The old town council had a very simple method of getting their work done. They just left everything to the town clerk and the manager of police. This seems to be the modern method, _minus_ the vulgar talk and reports in the newspapers. The town-clerk was Mr. John Gray. Would he were here to-day: a man who could hold his tongue and do jobs quietly! Peace to the ashes of the good Gray: a judicious man, with a belly, white hair, and decorous black clothes; famous for drinking punch; a respectable and useful officer, devoted to his superiors, and chock-full of municipal wisdom. The manager of police was James Laing, about whom we have anecdotes which endear him to the heart of every lover of quiet. James was a hater of noise at untimely hours. He may have been prevented from writing his reminiscences by the rowdy din and uproar which seems to have been then, as it is now, at all hours of the night (constant up to midnight, in the small hours sporadic) as remarkable a feature of residential Edinburgh as its deadly east wind. Fortunately, James had the power, now defunct and obsolete, of making the police operate. One evening the usual demoniac orgy of noise was proceeding, driving peaceful citizens to profanity and despair. The whole devil's tattoo was caused by a mere handful of tipsy hooligans--six or eight baker lads, it seems, of respectable though humble parentage. James set the police in motion, the lads were promptly arrested, and next morning, when the master baker growled 'Ubi est ille apprentice?' echo answered promptly, 'Non est inventus.' A lawyer, however, who took an interest in the family of one of them, went that morning, greatly daring, to James Laing to inquire, when he was told he need give himself no trouble; 'they are all beyond Inchkeith by this time.' With a promptness of device only equalled by his firmness of purpose, this benefactor of suffering humanity had sent the disciples of Din to exert their demoniac disturbances on the high seas! They had, in fact, been shipped on board a tender in Leith Roads, which James knew was to sail that very morning. After this, one is not astonished to learn that the great Laing was a philosopher and entertained an immense reverence for Dugald Stewart. Stewart used to tell an anecdote which proves that Laing, besides discovering the best means of preserving quiet in the streets, had also solved the problem of finding healthy employment for the police in their 'hours of idleness.' The Professor was walking very early one morning in the Meadows, when he saw a band of men within the enclosure busily engaged apparently in turning up the turf. Upon going up to them, he found his friend Laing commanding the operations, who explained that in these short light nights there was nothing going on with the blackguards, 'and so, ye see, Mr. Professor, I've just brought oot the constables to try our hands at the moudieworts.' They were catching moles.