Some Books of the Week
A SHORT line of houses, just over a mile long, links Edinburgh Castle with the Abbey and House of Holyrood—a length which Lockhart (Scott's Lockhart) thought the most " im- pressive " street in Britain. The impressiveness in it that appeals to the eye is conveyed by some particularly charming drawings and many excellent photographs which illustrate Mr. R. T. Skinner's The Royal Mile (Oliver and Boyd, 5s.). Mr. Skinner's part in the book is briefly but clearly to describe the historical associations, the almost innumerable bloody and
romantic incidents which have crammed themselves into that picturesque length of street, where lived at one time or another most of Scotland's great, notorious, or intriguing figures.
Still there stands in it the house of John Knox ; in the Lawn- market stood the " land " of that rigid Covenanter, celebrated even in Scotland for his gift of extempore prayer, Major Weir, who superintended the hanging of Montrose, and was himself burnt at Gallowlee for incest, sorcery, and murder. And in New Street off the Canongate (the street of the Holyrood Canons) lay the house of Henry Home, Lord Kames, to whom it fell in 1780 to try a former chess-partner, one Matthew Hay, for murder ; on the jury's returning a verdict of guilty, this judicial humorist exclaimed, " That's checkmate for you, Matthew." " Somewhat coarse in his manners," wrote Scott of the judge, and one remembers Johnson's You hare Lord Karnes. Keep him ; ha, ha, ha ! We don't envy you him."
The book contains many good stories.
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