he previous
century, now closed every possible avenue of commercial activity for the
renumerative utilisation of Scottish capital. 'We are dying by inches,'
wrote James, Earl of Bute, to a friend. And the signs of the times did
not seem to belie the assertion.

In Edinburgh, also, the change was severely felt. The removal of the
Court to London, a hundred and four years before, had drawn a large
number of the Scottish nobility to the vortex of fashion. The money they
were wont to spend during their stay in Edinburgh, while the Court
_season_ lasted, was diverted into another channel. The town houses
which they had been forced to maintain in the Scottish metropolis, were
in many cases relinquished, and the place that so long had known them
knew them no more. At that time Scottish merchants and shopkeepers had
suffered severely, yet they had the satisfaction of knowing that the
seat of Scottish government remained north of the Tweed.

But now a change even more radical was inaugurated. The national
Parliament, whose sittings had always necessitated the attendance of a
considerable proportion of the nobility and gentry of the country,
during a certain part of the year, was merged in that of the larger
country. Those of the purely Scottish peerage, whom choice or political
duties had retained in Scotland, now found no need to maintain their
costly Edinburgh establishments. Many a noble ancestral home, that for
three or four hundred years had sheltered the household and retainers of
families, whose deeds were interwoven with the historic records of
Scotland's most glorious epochs, was now advertised for sale. An exodus
to London on a vast scale set in, and the capital of Scotland ere long
settled down, in the apathy of despair, to play the _role_ of a
provincial centre. Henceforward her 'paper lords,' otherwise Judges of
the Court of Session, were to represent her titled magnates.

The bitterness of spirit which such a course of action as this migration
inspired in the minds of the residents of the Scottish capital, Ramsay,
as a young journeyman, or as a master craftsman who had only newly
commenced business for himself, would fervently reciprocate. In two
places at least in his works he pathetically, yet vigorously, protests
against the cream of Scottish youth being sent away out of the country.

In one of the most suggestively beautiful of his minor pastorals, _Betty
and Kate_, he thus writes--

'Far, far, o'er fa