CANONGATE THEATRE.

From a period subsequent to 1727 till after the year 1753, the Tailors’ Hall in the Cowgate[264] was used as a theatre by itinerating companies, who met with some success notwithstanding the incessant hostility of the clergy.[265] It was a house which in theatrical phrase, could hold from £40 to £45. A split in the company here concerned led to the erection, in 1746-7, of a theatre at the bottom of a close in the Canongate, nearly opposite to the head of New Street. This house, capable of holding about £70—the boxes being half-a-crown and pit one and sixpence—was for several years the scene of good acting under Lee, Digges, Mrs Bellamy, and Mrs Ward. We learn from Henry Mackenzie that the tragedy of Douglas, which first appeared here in 1756, was most respectably acted—the two ladies above mentioned playing respectively Young Norval and Lady Randolph.[266] The personal elegance of Digges—understood to be the natural son of a man of rank—and the beauty of Mrs Bellamy were a theme of interest amongst old people fifty years ago; but their scandalous life was of course regarded with horror by the mass of respectable society. They lived in a small country-house at Bonnington, between Edinburgh and Leith. It is remembered that Mrs Bellamy was extremely fond of singing-birds, and kept many about her. When emigrating to Glasgow, she had her feathered favourites carried by a porter all the way that they might not suffer from the jolting of a carriage. Scotch people wondered to hear of ten guineas being expended on this occasion. Persons under the social ban for their irregular lives often win the love of individuals by their benevolence and sweetness of disposition—qualities, it is remarked, not unlikely to have been partly concerned in their first trespasses. This was the case with Mrs Bellamy. Her waiting-maid, Annie Waterstone, who is mentioned in her Memoirs, lived many years after in Edinburgh, and continued to the last to adore the memory of her mistress. Nay, she was, from this cause, a zealous friend of all kinds of players, and never would allow a slighting remark upon them to pass unreproved. It was curious to find in a poor old Scotchwoman of the humbler class such a sympathy with the follies and eccentricities of the children of Thespis.

Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate.

While under the temporary management of two Edinburgh citizens extremely ill-qualified for the charge—one of them, by the bye, a Mr David Beatt, who had read the rebel proclamations from the Cross in 1745—a sad accident befell the Canongate playhouse. Dissensions of a dire kind had broken out in the company. The public, as usual, was divided between them. Two classes of persons—the gentlemen of the bar and the students of the university[267]—were especially zealous as partisans. Things were at that pass when a trivial incident will precipitate them to the most fearful conclusion. One night, when Hamlet was the play, a riot took place of so desperate a description that at length the house was set on fire. It being now necessary for the authorities to interfere, the Town-guard was called forth, and marched to the scene of disturbance; but though many of that veteran corps had faced the worst at Blenheim and Dettingen, they felt it as a totally different thing to be brought to action in a place which they regarded as a peculiar domain of the Father of Evil. When ordered, therefore, by their commander to advance into the house and across the stage, the poor fellows fairly stopped short amidst the scenes, the glaring colours of which at once surprised and terrified them. Indignant at their pusillanimity, the bold captain seized a musket, and placing himself in an attitude equal to anything that had ever appeared on those boards, exclaimed: ‘Now, my lads, follow me!’ But just at the moment that he was going to rush on and charge the rioters, a trap-door on which he trod gave way, and in an instant the heroic leader had sunk out of sight, as if by magic. This was too much for the excited nerves of the guard; they immediately vacated the house, leaving the devil to make his own of it; and accordingly it was completely destroyed. It is added that when the captain by-and-by reappeared, they received him in the quality of a gentleman from the other world; nor could they all at once be undeceived, even when he cursed them in vigorous Gaelic for a pack of cowardly scoundrels.

Old Playhouse Close.

The Canongate theatre revived for a short time, and had the honour to be the first house in our city in which the drama was acted with a license. It was opened with this privilege by Mr Ross on the 9th December 1767, when the play was The Earl of Essex, and a general prologue was spoken, the composition of James Boswell. Soon after, being deserted for the present building in the New Town,[268] it fell into ruin; in which state it formed the subject of a mock elegy to the muse of Robert Fergusson. The reader will perhaps be amused with the following extract from that poem:

‘Can I contemplate on those dreary scenes

Of mouldering desolation, and forbid

The voice elegiac, and the falling tear!

