the fashionable rendezvous of the period.
No sooner was the midday dinner over, than the fair ladies and gallants
of the town--the former in the wide hoops, the jewelled stomachers, the
silken _capuchins_ (cloaks), the _bongraces_ (hoods), and high
head-dresses of the day; the latter in the long, embroidered coats,
knee-breeches, silk stockings, and buckled shoes, tye-wigs, and
three-cornered hats peculiar to the fourth decade of last
century--issued from their dingy turnpike stairs in the equally darksome
closes, pends, and wynds, to promenade or lounge, as best pleased them,
in the open space around the Cross. Here were to be met all sorts and
conditions of men and women. Viewed from the first storey of the
building wherein Allan Ramsay's shop was situated, the scene must have
been an exceedingly animated one. Mr. Robert Chambers, with that
graphic power of literary scene-painting he possessed in measure so
rich, represented the picture, in his _Traditions of Edinburgh_, in
colours so vivid, and with a minuteness of detail so striking, that
subsequent descriptions have been little more than reproductions of his.
Let us take advantage of his admirable sketch of the scene round the
Cross, filling in any important details he may have omitted.

The jostlement and huddlement was extreme everywhere. Ladies and
gentlemen paraded along in the stately attire of the period: grave Lords
of Session, and leading legal luminaries, bustling Writers to the Signet
and their attendant clerks, were all there. Tradesmen chatted in groups,
often bareheaded, at their shop doors; _caddies_ whisked about, bearing
messages or attending to the affairs of strangers; children darted about
in noisy sport; corduroyed carters from Gilmerton are bawling 'coals'
and 'yellow sand'; fishwives are crying their 'caller haddies' from
Newhaven; whimsicals and idiots going about, each with his or her crowd
of tormentors; _tronmen_ with their bags of soot; town-guardsmen in
rusty uniform, and with their ancient Lochaber axes; water-carriers with
their dripping barrels; Highland drovers in philabeg, sporran, and cap;
Liddesdale farmers with their blue Lowland bonnets; sedan chairmen, with
here and there a red uniform from the castle--such was the scene upon
which, in the early months of the year 1732,--alas! his last on
earth,--the celebrated London poet, John Gay, gazed from the windows of
Allan Ramsay's shop. Beside him stood the redoubtable Allan himself,