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Edinburgh society, past and present.
'Wha last beside his chair shall fa' He is the king amang us three!' It was the Princess Dashkoff who said, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, that of all the societies of men of talent she had met with in her travels, Edinburgh's was the first in point of abilities.
One might make the same remark to-day, perhaps, and not depart widely from the truth.

One does not find, however, as many noted names as are associated with the annals of the Cape and Poker Clubs or the Crochallan Fencibles, those famous groups of famous men who met for relaxation (and intoxication, I should think) at the old Isle of Man Arms or in Dawney's Tavern in the Anchor Close.

These groups included such shining lights as Robert Fergusson the poet, and Adam Ferguson the historian and philosopher, Gavin Wilson, Sir Henry Raeburn, David Hume, Erskine, Lords Newton, Gillies, Monboddo, Hailes, Kames, Henry Mackenzie, and the Ploughman Poet himself, who has kept alive the memory of the Crochallans in many a jovial verse like that in which he describes Smellie, the eccentric philosopher and printer:-- 'Shrewd Willie Smellie to Crochallan came, The old cocked hat, the grey surtout the same, His bristling beard just rising in its might; 'Twas four long nights and days to shaving night'; or in the characteristic picture of William Dunbar, a wit of the time, and the merriest of the Fencibles:-- 'As I cam by Crochallan I cannily keekit ben; Rattlin', roarin' Willie Was sitting at yon boord en'; Sitting at yon boord en', And amang guid companie! Rattlin', roarin' Willie, Ye're welcome hame to me!' or in the verses on Creech, Burns's publisher, who left Edinburgh for a time in 1789.

The 'Willies,' by the way, seem to be especially inspiring to the Scottish balladists.
'Oh, Willie was a witty wight, And had o' things an unco slight! Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight And trig and braw; But now they'll busk her like a fright-- Willie's awa'!' I think perhaps the gatherings of the present time are neither quite as gay nor quite as brilliant as those of Burns's day, when 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut, An' Rob an' Allan cam to pree'; but the ideal standard of those meetings seems to be voiced in the lines:-- 'Wha last beside his chair shall fa', He is the king amang us three!' As they sit in their chairs nowadays to the very end of the feast, there is doubtless joined with modern sobriety a soupcon of modern dulness and discretion.
To an American the great charm of Edinburgh is its leisurely atmosphere: 'not the leisure of a village arising from the deficiency of ideas and motives, but the leisure of a city reposing grandly on tradition and history; which has done its work, and does not require to weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or smelt its own iron.' We were reminded of this more than once, and it never failed to depress us properly.