No more from box to box the basket, piled

With oranges as radiant as the spheres,

Shall with their luscious virtues charm the sense

Of taste or smell. No more the gaudy beau,

With handkerchief in lavender well drenched,

Or bergamot, or [in] rose-waters pure,

With flavoriferous sweets shall chase away

The pestilential fumes of vulgar cits,

Who, in impatience for the curtain’s rise,

Amused the lingering moments, and applied

Thirst-quenching porter to their parched lips.

Alas! how sadly altered is the scene!

For lo! those sacred walls, that late were brushed

By rustling silks and waving capuchines,

Are now become the sport of wrinkled Time!

Those walls that late have echoed to the voice

Of stern King Richard, to the seat transformed

Of crawling spiders and detested moths,

Who in the lonely crevices reside,

Or gender in the beams, that have upheld

Gods, demigods, and all the joyous crew

Of thunderers in the galleries above.’

[MARIONVILLE—STORY OF CAPTAIN MACRAE.]

Marionville.

Between the eastern suburbs of Edinburgh and the village of Restalrig stands a solitary house named Marionville, enclosed in a shrubbery of no great extent, surrounded by high walls. Whether it be that the place has become dismal in consequence of the rise of a noxious fen in its neighbourhood, or that the tale connected with it acts upon the imagination, I cannot pretend to decide, but unquestionably there is about the house an air of depression and melancholy such as could scarcely fail to strike the most unobservant passenger. Yet, in 1790, this mansion was the abode of a gay and fashionable family, who, amongst other amusements, indulged in that of private theatricals, and in this line were so highly successful that admission to the Marionville theatre became a privilege for which the highest in the land would contend. Mr Macrae, the head of this family, was a man of good fortune, being the proprietor of an estate in Dumfriesshire, and also of good connections—the Earl of Glencairn, whom Burns has so much celebrated, being his cousin, while by his mother he was nearly related to Viscount Fermoy and the celebrated Sir Boyle Roche. He had been for some years retired from the Irish Carabiniers, and being still in the prime of life, he was thinking of again entering the army, when the incident which I am about to relate took place. He was a man of gentlemanlike accomplishments and manners, of a generous and friendly disposition, but marked by a keen and imperious sense of the deference due to a gentleman, and a heat of temper which was apt to make him commit actions of which he afterwards bitterly repented. After the unfortunate affair which ended his career in Scotland, the public, who never make nice distinctions as to the character of individuals, adopted the idea that he was as inhumane as rash, and he was reported to be an experienced duellist. But here he was greatly misrepresented. Mr Macrae would have shrunk from a deliberate act of cruelty; and the only connection he had ever had with single combat was in the way of endeavouring to reconcile friends who had quarrelled—an object in which he was successful on several memorable occasions. But the same man—whom all that really knew him allowed to be a delightful companion and kind-hearted man—was liable to be transported beyond the bounds of reason by casual and trivial occurrences. A messenger of the law having arrested the Rev. Mr Cunningham, brother of the Earl of Glencairn, for debt, as he was passing with a party from the drawing-room to the dining-room at Drumsheugh House, Mr Macrae threw the man over the stair. He was prompted to this act by indignation at the affront which he conceived his cousin, as a gentleman, had received from a common man. But soon after, when it was represented to him that every other means of inducing Mr Cunningham to settle his debt had failed, and when he learned that the messenger had suffered severe injury, he went to him, made him a hearty apology, and agreed to pay three hundred guineas by way of compensation. He had himself allowed a debt due to a tailor to remain too long unpaid, and the consequence was that he received a summons for it before the sheriff-court. With this document in his hand, he called, in a state of great excitement, upon his law-agent, to whom he began to read: ‘Archibald Cockburn of Cockpen, sheriff-depute,’ &c., till he came to a passage which declared that ‘he, the said James Macrae, had been oft and diverse times desired and required,’ &c. ‘The greatest lie ever uttered!’ he exclaimed. ‘He had never heard a word of it before; he would instantly go to the sheriff and horsewhip him.’ The agent had at the time letters of horning against a very worthy baronet lying upon his table—that is to say, a document in which the baronet was denounced as a rebel to the king, according to a form of the law of Scotland, for failing to pay his debt. The agent took up this, and coolly began to read: ‘George III. by the grace of God,’ &c. Macrae at once saw the application, and fell a-laughing at his own folly, saying he would go directly and give the sheriff tickets for the play at Marionville, which he and his family requested. It will be seen that the fault of this unfortunate gentleman was heat of temper, not a savage disposition; but what fault can be more fatal than heat of temper?

