36 FAMOUS SCOTS 



in the harbour of Leith. It was still the veritable 

 Auld Reekie' of Fergusson, preserving its quaint 

 distinctiveness by the happy blending of the divisions 

 of the old town and the new the old town through 

 which, says Lockhart, the carriage of Scott would creep 

 at the slowest of paces, driven by the most tactful and 

 discriminating of Jehus, while every gable and buttress 

 in what a recent prosaic English guide-book denominates 

 the most dilapidated street in Europe would crowd its 

 storied memories upon the novelist and poet of the 

 Chronicles of the Canongate. To the last, like Carlyle, 

 he preserved the memory, ever a landmark to the 

 patriotic Scot, of his first day in the old 'romantic 

 town ' of Sir Walter, and of his impressions of the most 

 picturesque of European capitals. 



