The streets, which are thronged from end to end, become a place for delicate pilotage.

Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out and cannoning one against another; and now and again, one falls and lies as he has fallen.

Before night, so many have gone to bed or the police office, that the streets seem almost clearer.
And as _guisards_ and _first-footers_ are now not much seen except in country places, when once the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at the Tron railings, the festivities begin to find their way indoors and something like quiet returns upon the town.

But think, in these piled _lands_, of all the senseless snorers, all the broken heads and empty pockets! Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention.

But the great generation, I am afraid, is at an end; and even during my own college days, the spirit appreciably declined.