands" in the Old Town. It is easy to understand how Lord Cockburn and others mourned over the disappearance of all the familiar landmarks of their boyhood, and moralised over the sweeping changes that had transformed their native city. "The eighteenth was the last Scottish century. We, whose youth tasted the close of that century and lived far into the southern influence, feel proud of a purely Edinburgh society, which raised the reputation of our discrowned capital and graced the deathbed of our national manners." "2 2 Cockburn's Journals, vol. ii. p. 199. H 1 URGA AND THE TASHI LAMA. follow. will inevitably SINCE the flight of the Tashi this branch will Lama from Lhassa, accompanied, as was reported, by the Russian Buriat Agent, Urga or its immediate neighbourhood has been the temporary home of the deposed deity. Latest advices from China state that he has at last been induced by the authorities at Pekin to quit Urga, in order to return at any rate to Thibet; but whether the idea of attempting to make his way back to Lhassa itself holds out any pleasing prospect to him may well be doubted. So little known to Europeans is Urga, that it may be of interest to attempt to throw some light upon such a sacred spot, as well as upon the surrounding country. Previous to the Russo-Japanese war, and at a time when the former nation had but barely completed her epoch-making Siberian Railway, there were under consideration other, and no less important branch, lines. Of these vertebræ, which it was intended should some day supplement the backbone, as the Trans-Siberian line may be considered, one of the most important has already been completed and opened, the Orenburg Tashkendt line. Another, starting from Tashkendt and proceeding vid Vernoe and Semipalatinsk to join the Siberian railway in the neighbourhood of Tomsk, still awaits construction. But There was, and possibly still is, in contemplation a branch, which it was intended should connect Pekin with the Trans-Siberian line across the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The actual tracing suggested led from some point in the vicinity of Lake Baikal vid Kiachkta and Urga to Kalgan, on the southern or Chinese edge of Mongolia. It has been stated that the natural difficulties arising from want of water as well as from the terrible severity of the winter in the Gobi would prevent the construction of any such line, but with this view the writer, who has himself crossed the Gobi desert in the month of July, cannot agree. As to the difficulty in actual construction, it may be stated that for many scores of the seven odd hundred miles separating Urga from Kalgan nothing could be easier. A gigantic repetition of the formation of the country surrounding Newmarket best describes the character of a large portion of the track along which the trace of the railway line would run. As to the natural difficulties already referred to, few travellers who have experience of the Godforsaken waste of shifting sand through which the TransCaspian railway forces its way to the river Oxus in Russian Central Asia, will be in any haste to say that the UrgaKalgan line is a physical impossibility. In the light of the future and of past events in Manchuria it is a problem of the deepest interest, at any rate to soldiers, to consider what might have been the result in the present war had a few years more been allowed to Russia to develop and mature her strategical railways in and around that unfortunate country. That any such line will now be built is unlikely. That is to say, if China is wise. At the present time she is engaged in pushing on what would have been the last 150 miles of the Russian line, the portion from Pekin to Kalgan this in order to connect the Mongolian plateau and borderland with the capital. From time immemorial the ancient caravan route has passed this way, traversing the Nankou pass. And if only the Chinese could be sufficiently far-seeing, and possessed the necessary strength of purpose to keep the entire capital in their own hands, this new line, through its bearing upon modern trading enterprise at Tientsin and Pekin, should, by the profits it earns, go far to reconcile the Chinese to railway enterprise in the interior. another has disseminated Russian influence, and possibly something more tangible, among the Mongolian princes of the eastern tribes. At the time of the writer's visit Russia was represented by M. Schismaroff, who, like not a few of the versatile and capable public servants of the Czar, is not of pure Russian extraction. To his intimate acquaintance with their character and customs was no doubt due a considerable portion of his success in moulding the native element he was called upon to handle. The approach to Urga from the south, as seen in the early rains, is decidedly picturesque. Riding in, the country was everywhere covered with beautiful carpet of fresh green turf, which, following suddenly upon the bare expanse of stony desert, was most comforting to the eyes. After the eternal flatness of the last month it was indeed a treat to pass over rolling green hills heavily wooded in a darker shade, which contrasted in colour as nature alone knows how to paint. Anything more unlike what imagination pictures the deserts of Mongolia to be it is hard to imagine. The town itself, though town in the European sense it is not, lies on the north side of a small river, by name the Tola. The valley through which the river flows is shut in by hills towards the east, and varies from a mile to one and a half mile in breadth. Strictly speaking neither a town, a |