To the superstitions of the North Britons must be added their peculiar and characteristic amusements; and here we have some atonement to make to the memory of the learned Paulus Pleydell, whose compotatory relaxations, better information now inclines us to think, we mentioned with somewhat too little reverence.  Before the new town of Edinburgh (as it is called) was built, its inhabitants lodged, as is the practice of Paris at this day, in large buildings called lands, each family occupying a story, and having access to it by a stair common to all the inhabitants.  These buildings, when they did not front the high street of the city, composed the sides of little, narrow, unwholesome closes or lanes.  The miserable and confined accommodation which such habitations afforded, drove men of business, as they were called, that is, people belonging to the law, to hold their professional rendezvouses in taverns, and many lawyers of eminence spent the principal part of their time in some tavern of note, transacted their business there, received the visits of clients with their writers or attornies, and suffered no imputation from so doing.  This practice naturally led to habits of conviviality, to which the Scottish lawyers, till of very late years, were rather too much addicted.  Few men drank so hard as the counsellors of the old school, and there survived till of late some veterans who supported in that respect the character of their predecessors.  To vary the humour of a joyous evening many frolics were resorted to, and the game of high jinks was one of the most common.[1] In fact, high jinks was one of the petits jeux with which certain circles were wont to while away the time; and though it claims no alliance with modern associations, yet, as it required some shrewdness and dexterity to support the characters assumed for the occasion, it is not difficult to conceive that it might have been as interesting and amusing to the parties engaged in it, as counting the spots of a pack of cards, or treasuring in memory the rotation in which they are thrown on the table.  The worst of the game was what that age considered as its principal excellence, namely, that the forfeitures being all commuted for wine, it proved an encouragement to hard drinking, the prevailing vice of the age.

[1] We have learned, with some dismay, that one of the ablest lawyers
    Scotland ever produced, and who lives to witness (although in
    retirement) the various changes which have taken place in her courts
    of judicature, a man who has filled with marked distinction the
    highest offices of his profession, tush’d (pshaw’d) extremely at
    the delicacy of our former criticism.  And certainly he claims some
    title to do so, having been in his youth not only a witness of such
    orgies as are described as proceeding under the auspices of Mr.
    Pleydell, but himself a distinguished performer.