"
From these dreams of ambition he turned his thoughts to those of
pleasure, and began to form many conjectures, when and where he should
see Catherine Seyton, and in what manner their acquaintance was to be
renewed. With such conjectures he was amusing himself, when he found
that they had entered the city, and all other feelings were suspended
in the sensation of giddy astonishment with which an inhabitant of the
country is affected, when, for the first time, he finds himself in the
streets of a large and populous city, a unit in the midst of
thousands.
The principal street of Edinburgh was then, as now, one of the most
spacious in Europe. The extreme height of the houses, and the variety
of Gothic gables and battlements, and balconies, by which the sky-line
on each side was crowned and terminated, together with the width of
the street itself, might have struck with surprise a more practised
eye than that of young Graeme. The population, close packed within the
walls of the city, and at this time increased by the number of the
lords of the King's party who had thronged to Edinburgh to wait upon
the Regent Murray, absolutely swarmed like bees on the wide and
stately street. Instead of the shop-windows, which are now calculated
for the display of goods, the traders had their open booths projecting
on the street, in which, as in the fashion of the modern bazaars, all
was exposed which they had upon sale. And though the commodities were
not of the richest kinds, yet Graeme thought he beheld the wealth of
the whole world in the various bales of Flanders cloths, and the
specimens of tapestry; and, at other places, the display of domestic
utensils and pieces of plate struck him with wonder.
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