Mr Macrae was married to an accomplished lady, Maria Cecilia le Maitre, daughter of the Baroness Nolken, wife of the Swedish ambassador. They occasionally resided in Paris, with Mrs Macrae’s relations, particularly with her cousin, Madame de la Briche, whose private theatricals in her elegant house at the Marais were the models of those afterwards instituted at Marionville. It may not be unworthy of notice that amongst their fellow-performers at Madame de la Briche’s was the celebrated Abbé Sieyès. When Mr Macrae and his lady set up their theatre at Marionville, they both took characters, he appearing to advantage in such parts as that of Dionysius in the Grecian Daughter, and she in the first line of female parts in genteel comedy. Sir David Kinloch and a Mr Justice were their best male associates; and the chief female performer, after Mrs Macrae herself, was Mrs Carruthers of Dormont, a daughter of the celebrated artist Paul Sandby. When all due deduction is made for the effects of complaisance, there seems to remain undoubted testimony that these performances involved no small amount of talent.

In Mr and Mrs Macrae’s circle of visiting acquaintance, and frequent spectators of the Marionville theatricals, were Sir George Ramsay of Bamff and his lady. Sir George had recently returned, with an addition to his fortune, from India, and was now settling himself down for the remainder of life in his native country. I have seen original letters between the two families, showing that they lived on the most friendly terms and entertained the highest esteem for each other. One written by Lady Ramsay to Mrs Macrae, from Sir George’s country-seat in Perthshire, commences thus: ‘My dear friend, I have just time to write you a few lines to say how much I long to hear from you, and to assure you how sincerely I love you.’ Her ladyship adds: ‘I am now enjoying rural retirement with Sir George, who is really so good and indulgent, that I am as happy as the gayest scenes could make me. He joins me in kind compliments to you and Mr Macrae,’ &c. How deplorable that social affections, which contribute so much to make life pass agreeably, should be liable to a wild upbreak from perhaps some trivial cause, not in itself worthy of a moment’s regard, and only rendered of consequence by the sensitiveness of pride and a deference to false and worldly maxims!

The source of the quarrel between Mr Macrae and Sir George was of a kind almost too mean and ridiculous to be spoken of. On the evening of the 7th April 1790, the former gentleman handed a lady out of the Edinburgh theatre, and endeavoured to get a chair for her, in which she might be conveyed home. Seeing two men approaching through the crowd with one, he called to ask if it was disengaged, to which the men replied with a distinct affirmative. As Mr Macrae handed the lady forward to put her into it, a footman, in a violent manner, seized hold of one of the poles, and insisted that it was engaged for his mistress. The man seemed disordered by liquor, and it was afterwards distinctly made manifest that he was acting without the guidance of reason. His lady had gone home some time before, while he was out of the way. He was not aware of this, and, under a confused sense of duty, he was now eager to obtain a chair for her, but in reality had not bespoken that upon which he laid hold. Mr Macrae, annoyed at the man’s pertinacity at such a moment, rapped him over the knuckles with a short cane to make him give way; on which the servant called him a scoundrel, and gave him a push on the breast. Incensed overmuch by this conduct, Mr Macrae struck him smartly over the head with his cane, on which the man cried out worse than before, and moved off. Mr Macrae, following him, repeated his blows two or three times, but only with that degree of force which he thought needful for a chastisement. In the meantime the lady whom Mr Macrae had handed out got into a different chair, and was carried off. Some of the bystanders, seeing a gentleman beating a servant, cried shame, and showed a disposition to take part with the latter; but there were individuals present who had observed all the circumstances, and who felt differently. One gentleman afterwards gave evidence that he had been insulted by the servant, at an earlier period of the evening, in precisely the same manner as Mr Macrae, and that the man’s conduct had throughout been rude and insolent, a consequence apparently of drunkenness.

