44 FAMOUS SCOTS 



Heath's Life of Oliver Cromwell, and for the historical 

 restoration of the great Reformer, M'Crie has done in 

 his book what Carlyle, in his Letters of Cromwell, has for 

 ever effected for the true presentation of the Protector. 



In the bookstalls of the city he would pick up some 

 new additions to his shelf. At odd hours, too, he 

 would hang about Castle Street in the hope of seeing 

 Sir Walter Scott. The capital at this time, though 

 sadly shorn of its old literary coteries in the days of 

 Burns, still numbered such men as Jeffrey, Cockburn, 

 Dugald Stewart, and Professor Wilson; and he did 

 manage, one evening, to spend some hours with a 

 cousin in Ambrose's, where the famous club used to 

 hold their meetings in a room below. But none of 

 these faces was he then destined to know in the flesh, 

 and the ' pride of all Scotsmen ' whom Carlyle met in 

 the Edinburgh streets, ' worn with care, the joy all fled,' 

 had passed away the next time when Miller visited the 

 capital. 



Work, we have seen, was plentiful in the town. The 

 great fire had swept Parliament Close and the High 

 Street, carrying with it the steeple of the old Tron, and 

 many of the lofty tenements that formed such a feature 

 of Old Edinburgh. But he was feeling the first effects 

 of the stone-cutters' disease, and his lungs, affected by 

 the stone dust, threatened consumption. He states 

 that few of his class reached the age of forty through 

 the trouble, and not more than one in fifty ever 

 came to forty-five. But circumstances fortunately 



