338 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



Nothing escapes the modern desecrating touch. 

 " Aukl Reekie" itself — Edinburgh, that hist 

 stronghold of the Has Been — is not the same 

 " beloved town " that Sir Walter Scott knew. 

 The French Renaissance character of its grandiose 

 new buildings does not alone tend to change it 

 into something alien to sentiment and ancient 

 recollection ; but that which our ancestors would 

 have thought a mere impossibility, that which 

 themselves would, and ourselves should, stigmatise 

 as a crime committed against History and the 

 Picturesque, has almost come to pass. In short, 

 the deep ravine Avhere the Nor' Loch stagnated 

 of old, where the AYaverley Station is now j^laced, 

 has been deprived of something of its apparent 

 depth, and the Castle Rock of a corresponding 

 height, l)y the towering proportions of the vast 

 buildings that fill u]^ the valley and desecrate 

 the site of the northern capital. 



Sturdy survivals of olden days are the local 

 delicacies that first obtained a Avider fame from 

 that time when they were set before the coach 

 passengers at the country inns where the coach 

 dined, or had tea, or supped, and were so greatly 

 appreciated that supplies were carried away for 

 the benefit of distant friends. Some, however, 

 of these delicacies have disappeared. No longer 

 does Grantham produce the cakes mentioned by 

 Thoresby in 1083. Grantham, he says, was 

 "famous in his esteem for Bishop Fox's bene- 

 factions, but it is chiefly noted of travellers for 

 a peculiar sort of thin cake, called ' Grantham 



