The Cross, a handsome octagonal building in the High Street, surmounted
by a pillar bearing the Scottish unicorn, was the great centre of
gossip in former days. The principal coffee-houses and booksellers’
shops were close to this spot. The chief merchants, the leading
official persons, the men of learning and talents, the laird, the
noble, the clergyman, were constantly clustering hereabouts during
certain hours of the day. It was the very centre and cynosure of the
old city.
During the reigns of the first and second Georges, it was customary
for the magistrates of Edinburgh to drink the king’s health on his
birthday on a stage erected at the Cross—loyalty being a virtue which
always becomes peculiarly ostentatious when it is under any suspicion
of weakness. On one of these occasions the ceremony was interrupted by
a shower of rain, so heavy that the company, with one consent, suddenly
dispersed, leaving their entertainment half-finished. When they
returned, the glasses were found full of water, which gave a Jacobite
lady occasion for the following epigram, reported to me by a venerable
bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church:
‘In Cana once Heaven’s king was pleased
With some gay bridal folks to dine,
And then, in honour of the feast,
He changed the water into wine.
But when, to honour Brunswick’s birth,
Our tribunes mounted the Theâtre,
He would not countenance their mirth,
But turned their claret into water!’
[Illustration: FORENOON AT THE CROSS.