sat at midnight
The old Assembly Rooms where potent Jacky Murray presided , where urbane Duncan Forbes won all hearts , where a gentle laird wooed in sweet numbers -- and in vain -- the Annie Laurie of that well-known old song , are now almost forgotten . Other things have passed away in company with the wigs and ruffles , the patches and snuff . The grace may remain , and the refinement be thorough where then it was superficial , but the courtliness of conscious superiority , the picturesque contrarieties and broken natural land that lay below the heaths and craters , exist but as the black gloom and red glare of the past . There the grave responsible Lord of Session , sober in mien as Scotchmen are wont to be , sat at midnight and roared over his claret in the mad orgies of the Hell-fire Club ; here the pawky , penetrating lawyer , shrewd both from calling and character , played the reckless game of a correspondence with the stage Court of St. Germains ; yonder mettle beauty sailed along on her high-heeled shoes to finish the night 's triumph at an oyster supper in a den behind the Luckenbooths . And there again walked an imperial dowager , who still span her own linen and struck her serving-man with her ivory cane . Truly the old Edinburgh Assembly Rooms had their secrets , and contained exciting enough elements under their formal French polish . The regular balls at the Assembly Rooms were eras in Nelly Carnegie 's life , and yet she met always the same company .