'Mine own romantic town.' Marmion BY MRS. OLIPHANT AUTHOR OF 'MAKERS OF FLORENCE,' 'MAKERS OF VENICE,' ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE REID, R.S.A. LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1891 All rights reserved First Edition (Medium 8vo) 1890 Second Edition (Crown 8vo) 1891 TO MY OLD FRIEND ALEXANDER MACMILLAN...

It is strange yet scarcely difficult to the imagination to realise the first embodiment of what is now Edinburgh in the far distance of the early ages. Neither Pict nor Scot has left any record of what was going on so far south in the days when the king's daughters, primitive princesses with their rude surroundings, were placed for safety in the castrum puellarum , the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly (but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of the fortre

The growth of Edinburgh is difficult to trace through the mists and the tumults of the ages. The perpetual fighting which envelops the Scotland of those days as in the "great stour" or dust, which was Sir Walter Scott's conception of a battle, with gleams of swords and flashes of fire breaking through, offers few breaks through which we can see anything like the tranquil growth of that civic life which requires something of a steady and settled order and authority to give it being. The revolutio

There is perhaps among the many historical personages attached by close association to Edinburgh no one so living, so vigorous, so present, as the great figure of the Reformer and Prophet, who once filled the air with echoes of his vehement and impassioned oratory, who led both Lords and Commons, and mated with princes on more than equal terms, the headstrong, powerful, passionate Preacher, who was at once the leading spirit of his time and its most vigorous chronicler. To fill the circle of ass