gretted sincerely that I had not also a room for Mr. Scott. Mr.
Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High=street, to my house in
James's court[45]: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being
assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. I heard a late baronet,
of some distinction in the political world in the beginning of the
present reign, observe, that 'walking the streets of Edinburgh at night
was pretty perilous, and a good deal odoriferous.' The peril is much
abated, by the care which the magistrates have taken to enforce the city
laws against throwing foul water from the windows[46]; but from the
structure of the houses in the old town, which consist of many stories,
in each of which a different family lives, and there being no covered
sewers, the ordour still continues. A zealous Scotsman would have wished
Mr. Johnson to be without one of his five senses upon this occasion. As
we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the
dark[47]!' But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the
loftiness of the buildings on each side made a noble appearance[48].

My wife had tea ready for him, which it is well known he delighted to
drink at all hours, particularly when sitting up late, and of which his
able defence against Mr. Jonas Hanway[49] should have obtained him a
magnificent reward from the East-India Company. He shewed much
complacency upon finding that the mistress of the house was so attentive
to his singular habit; and as no man could be more polite when he chose
to be so, his address to her was most courteous and engaging; and his
conversation soon charmed her into a forgetfulness of his external
appearance[50].

I did not begin to keep a regular full journal till some days after we
had set out from Edinburgh; but I have luckily preserved a good many
fragments of his _Memorabilia_ from his very first evening in Scotland.

We had, a little before this, had a trial for murder, in which the
judges had allowed the lapse of twenty years since its commission as a
plea in bar, in conformity with the doctrine of prescription in the
_civil_ law, which Scotland and several other countries in Europe have
adopted. He at first disapproved of this; but then he thought there was
something in it, if there had been for twenty years a neglect to
prosecute a crime which was _known_. He would not allow that a murder,
by not being _discovered_ for twenty years, should escape
punishment[51]