Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/95

Rh maintained that as Scotland contributed so little to the land-tax, so if she needed a militia she ought to bear the whole expense herself. "What enemy," asked Johnson scornfully, "would invade Scotland where there is nothing to be got?" It was not till the year 1793, in the midst of the alarms of a war with France, that the force was at last established, and Scotland in one more respect placed on an equality with England.

In Edinburgh such a club as this, formed of all the eager active spirits in the place, could act with the greater vigour from the ease with which the members could meet. In whatever quarter of the town men lived, even if they had moved to the squares which had lately been built to the north and south, they were not much more widely separated than the residents in the Colleges of Oxford. The narrowness of the limits in which they were confined is shown by the small number of hackney-coaches which served their wants. In London, in 1761, there were eight hundred; by 1784 they had risen to a thousand. In Edinburgh there were but nine; and even these, it was complained, were rarely to be seen on the stand after three o'clock in the afternoon. It was in sedan chairs that visits of ceremony were paid; the bearers were Highlanders, as in London they were generally Irishmen. The dinner-hour was still so early that the meal of careless and cheerful hospitality was the supper. In 1763 fashionable people dined at two; twenty years later at four or even at five. At the time of Johnson's visit three was probably the common hour. Dr. Carlyle describes the ease with which in his younger days a pleasant supper party was gathered together. "We dined where we best could, and by cadies we assembled our friends to meet us in a tavern by nine o'clock; and a fine time it was when we could collect David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord Elibank, and Drs. Blair and Jardine on an hour's warning." Though the Scotch were "religious observers of hospitality," yet a stranger did not readily get invited to their favourite meal. "To be admitted to their suppers is a mark of their friendship. At them the restraints of ceremony are banished, and you see people really as they are." The Scotch ladies, it was noticed, at these cheerful but prolonged repasts drank more wine than an English woman