As the dwellers in the Faubourg St. Germain regard their neighbours across the Seine, in the Faubourg St. Honore, with disapproving eyes, so the sojourners in the Canongate and the Cowgate considered that the inundation of modern population vulgarized their ’prescriptive gentilities.’  Cockburn’s description of a Scottish assembly in the olden time is most interesting.

’For example, Saint Cecilia’s Hall was the only public resort of the musical; and besides being our most selectly fashionable place of amusement, was the best and most beautiful concert-room I have ever seen.  And there have I myself seen most of our literary and fashionable gentlemen, predominating with their side curls and frills, and ruffles, and silver buckles; and our stately matrons stiffened in hoops, and gorgeous satin; and our beauties with high-heeled shoes, powdered and pomatumed hair, and lofty and composite head-dresses.  All this was in the Cowgate; the last retreat now-a-days of destitution and disease.  The building still stands, through raised and changed.  When I last saw it, it seemed to be partly an old-clothesman’s shop and partly a brazier’s.’  Balls were held in the beautiful rooms of George Square, in spite of the ‘New Town piece of presumption,’ that is, an attempt to force the fashionable dancers of the reel into the George Street apartments.

‘And here,’ writes Lord Cockburn, looking back to the days when he was that ‘ne’er-do-weel’ Harry Cockburn, ’were the last remains of the ball-room discipline of the preceding age.  Martinet dowagers and venerable beaux acted as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, and made all the preliminary arrangements.  No couple could dance unless each party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, in the precise dance.  If there was no ticket, the gentleman or the lady was dealt with as an intruder, and turned out of the dance.  If the ticket had marked upon it—–­say for a country-dance, the figures, 3, 5; this meant that the holder was to place himself in the 3rd dance, and 5th from the top; and if he was anywhere else, he was set right or excluded.  And the partner’s ticket must correspond.  Woe on the poor girl who with ticket 2, 7, was found opposite a youth marked 5, 9!  It was flirting without a licence, and looked very ill, and would probably be reported by the ticket director of that dance to the mother.’

All this had passed away; and thus the aristocracy of a few individuals was ended; and society, freed from some of its restraints, flourished in another and more enlightened way than formerly.

There were still a sufficient number of peculiarities to gratify one who had an eye to the ludicrous.  Sydney Smith soon discovered that it is a work of time to impart a humorous idea to a true Scot.  ‘It requires,’ he used to say, ’a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.’  ’They are so embued with metaphysics, that they even make love metaphysically.