22 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. I. 



and tatooed, is now in Edinburgh, selling his narrative for a 

 penny. I saw him standing at the door. The lines are filled 

 with charcoal. I remain your very affectionate brother, 



' GEORGE WILSON/ 



" The date of this letter indicates that the holidays were 

 drawing to a close. Within a week or so thereafter our daily 

 sports were in the High School Yards, and our busy duties in its 

 halls, but soon we bade farewell to the old High School, occu- 

 pying the site of the ancient Monastery of Black Friars, of the 

 Order of St. Dominic, founded by Alexander n. in 1230, and 

 transferred to the use of the City Grammar School at the Kefor- 

 mation. The migration from the time-hallowed site at the head 

 of the old High School Wynd to the splendid edifice erected on 

 the southern slope of the Calton Hill, was an important change 

 in other ways besides the mere removal to a more commodious 

 and magnificent building. It put an abrupt close to a host of 

 old school customs and traditions ; and, among the rest, to the 

 hereditary bickers and strife between ' the puppies and black- 

 guards/ as the High School boys and the natives of the neigh- 

 bouring Cowgate and its purlieus respectively designated each 

 other. Without being at all quarrelsome, George and I did not 

 pass through our school days, among some five or six hundred 

 boys, and with our hereditary Cowgate foes outside the play- 

 ground walls, without a battle or two ; and when it fairly came 

 to a state of things which left no honourable alternative, George 

 was as little of a coward in that as he proved in other duties in 

 later life. The only real fear, indeed, was that of carrying home 

 the tell-tale traces of a bloody nose ; for mother was as little 

 disposed to look with favour on such relics of strife however 

 unavoidable as good mothers usually are. Such chances, how- 

 ever, which were always rare, were nearly brought to a close 

 with the grand ceremonial which transferred the school to its 

 new domicile. On the 23d June 1829, we walked in procession, 

 each bearing our white osier wand, with music and military 

 guards, and all the civic glories that the Lord Provost and 

 Magistrates could muster to do honour to the occasion. The 

 upper rooms of the east wing in the new building were occupied 



