This is one of the images which Burns included in a book, called 'Picturesque Bits from Old Edinburgh' and published in 1868. Although the photographs record the historic buildings of the Old Town, Burns wanted them to be a reminder of the 'pain in the present'; the squalid and overcrowded conditions in which the poor lived. There is nevertheless a lot of charm in this picture and, although, there are no figures in the street, it is clearly inhabited.