Learning that the servant was in the employment of Lady Ramsay, Mr Macrae came into town next day, full of anxiety to obviate any unpleasant impression which the incident might have made upon her mind. Meeting Sir George in the street, he expressed to him his concern on the subject, when Sir George said lightly that the man being his lady’s footman, he did not feel any concern in the matter. Mr Macrae then went to apologise to Lady Ramsay, whom he found sitting for her portrait in the lodgings of the young artist Raeburn, afterwards so highly distinguished. It has been said that he fell on his knees before the lady to entreat her pardon for what he had done to her servant. Certainly he left her with the impression that he had no reason to expect a quarrel between himself and Sir George on account of what had taken place.

James Merry—this was the servant’s name—had been wounded in the head, but not severely. The injuries which he had sustained—though nothing can justify the violence which inflicted them—were only of such a nature as a few days of confinement would have healed. Such, indeed, was the express testimony given by his medical attendant, Mr Benjamin Bell. There was, however, a strong feeling amongst his class against Macrae, who was informed, in an anonymous letter, that a hundred and seven men-servants had agreed to have some revenge upon him. Merry himself had determined to institute legal proceedings against Mr Macrae for the recovery of damages. A process was commenced by the issue of a summons, which Mr Macrae received on the 12th. Wounded to the quick by this procedure, and smarting under the insolence of the anonymous letter, Mr Macrae wrote next day a note to Sir George Ramsay, in which, addressing him without any term of friendly regard, he demanded that either Merry should drop the prosecution or that his master should turn him off. Sir George temperately replied ‘that he had only now heard of the prosecution for the first time; that the man met with no encouragement from him; and that he hoped that Mr Macrae, on further consideration, would not think it incumbent on him to interfere, especially as the man was at present far from being well.’

On the same evening Mr Amory, a military friend of Mr Macrae, called upon Sir George with a second note from that gentleman, once more insisting on the man being turned off, and stating that in the event of his refusal Mr Amory was empowered to communicate his opinion of his conduct. Sir George did refuse, on the plea that he had yet seen no good reason for his discharging the servant; and Mr Amory then said it was his duty to convey Mr Macrae’s opinion, which was ‘that Sir George’s conduct had not been that of a gentleman.’ Sir George then said that further conversation was unnecessary; all that remained was to agree upon a place of meeting. They met again that evening at a tavern, where Mr Amory informed Sir George that it was Mr Macrae’s wish that they should meet, properly attended, next day at twelve o’clock at Ward’s Inn, on the borders of Musselburgh Links.

The parties met there accordingly, Mr Macrae being attended by Captain Amory, and Sir George Ramsay by Sir William Maxwell; Mr Benjamin Bell, the surgeon, being also of the party. Mr Macrae had brought an additional friend, a Captain Haig, to favour them with his advice, but not to act formally as a second. The two parties being in different rooms, Sir William Maxwell came into that occupied by Mr Macrae, and proposed that if Mr Macrae would apologise for the intemperate style of his letters demanding the discharge of the servant, Sir George would grant his request, and the affair would end. Mr Macrae answered that he would be most happy to comply with this proposal if his friends thought it proper; but he must abide by their decision. The question being put to Captain Haig, he answered, in a deliberate manner: ‘It is altogether impossible; Sir George must, in the first place, turn off his servant, and Mr Macrae will then apologise.’ Hearing this speech, equally marked by wrong judgment and wrong feeling, Macrae, according to the testimony of Mr Bell, shed tears of anguish. The parties then walked to the beach, and took their places in the usual manner. On the word being given, Sir George took deliberate aim at Macrae, the neck of whose coat was grazed by his bullet. Macrae had, if his own solemn asseveration is to be believed, intended to fire in the air; but when he found Sir George aiming thus at his life, he altered his resolution, and brought his antagonist to the ground with a mortal wound in the body.

There was the usual consternation and unspeakable distress. Mr Macrae went up to Sir George and ‘told him that he was sincerely afflicted at seeing him in that situation.’[269] It was with difficulty, and only at the urgent request of Sir William Maxwell, that he could be induced to quit the field. Sir George lingered for two days. The event occasioned a great sensation in the public mind, and a very unfavourable view was generally taken of Mr Macrae’s conduct. It was given out that during a considerable interval, while in expectation of the duel taking place, he had practised pistol-shooting in his garden at a barber’s block; and he was also said to have been provided with a pair of pistols of a singularly apt and deadly character; the truth being that the interval was a brief one, his hand totally unskilled in shooting, and the pistols a bad brass-mounted pair, hastily furnished by Amory. We have Amory’s testimony that as they were pursuing their journey to another country, he was constantly bewailing the fate of Sir George Ramsay, remarking how unfortunate it was that he took so obstinate a view about the servant’s case. The demand, he said, was one which he would have thought it necessary to comply with. He had asked Sir George nothing but what he would have done had it been his own case. This is so consonant with what appears otherwise respecting his character that we cannot doubt it. It is only to be lamented that he should not have made the demand in terms more calculated to lead to compliance.

