rely domestic. Hence with
Ramsay, as with other men, tavern life was accepted as a substitute for
those comforts the sterner sex could not get at home. As Grant remarks
in his _Old and New Edinburgh_: 'The slender house accommodation in the
turnpike stairs compelled the use of taverns more than now. There the
high-class advocate received his clients, and the physician his
patients--each practitioner having his peculiar _howff_. There, too,
gentlemen met in the evening for supper and conversation, without much
expense, a reckoning of a shilling being a high one--so different then
was the value of money and the price of viands.'

Mr. Logie Robertson, in his graphic and admirable introduction to the
_Poems of Allan Ramsay_ in the Canterbury Series, adds: 'Business
lingered on all over the town to a much later period than is customary
now, but by eight o'clock every booth was deserted and every shop
closed, and the citizens for the most part gave themselves up to cheap
conviviality and pastime for the next hour or two. Almost every
tradesman had his favourite place in his favourite tavern, where, night
after night, he cracked a quiet bottle and a canny joke before going
home to his family. It was first business, then friendship; and the
claims of family after that.'

Out of this general spirit of conviviality arose those numberless Clubs
wherein, upon the convivial stem, were graffed politics, literature,
sport, science, as well as many other pursuits less worthy and less
beneficial. No custom, no usage, no jest, in fact, seemed too trivial to
be seized upon as the pretext to give a colour of excuse for founding a
Club. Some of them were witty, others wise, others degrading. Such
designations as the _Cape Club_,--so called from doubling the Cape of
Leith Wynd, when half-seas over, to get home to the burgh of Low Calton,
where several of the members lived; the _Pious Club_, because the
brethren met regularly to consume pies; the _Spendthrift Club_, because
no _habitue_ was permitted to spend more than _fourpence halfpenny_, and
others, were harmless in their way, and promoted a cheap _bonhomie_
without leading the burghers into disgraceful excesses. But the
_Hell-fire Club_, the _Sweating Club_, the _Dirty Club_, and others of a
kindred order, were either founded to afford an opportunity for
indulgence in riot and licence of every kind, or were intended to
encourage habits as disgusting as they were brutal.

Not to be sup