MEMORIALS OF TARTAN-LAND. 295 ment-shop may belong to a grocer or toy-merchant; while the shop above it may be tenanted by an upholsterer or a saddler, whose door (festooned with gamebags), together with the entrance-door of your lodginghouse, is approached by a flight of three or four steps. This arrangement causes a complete bouleversement of the social system; for your landlady has her kitchens up in the attics; and your dinner, instead of being brought upstairs, is carried down. This basement system, partially carried out in Princes Street, adds a double and peculiar attraction to the shops, which already possess another peculiarity attending their profuse display of articles of a national character. No one can stroll down Princes Street and glance in at the shop windows, without being fully alive to the fact that he is in Tartan-land. Thus, the drapers' shops are gay with all manner of plaids; although there are some establishments like that of Romanes and Paterson, on the North Bridge—which are especially devoted to the Clan Tartans, and from whence you can emerge with all the necessary materials wherewith to convert yourself into a Highland chieftain of any known or fancy clan. Or, if your modesty shrinks from this, any tailor will rig you in a Tweed suit, whose colour shall harmonise with the natural tints of the glens and straths where your sport may lead you. The printsellers' windows are rich in engravings and chromo-lithographs of Edinburgh, and other Tartan-land scenes - Newhaven Fishwomen, Heather Belles,' Tub-washings,' 'Highland Shepherds,' Deer-stalking,' 'Grouse-shooting,' 'Golfplayers,' 'Curling,' 'Pipers,' MacIan's Gaelic Gatherings,' and the Clan Tartans of Scotland.' The booksellers show us all kinds of Scotch maps, and 6 6 guides, and tourists' companions, and memorials, and souvenirs, and Scott's works, and Burns' poems, bound in wooden, or silken, or papier-maché covers of Clan Tartan. Writing-cases, blotting-books, portfolios, and other articles are also displayed with their chequered sides, after the same brilliant fashion. The lace-makers hang their windows with the fairy webs of the Ayrshire embroidery. Shetland shawls appear elsewhere, wrappers and linsey-woolseys, and stockings and socks from Skye and the western isles. The tobacconists show Scotch snuffs and mulls, from the huge silvered and cairn-gormed rams' heads, to the unpretending little black horn. The jewellers, too, have their cairngorms, and silver-mounted Scotch pebbles, and their silver thistles, and Scotch lions, and Nemo-me-impunelacessits, and every other national badge and device, Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear, either plain, or in every variety of inlaying and enamelling. Then, the coopers show their Scotch bickers, luggies, quaiches, drinking-cups, butter-prints, and rollers; the bird-stuffers have their grouse and ptarmigan, and stags'-heads and antlers, for English visitors to carry home as undoubted spoils of the chase; and the cabinet-makers offer their stag-horn umbrella-stands, and inkstands, and other articles, into the composition of which deer-stalking trophies have largely entered. But perhaps the toy-shops, and the shops that display Choice and Cheap Souvenirs of Scotland,' offer the greatest national variety, as they deal in most of the articles already specified, and in hundreds of others beside. Here you may procure the Mauchline manufactures in every kind of Clan Tartan wood-work, fashioned into paper-cutters, note-books, TOYS AND DOLLS-CALTON HILL. 297 ring-stands, match-boxes, cigar-cases, pen-holders, teacaddies, card-trays, spectacle-cases, work-boxes, cardcases, napkin-rings, and various other things, which will enable you to carry back a real souvenir of Tartan-land for the low charge of sixpence. Here, too, you can buy your plaided work-boxes, glove-boxes, and writingdesks; provide yourself with golf clubs and balls, and purchase for your little English friends the most charming dolls, dressed up as Newhaven fishwomen, or in every variety of tartan. In the latter, the costume of each clan is preserved to a nicety, so that these dolls may be said to combine amusement and instruction. In short, if you are strolling down Princes Street, with the intent to mount that Gael-ton, or 'dwelling of the Gael,'* now called Calton Hill, and, standing amid its medley of temples, that might please the eye of Pericles, or turn the brain of Palladio,† gaze upon the magnificent panorama at your feet-or even pay a shilling for the exertion of climbing up to the top of the Nelson's monument, where, however, the cameraobscura view of mine own romantic town' more than repays the toil of the ascent-you will see quite enough in the shop-windows to fully satisfy you that you are in the metropolis of Tartan-land. Sir W. Scott's Provincial Antiquities, p. 228. + Recreations of Christopher North, ii. 116. A CHAPTER XXX. NEWHAVEN AND ITS FISHWIVES. Musselburgh-Fisherrow-Portobello-The Scottish Margate VISIT to the many objects of interest in the en virons of Edinburgh should include a drive or ramble along that portion of the coast of the Firth of Forth from Musselburgh to Granton, of which Leith is the capital. Musselburgh is a goodly town, with an old Roman bridge to mark its antiquity, and a handsome portraitmonument to its modern poet, D. M. Moir, the ‘Delta' of Blackwood.' On the Musselburgh Links, between the town and the sea, where Cromwell quartered his infantry, the Edinburgh races are now held. The suburb of Fisherrow, with its squalid houses and dirty exterior, supplies many of those (so-called) Newhaven' fishwomen, with whom we will presently make acquaintance. Passing Joppa, we come to Portobello, a fashionable watering-place that has arisen since the days when Scott was so fond of riding his horse into the surf on the Portobello sands. It is now to Edinburgh what Margate is to London; except that Portobello is only SATIRE ON BATHING SCENES. 299 three miles distant from the metropolis, and consequently is of easier and cheaper access. If you are so inclined, you can take an omnibus from Princes Street to Portobello for fourpence; and, when you are there, have a bathe for threepence. But whether or no a bashful man is able to do so without any violation to his own modesty, I am not able to say from experience. I find, however, in a clever brochure published at Edinburgh ten years since, and chiefly dealing with Scottish art and artists, that one of the characters asks, How do Scotch artists study from the nude, and is answered, The artist who for travel has not wealth, Must take the nude from statues, or by stealth: The high-art youth, the anxious rising fellow The sketch of this poetical satirist is certainly not contradicted by the writer of an article (cleverly illustrated by J. Doyle) in the 'Illustrated Times' for Aug. 30, 1856, who, after describing the leading characteristics of the place, gives this summary of its rise and fall: The history of Portobello is brief and simple. About this time last century, an old sailor who had taken part in the capture of Portobello in America, built a house by the seaside to the south-east of Edinburgh. Intending this, doubtless, as a memorial of his exploit, he called it Portobello. The citizens of Edinburgh, considering that the air was pure and the beach agreeably soft, cast their eyes towards it as a favourable situation for |