The death of an amiable man under such deplorable circumstances roused the most zealous vigilance on the part of the law authorities; but Mr Macrae and his second succeeded in reaching France. A summons was issued for his trial, but he was advised not to appear, and accordingly sentence of outlawry was passed against him. The servant’s prosecution meanwhile went on, and was ultimately decided against Mr Macrae, although, on a cool perusal of the evidence on both sides, there appears to me the clearest proof of Merry having been the first aggressor. Mr Macrae lived in France till the progress of the Revolution forced him to go to Altona. When time seemed to have a little softened matters against him, he took steps to ascertain if he could safely return to his native country. It was decided by counsel that he could not. They held that his case entirely wanted the extenuating circumstance which was necessary—his having to contemplate degradation if he did not challenge. He was under no such danger; so that, from his letters to Sir George Ramsay, he appeared to have forced on the duel purely for revenge. He came to see the case in this light himself, and was obliged to make up his mind to perpetual self-banishment. He survived thirty years. A gentleman of my acquaintance, who had known him in early life in Scotland, was surprised to meet him one day in a Parisian coffee-house after the peace of 1814—the wreck or ghost of the handsome, sprightly man he had once been. The comfort of his home, his country, and friends, the use of his talents to all these, had been lost, and himself obliged to lead the life of a condemned Cain, all through the one fault of a fiery temper.

[ALISON SQUARE.]

This is a large mass of building between Nicolson Square and the Potterrow, in the south side of the town. It was built about the middle of the eighteenth century, upon venture, by one Colin Alison, a joiner, who in after-life was much reduced in his circumstances, not improbably in consequence of this large speculation. In his last days he spent some of his few remaining shillings in the erection of two boards, at different parts of his buildings, whereon was represented a globe in the act of falling, with this inscription:

‘If Fortune smile, be not puffed up,

And if it frown, be not dismayed;

For Providence governeth all,

Although the world’s turned upside down.’

Alison Square[270] has enjoyed some little connection with the Scottish muses. It was in the house of a Miss Nimmo in this place that Burns met Clarinda. It would amuse the reader of the ardent letters which passed between these two kindred souls to visit the plain, small, dusky house in which the lady lived at that time, and where she received several visits of the poet. It is situated in the adjacent humble street called the Potterrow, the first floor over the passage into General’s Entry, accessible by a narrow spiral stair from the court. A little parlour, a bedroom, and a kitchen constituted the accommodations of Mrs M’Lehose; now the residence of two, if not three, families in the extreme of humble life. Here she lived with a couple of infant children, a young and beautiful woman, blighted in her prospects in consequence of an unhappy marriage (her husband having deserted her, after using her barbarously), yet cheerful and buoyant, through constitutional good spirits and a rational piety. To understand her friendship with Burns and the meaning of their correspondence, it was almost necessary to have known the woman. Seeing her and hearing her converse, even in advanced life, one could penetrate the whole mystery very readily, in appreciating a spirit unusually gay, frank, and emotional. The perfect innocence of the woman’s nature was evident at once; and by her friends it was never doubted.

ALISON SQUARE.

[Page 358.]

In Alison Square Thomas Campbell lived while composing his Pleasures of Hope. The place where any deathless composition took its shape from the author’s brain is worthy of a place in the chart. A lady, the early friend of Campbell and his family, indicates their residence at that time as being the second door in the stair, entered from the east side, on the north side of the arch, the windows looking partly into Nicolson Square and partly to the Potterrow. The same authority states that much of the poem was written in the middle of the night, and from a sad cause. The poet’s mother, it seems, was of a temper so extremely irritable that her family had no rest till she retired for the night. It was only at that season that the young poet could command repose of mind for his task.

[LEITH WALK.]

