nly to the right--about went the bag-pipe-haunted
mare, and away up the Mound, past the pictures of Irish Giants--Female
Dwarfs--Albinos--an Elephant endorsed with towers--Tigers and Lions of
all sorts--and a large wooden building, like a pyramid, in which there
was the thundering of cannon--for the battle, we rather think, of
Camperdown was going on--the Bank of Scotland seemed to sink into
the NorLoch--one gleam through the window of the eyes of the
Director-General--and to be sure how we did make the street-stalls of
the Lawn-market spin! The man in St. Giles's steeple was playing his
one o'clock tune on the bells, heedless in that elevation of our
career--in less than no time John Knox, preaching from a house
half-way down the Canongate, gave us the go-by--and down through one
long wide sprawl of men, women, and children we wheeled past the
Gothic front, and round the south angle of Holyrood, and across the
King's-park, where wan and withered sporting debtors held up their
hands and cried, Hurra--hurra--hurra--without stop or stay, up the
rocky way that leads to St. Anthony's Well and Chapel--and now it was
manifest that we were bound for the summit of Arthur's Seat. We hope
that we were sufficiently thankful that a direction was not taken
towards Salisbury Crags, where we should have been dashed into many
million pieces. Free now from even the slightest suburban impediment,
obstacle, or interruption, we began to eye our gradually rising
situation in life--and looking over our shoulder, the sight of city
and sea was indeed magnificent. There in the distance rose North
Berwick Law--but though we have plenty of time now for description, we
had scant time then for beholding perhaps the noblest scenery in
Scotland. Up with us--up with us into the clouds--and just as St.
Giles's bells ceased to jingle, and both girths broke, we crowned the
summit, and sat on horseback like king Arthur himself, eight hundred
feet above the level of the sea!

_Blackwood's Magazine_.

* * * * *

Select Biography

* * * * *

No. LVIII.

* * * * *

LELAND.

John Leland, the father of the English antiquaries, was born in
London, about the end of the reign of Henry VII. He was a pupil to
William Lily, the celebrated grammarian--the first head master of St.
Paul's school; and by the kindness and liberality of a Mr. Myles, he
was sen