ms when an
'Assembly' was being held, and actually perforated the closed doors with
red-hot spits.

As affording an interesting picture of the austerity of the time, a
sentence or two may be quoted from a little pamphlet in the Advocates'
Library entitled, 'A Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to his
Friend in the City, with an Answer thereto concerning the New Assembly.'
The author writes: 'I am informed there is lately a Society erected in
your town which I think is called an "Assembly." The speculations
concerning this meeting have of late exhausted the most part of the
public conversation in this countryside. Some are pleased to say 'tis
only designed to cultivate polite conversation and genteel behaviour
among the better sort of folks, and to give young people an opportunity
of accomplishing themselves in both; while others are of opinion it will
have quite a different effect, and tends to vitiate and deprave the
minds and inclinations of the younger sort.'

The Assemblies themselves must have been characterised by the most
funereal solemnity, particularly during the _regime_ of the famous
'Mistress of Ceremonies,' or directress, Miss Nicky Murray. So late as
1753, when the horror at 'promiscuous dancing' might be supposed to have
mitigated a little, Goldsmith, who then visited the Assembly, relates
that, on entering the room, he saw one end of it 'taken up by the
ladies, who sat dismally in a group by themselves. On the other side
stand their pensive partners that are to be, but with no more
intercourse between the sexes than between two countries at war. The
ladies, indeed, may ogle and the gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid
on any closer commerce.'

As might well be supposed, such bigoted austerity had no friend in Allan
Ramsay. All that he could do he did to dissipate the mistaken ideas of
the Scottish clergy and the stricter section of the Presbyterian Church,
on the subject of dancing and the holding of the Assemblies. In the
preface to his poem of _The Fair Assembly_ he remarks: 'It is amazing to
imagine that any are so destitute of good sense and manners as to drop
the least unfavourable sentiment against the Assembly. It is to be owned
with regret, the best of things have been abused. The Church has been,
and in many countries is, the chief place for assignations that are not
warrantable.... The beauty of the fair sex, which is the great preserver
of harmony and society, has been the ruin of man