From an early hour a stranger will be impressed by the number of drunken men; and by afternoon drunkenness has spread to the women.  With some classes of society, it is as much a matter of duty to drink hard on New-year’s Day as to go to church on Sunday.  Some have been saving their wages for perhaps a month to do the season honour.  Many carry a whisky-bottle in their pocket, which they will press with embarrassing effusion on a perfect stranger.  It is inexpedient to risk one’s body in a cab, or not, at least, until after a prolonged study of the driver.  The streets, which are thronged from end to end, become a place for delicate pilotage.  Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out and cannoning one against another; and now and again, one falls and lies as he has fallen.  Before night, so many have gone to bed or the police office, that the streets seem almost clearer.  And as GUISARDS and first-footers are now not much seen except in country places, when once the New Year has been rung in and proclaimed at the Tron railings, the festivities begin to find their way indoors and something like quiet returns upon the town.  But think, in these piled Lands, of all the senseless snorers, all the broken heads and empty pockets!

Of old, Edinburgh University was the scene of heroic snowballing; and one riot obtained the epic honours of military intervention.  But the great generation, I am afraid, is at an end; and even during my own college days, the spirit appreciably declined.  Skating and sliding, on the other hand, are honoured more and more; and curling, being a creature of the national genius, is little likely to be disregarded.  The patriotism that leads a man to eat Scotch bun will scarce desert him at the curling-pond.  Edinburgh, with its long, steep pavements, is the proper home of sliders; many a happy urchin can slide the whole way to school; and the profession of errand-boy is transformed into a holiday amusement.  As for skating, there is scarce any city so handsomely provided.  Duddingstone Loch lies under the abrupt southern side of Arthur’s Seat; in summer a shield of blue, with swans sailing from the reeds; in winter, a field of ringing ice.  The village church sits above it on a green promontory; and the village smoke rises from among goodly trees.  At the church gates, is the historical JOUG; a place of penance for the neck of detected sinners, and the historical louping-on stane, from which Dutch-built lairds and farmers climbed into the saddle.  Here Prince Charlie slept before the battle of Prestonpans; and here Deacon Brodie, or one of his gang, stole a plough coulter before the burglary in Chessel’s Court.  On the opposite side of the loch, the ground rises to Craigmillar Castle, a place friendly to Stuart Mariolaters.  It is worth a climb, even in summer, to look down