same roof no less than three libraries: two of no mean
order; confused and semi-subterranean, full of stairs and
galleries; where you may see the most studious-looking
wigs fishing out novels by lanthorn light, in the very
place where the old Privy Council tortured Covenanters.
As the Parliament House is built upon a slope, although
it presents only one story to the north, it measures
half-a-dozen at least upon the south; and range after
range of vaults extend below the libraries. Few places
are more characteristic of this hilly capital. You
descend one stone stair after another, and wander, by the
flicker of a match, in a labyrinth of stone cellars.
Now, you pass below the Outer Hall and hear overhead,
brisk but ghostly, the interminable pattering of legal
feet. Now, you come upon a strong door with a wicket: on
the other side are the cells of the police office and the
trap-stair that gives admittance to the dock in the
Justiciary Court. Many a foot that has gone up there
lightly enough, has been dead-heavy in the descent. Many
a man's life has been argued away from him during long
hours in the court above. But just now that tragic stage
is empty and silent like a church on a week-day, with the
bench all sheeted up and nothing moving but the sunbeams
on the wall. A little farther and you strike upon a
room, not empty like the rest, but crowded with
PRODUCTIONS from bygone criminal cases: a grim lumber:
lethal weapons, poisoned organs in a jar, a door with a
shot-hole through the panel, behind which a man fell
dead. I cannot fancy why they should preserve them
unless it were against the Judgment Day. At length, as