Up to the period of the building of the North Bridge, which connects the Old with the New Town of Edinburgh, the Easter Road was the principal passage to Leith. The origin of Leith Walk was accidental. At the approach of Cromwell to Edinburgh, immediately before the battle of Dunbar, Leslie, the Covenanting general, arranged the Scottish troops in a line, the right wing of which rested upon the Calton Hill, and the left upon Leith, being designed for the defence of these towns. A battery was erected at each extremity, and the line was itself defended by a trench and a mound, the latter composed of the earth dug from the former. Leslie himself took up his head-quarters at Broughton, whence some of his despatches are dated. When the war was shifted to another quarter, this mound became a footway between the two towns. It is thus described in a book published in 1748: ‘A very handsome gravel walk, twenty feet broad, which is kept in good repair at the public charge, and no horses suffered to come upon it.’ When Provost Drummond built the North Bridge in 1769, he contemplated that it should become an access to Leith as well as to the projected New Town. Indeed, he seems to have been obliged to make it pass altogether under that semblance in order to conciliate the people; for upon the plate sunk under the foundations of the bridge it is solely described as the opening of a road to Leith. At that time the idea of a New Town seemed so chimerical that he scarcely dared to avow his patriotic intentions. After the opening of the bridge, the Walk seems to have become used by carriages, but without any regard being paid to its condition or any system established for keeping it in repair. It consequently fell into a state of disorder, from which it was not rescued till after the commencement of the present century, when a splendid causeway was formed at a great expense by the city of Edinburgh, and a toll erected for its payment.

One terrible peculiarity attended Leith Walk in its former condition. It was overhung by a gibbet, from which were suspended all culprits whose bodies at condemnation were sentenced to be hung in chains. The place where this gibbet stood, called the Gallow Lee, is now a good deal altered in appearance. It was a slight rising ground immediately above the site of the toll[271] and on the west side of the road, being now partly enclosed by the precincts of a villa, where the beautiful Duchess of Gordon once lived. The greater part of the Gallow Lee now exists in the shape of mortar in the walls of the houses of the New Town. At the time when that elegant city was built, the proprietor of this redoubtable piece of ground, finding it composed of excellent sand, sold it all away to the builders, to be converted into mortar, so that it soon, from a rising ground, became a deep hollow. An amusing anecdote is told in connection with this fact. The honest man, it seems, was himself fully as much of a sand-bed as his property. He was a big, voluminous man, one of those persons upon whom drink never seems to have any effect. It is related that every day, while the carts were taking away his sand, he stood regularly at the place receiving the money in return, and every little sum he got was immediately converted into liquor and applied to the comfort of his inner man. A public-house was at length erected at the spot for his particular behoof; and, assuredly, as long as the Gallow Lee lasted this house did not want custom. Perhaps, familiar as the reader may be with stories of sots who have drunk away their last acre, he never before heard of the thing being done in so literal a manner.

If my reader be an inhabitant of Edinburgh of any standing, he must have many delightful associations of Leith Walk in connection with his childhood. Of all the streets in Edinburgh or Leith, the Walk in former times was certainly the street for boys and girls. From top to bottom, it was a scene of wonders and enjoyments peculiarly devoted to children. Besides the panoramas and caravan-shows, which were comparatively transient spectacles, there were several shows upon Leith Walk, which might be considered as regular fixtures and part of the country-cousin sights of Edinburgh. Who can forget the waxworks of ‘Mrs Sands, widow of the late G. Sands,’ which occupied a laigh shop opposite to the present Haddington Place, and at the door of which, besides various parrots and sundry birds of Paradise, sat the wax figure of a little man in the dress of a French courtier of the ancien régime, reading one eternal copy of the Edinburgh Advertiser? The very outsides of these wonder-shops was an immense treat; all along the Walk it was one delicious scene of squirrels hung out at doors, and monkeys dressed like soldiers and sailors, with holes behind where their tails came through. Even the half-penniless boy might here get his appetite for wonders to some extent gratified.

