It was not choice, so much as an external fate, that kept Fergusson in this round of sordid pleasures.

A Scot of poetic temperament, and without religious exaltation, drops as if by nature into the public-house.

The picture may not be pleasing; but what else is a man to do in this dog's weather?
To none but those who have themselves suffered the thing in the body, can the gloom and depression of our Edinburgh winter be brought home.

For some constitutions there is something almost physically disgusting in the bleak ugliness of easterly weather; the wind wearies, the sickly sky depresses them; and they turn back from their walk to avoid the aspect of the unrefulgent sun going down among perturbed and pallid mists.

The days are so short that a man does much of his business, and certainly all his pleasure, by the haggard glare of gas lamps.