`Oh, Willie was a witty wight,
And had o' things an unco slight!
Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight
And trig and braw;
But now they'll busk her like a fright--
Willie's awa'!'

I think perhaps the gatherings of the present time are neither quite
as gay nor quite as brilliant as those of Burns's day, when

`Willie brewed a peck o' maut,
An' Rob an' Allan cam to pree';

but the ideal standard of those meetings seems to be voiced in the
lines:-

`Wha last beside his chair shall fa',
He is the king amang us three!'

As they sit in their chairs nowadays to the very end of the feast,
there is doubtless joined with modern sobriety a soupcon of modern
dulness and discretion.

To an American the great charm of Edinburgh is its leisurely
atmosphere: `not the leisure of a village arising from the
deficiency of ideas and motives, but the leisure of a city reposing
grandly on tradition and history; which has done its work, and does
not require to weave its own clothing, to dig its own coals, or
smelt its own iron.'