But the Covenanters were to learn not to put their faith in princes—especially in princes coerced to their faith. On the 11th of May 1661, the head of the gallant Royalist, the Marquis of Montrose, was taken down from its spike on the Tolbooth, and his mutilated remains were gathered, and buried in St. Giles’s with pomp and pity by Wishart, who had been his chaplain, and who, a year later, was consecrated Bishop of Edinburgh. When the poor persecuted Covenanters taken at Rullion Green were imprisoned in Haddo’s Hole and treated with barbarous severities, it was this Wishart who fed them and did all he could to obtain mercy for them,—this Wishart, who had himself suffered so much at the hands of Covenanters that to his dying day he bore the marks on his face of the rats who “had been like to devour” him in his loathsome dungeon.[33]

It is pleasant to turn from all the stormy and tragic memories of man’s inhumanities to man to the pretty and peaceful fact that in the spring of 1700 there were hung in the steeple of St. Giles’s “a good and sufficient cheme or sett of musical bells, according to the rules of musick, for the use of the good toun of Edinburgh.” Was this the peal that continued faithfully to jangle—

’Twas within a mile of Edinburgh toun,
In the rosy time o’ the year,

until, by reason of age, the jangling grew fitful, with little pauses and blanks of silence, like a pulse that is beating out its last of a long and busy life?...

If the Beatitude promised to those whom men shall revile and persecute and despitefully use is also granted to stone and lime, then “Sanct Gellis kirk “ is blessed indeed. Over six centuries ago it was burnt to ashes by the English, and carefully and reverently restored and rebuilt. Then, for nearly two hundred years it was slowly enriched and laboriously embellished, till every pillar had its shrine and every niche its altar, and its outer walls were irregular with the chapels that had been added to it, and the beautiful open arched crown steeple, the pride of Edinburgh to-day, was added by unknown hands.

And then all the altars were dashed down and the images burnt; and, scarcely had the Church been “cleansed of popery,” when she was again sprinkled and re-consecrated after the sacrilege; then again she was “purged of idolatry,” and the Latin chantings of a French bishop had to give place to the noise of workmen’s hammers and the creaking of pulleys and the falling of altars and carvings, and nine days later St. Giles’s found herself bare and empty and—whitewashed!

Her shadows have been cast by the wax candles bequeathed for the souls of those in purgatory; and they have been banished by the torches when John Knox held his Communions at four o’clock on winter mornings. Her aisles have echoed to many doctrines, many angry denunciations, many whispered prayers; they have held cannon and soldiers, they have immured prisoners, they have seen gay wedding pageantries, they have watched martyrs and statesmen laid to rest. And at last they were left dusty and neglected: cobwebs hung on the walls,—spiders spun their altars unreproved.

In 1758 the old Norman doorway, a survival of the thirteenth century, was ruthlessly demolished: and, in 1829, under the name of “improvement,” the architecture of the church was ruined, at the cost of over twenty thousand pounds, according to the taste of the builders,—the roof was plastered, the carvings and tombs and monuments were broken, destroyed, and desecrated, galleries were built, and all the past was insulted and the present rendered hideous,—and then again it was left in dirt and neglect. From this state it was rescued in 1883 by the late William Chambers, who undid the deeds of vandalism as far as possible, and magnificently restored the old Church of St. Giles.

CHAPTER IV
STORIES OF THE CLOSES, THE WYNDS, AND THE LANDS

It is, to be sure, more picturesque to lament the desolation of towns on hills and haughs than the degradation of an Edinburgh close; but I cannot help thinking on the simple and cosic retreats where worth and talent, and elegance to boot, were often nestled.