CHAPTER III.
A BALL IN THE OLDEN TIME.
Shades of my fathers, in your pasteboard skirts,
Your broidered waistcoats and your plaited shirts,
Your formal bag-wigs—wide extended cuffs,
Your five-inch chitterlings and nine-inch ruffs;
I see you move the solemn minuet o'er,
The modest foot scarce rising from the floor.
SALMAGUNDI.
On the south side of the city where the old Liberton road branching off enters it by two diverging routes, one by the narrow and ancient Potter Row, and the other by the street of the Bristo Port, a formidable gate in the re-entering angle of the city-wall, which bristled with cannon and overlooked the way that descended to the Grass-market, there stood in 1688 (and yet stands) an antique mansion of very picturesque aspect. It is furnished with numerous outshots and projections, broad, dark, and bulky stacks of chimnies reared up in unusual places, and having over the upper windows circular pediments enriched with initials and devices, but now blackened by age and encrusted with the smoky vapour of centuries.
It is still known as the "General's House," from its having been anciently the residence appropriated to the Commander-in-chief of the Scottish forces. A narrow passage leads to it from that ancient suburban Burgh of Barony, the Potter's Row, where doubtless many a psalm-singing puritan of Monk's Regiment, many a scarred trooper of Leven's Iron Brigade, and many a stern veteran of the Covenant have kept watch and ward, in the pathway which is still, as of old, styled, par excellence, THE General's Entry.
Its garden has now become a lumber-yard, and is otherwise encroached upon; its stables have long since vanished, and mean dwellings surround and overtop it; the windows are stuffed with old hats and bundles of straw or rags; brown paper flaps dismally in the broken glasses, and its once gay chambers, where the "cunning George Monk," the grave and stern Leven, Dalyel of the iron-heart, and the gallant Dunbarton feasted royally, and held wassail with their comrades, have, like all the surrounding mansions of the great and noble of the other days, been long since abandoned to citizens of the poorest and humblest class.
In 1688 its aspect was very different.
Standing then on the very verge of the city, it was deemed in the country, though now the gas lamps extend two miles beyond it, and dense and populous streets occupy the sites of two straggling and unpretending suburbs of thatched cottages and "sclaited lands." To the southward of the road, a narrow rugged horseway, passed through fields and thickets towards the great Loch of the Burgh, and ascending its opposite bank, passed the straggling suburb named the Causeway-side, where there were many noble old villas, the residences of Sir Patrick Johnstone, of the Laird of Westerhall, and others, and sweeping past the ruined convent of St. Catherine of Sienna, wound over the hill (near a gibbet that was seldom unoccupied by sweltering corpses and screaming ravens), towards the Barony of Liberton, a lonely hamlet with a little stone spire, and the tall square tower of the Winrams, in older days the patrimony of a lesser Baron named Macbeth.
To the westward of the General's House were fertile fields that extended close up to the defences of the city, then a long line of lofty and embattled walls built of reddish-coloured sandstone, strengthened at intervals by towers alternately of a round or square form, which defended its various ports or barrier-gates. Within this stony zone rose the dark and massive city, which for ages had been increasing in denseness; for, in consequence of the nature of the times, and the dubious relations of the country with its southern neighbour, the citizens seldom dared to build beyond the narrow compass of the walls.
From these causes, and in imitation of those bad allies the French, Edinburgh, like ancient Paris, became deeper and closer, taller and yet more tall; house arose upon house, street was piled upon street, bartizan, gable, and tower shot up to an amazing height, and were wedged within the walls, till the thoroughfares like those of Venice were only three feet broad, and in some places exhibited fourteen tiers of windows.