disproportion between the quantity of living flesh and
the trifling walls that separated and contained it.

There was nothing fanciful, at least, but every
circumstance of terror and reality, in the fall of the
LAND in the High Street. The building had grown rotten
to the core; the entry underneath had suddenly closed up
so that the scavenger's barrow could not pass; cracks and
reverberations sounded through the house at night; the
inhabitants of the huge old human bee-hive discussed
their peril when they encountered on the stair; some had
even left their dwellings in a panic of fear, and
returned to them again in a fit of economy or self-
respect; when, in the black hours of a Sunday morning,
the whole structure ran together with a hideous uproar
and tumbled story upon story to the ground. The physical
shock was felt far and near; and the moral shock
travelled with the morning milkmaid into all the suburbs.
The church-bells never sounded more dismally over
Edinburgh than that grey forenoon. Death had made a
brave harvest, and, like Samson, by pulling down one
roof, destroyed many a home. None who saw it can have
forgotten the aspect of the gable; here it was plastered,
there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle
still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap
picture of the Queen was pasted over the chimney. So, by
this disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty
families, all suddenly cut off from the revolving years.
The LAND had fallen; and with the LAND how much! Far in
the country, people saw a gap in the city ranks, and the