The reception of Guy Mannering in the following month amply made up for this partial disappointment. In two days the first edition of 2000 copies was sold out. Within two or three months 5000 copies more were called for. Curiosity doubtless stimulated the first demand. The mystery was further deepened by the prefixing to the novel of a motto from the Lay:
''Tis said that words and signs have power
O'er sprites in planetary hour;
But scarce I praise their venturous part,
Who tamper with such dangerous art'—
a device, as Scott said in 1829, for evading the guesses of certain persons who had observed that the Author of Waverley never quoted from the poetry of Walter Scott. The verdict of readers went by acclamation. There was no dissent as to the splendid qualities of the new novel. It was simply a chorus of delight. Happy generation to have the first enjoyment of the Shakespearian gallery of characters containing Dominie Sampson, the Laird of Ellangowan, Pleydell, Dandie Dinmont, and Meg Merrilies!
In this frame of mind, then, and in this blaze of glory, Walter Scott passed on, with the rest, into the new generation and the changing Edinburgh scene that followed and were products of the great European peace of 1815. The effects of the peace were the same in Edinburgh as elsewhere in the country. Cockburn has summarised them in these words: 'We got new things to speak about; and the entire disappearance of drums, uniforms, and parades, changed our habits and appearance. We were charmed at the moment by a striking sermon by Alison, and a beautiful review by Jeffrey, on the cessation of the long struggle; the chief charm of each being in the expression of the cordial and universal burst of joy that hailed the supposed restoration of liberty to Europe, and the downfall of the great soldier who was believed to be its only tyrant. Old men, but especially those in whose memories the American war ran into the French one, had only a dim recollection of what peace was; and middle-aged men knew it now for the first time. The change in all things, in all ideas, and conversation, and objects, was as complete as it is in a town that has at last been liberated from a strict and tedious siege.'
With the peace there began in Edinburgh some stirring of popular interest in public questions. One of the first signs of it was the great public meeting, held in July 1814, to protest against West Indian Slavery. The meeting was non-political, being attended by sympathetic persons of both parties. Yet it seems to have excited alarm, as an indication of dangerous and unsettled feelings. A monster petition resulted from this meeting, signed by ten or twelve thousand persons. Some of the promoters of the petition had an amusing experience. They found that many of the old Calvinistic Whigs would not sign any petition to the Lords Spiritual. This was the real spirit of true-blue Covenanters!
Over the New Town Dispensary, which was established in 1815, there raged what Cockburn remembered as 'a civic war.' The vested interests and old prejudices were up in arms against treating patients at their homes and the election of office-bearers by subscribers. 'However, common sense prevailed. The hated institution rose and flourished, and has had all its defects imitated by its opponents.' Prominent in this incident was Professor Andrew Duncan, an odd specimen of the curious old Edinburgh characters. He is described as a kind-hearted and excellent man, but 'one of a class which seems to live and be happy, and get liked, by its mere absurdities.' He figured as promoter and president of all sorts of innocent crack-brained clubs and societies, and wrote pamphlets, poems, epitaphs and jokes without end. His writings were all amiable, all dull, and most of them very foolish, but they made the author happy. The general respect and toleration for an eccentric like this throws a strong light on the simplicity and broad-minded philosophy of the 'unreformed' city population of a hundred years ago. The following are Lord Cockburn's recollections of Duncan:—
'He was even the president of a bathing club; and once at least every year did this grave medical professor conduct as many of the members as he could collect to Leith, where the rule was that their respect for their chief was to be shown by always letting him plunge first from the machine into the water. He continued, till he was past eighty, a practice of mounting to the summit of Arthur's Seat on the 1st of May, and celebrating the feat by what he called a poem. He was very fond of gardening, and rather a good botanist. This made him president of the Horticultural Society, which he oppressed annually by a dull discourse. But in the last, or nearly the last, of them he relieved the members by his best epitaph, being one upon himself. After mentioning his great age, he intimated that the time must soon arrive when, in the words of our inimitable Shakespeare, they would all be saying "Duncan is in his grave."'
CHAPTER L
The New Town of Edinburgh in 1815—Effects of the 'Plan'—The Earthen Mound—Criticisms by Citizens after the War—The New Approaches—Destruction of City Trees—Lord Cockburn's Lament.
The New Town of Edinburgh, as seen by Scott and his contemporaries, was simply a product of the mason. The houses were plain three-story buildings, without ornament and without variety. They stood end-on in long barrack-like blocks. 'Our jealousy of variety,' says Cockburn, 'and our association of magnificence with sameness, was really curious. If a builder ever attempted (which, however, to do them justice, they very seldom did) to deviate so far from the established paltriness as to carry up the front wall so as to hide the projecting slates, or to break the roof by a Flemish storm window, or to turn his gable to the street, there was an immediate outcry; and if the law allowed our burgh Edile, the Dean of Guild, to interfere, he was sure to do so.' Mere convenience was the only guiding principle, and it was the same with the famous 'Plan' for laying out the streets. Instead of taking a hint from the strikingly picturesque irregularity of the romantic 'Old Town,' the projectors studiously endeavoured to make everything as unlike it as possible. The 'Plan' laid down the streets in long straight lines, divided to an inch, and all to the same number of inches, by intersecting straight lines at right angles.