Besides being of old the chosen place for shows, Leith Walk was the Rialto of objects. This word requires explanation. It is applied by the people of Scotland to persons who have been born with or overtaken by some miserable personal evil. From one end to the other, Leith Walk was garrisoned by poor creatures under these circumstances, who, from handbarrows, wheelbarrows, or iron legs, if peradventure they possessed such adjuncts, entreated the passengers for charity—some by voices of song, some by speech, some by driddling, as Burns calls it, on fiddles or grinding on hand-organs—indeed, a complete continuous ambuscade against the pocket. Shows and objects have now alike vanished from Leith Walk. It is now a plain street, composed of little shops of the usual suburban appearance, and characterised by nothing peculiar, except perhaps a certain air of pretension, which is in some cases abundantly ludicrous. A great number, be it observed, are mere tiled cottages, which contrive, by means of lofty fictitious fronts, plastered and painted in a showy manner, to make up a good appearance towards the street. If there be a school in one of those receptacles, it is entitled an academy; if an artisan’s workshop, however humble, it is a manufactory. Everything about it is still showy and unsubstantial; it is still, in some measure, the type of what it formerly was.

Near the bottom of Leith Walk is a row of somewhat old-fashioned houses bearing the name of Springfield. A large one, the second from the top, was, ninety years ago, the residence of Mr M’Culloch of Ardwell, a commissioner of customs, and noted as a man of pleasantry and wit. Here, in some of the last years of his life, did Samuel Foote occasionally appear as Mr M’Culloch’s guest—Arcades ambo et respondere parati. But the history of their intimacy is worthy of being particularly told; so I transcribe it from the recollection of a gentleman whose advanced age and family connections could alone have made us faithfully acquainted with circumstances so remote from our time.

In the winter of 1775-6 [more probably that of 1774-5], Mr M’Culloch visited his country mansion in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, in company of a friend named Mouat, in order to be present at an election. Mr M’Culloch was a man of joyous temperament and a good deal of wit, and used to amuse his friends by spouting half-random verses. He and his friend spent a week or two very pleasantly in the country, and then set out on their return to Leith; Mr M’Culloch carrying with him his infant son David, familiarly called Wee Davie, for the purpose of commencing his education in Edinburgh. To pursue the narrative of my correspondent: ‘The two travellers got on pretty well as far as Dumfries; but it was with difficulty, occasioned by a snowstorm, that they reached Moffat, where they tarried for the night.

‘Early on a January morning, the snow having fallen heavily during the preceding night, they set off in a post-chaise and four horses to proceed on their perilous journey. Two gentlemen in their own carriage left the King’s Arms Inn (then kept by James Little) at the same time. With difficulty the first pair of travellers reached the top of Erickstane, but farther they could not go. The parties came out of their carriages, and, aided by their postillions, they held a consultation as to the prudence of attempting to proceed down the vale of Tweed. This was considered as a vain and dangerous attempt, and it was therefore determined on to return to Moffat. The turning of the carriages having become a dangerous undertaking, Wee Davie had to be taken out of the chaise and laid on the snow, wrapped in a blanket, until the business was accomplished. The parties then went back to Moffat, arriving there between nine and ten in the morning. Mr M’Culloch and his friend then learned that, of the two strangers who had left the inn at the same time, and had since returned, one was the celebrated Foote, and the other either Ross or Souter, but which of the two favourite sons of Thalia I cannot remember at this distant period of time. Let it be kept in mind that Foote had lost a leg, and walked with difficulty.

‘Immediately on returning Foote had entered the inn, not in good-humour, to order breakfast. His carriage stood opposite the inn door, in order to get the luggage taken off. While this was going on a paper was placarded on one of the panels. The wit came out to see how all matters were going on, when, observing the paper, he in wrath exclaimed: “What rascal has been placarding his ribaldry on my carriage?” He had patience, however, to pause and read the following lines:

“While Boreas his flaky storm did guide,

Deep covering every hill, o’er Tweed and Clyde,

The north-wind god spied travellers seeking way;

Sternly he cried: ‘Retrace your steps, I say;

Let not one foot, ’tis my behest, profane

The sacred snows which lie on Erickstane.’”

The countenance of our wit now brightened, as he called out, with an exclamation of surprise: “I should like to know the fellow who wrote that; for, be he who he may, he’s no mean hand at an epigram.” Mrs Little, the good but eccentric landlady, now stepped forward and spoke thus: “Trouth, Maister Fut, it’s mair than likely that it was our frien’ Maister M’Culloch of Ardwell that did it; it’s weel kent that he’s a poyet; he’s a guid eneugh sort o’ man, but he never comes here without poyet-teasing mysel’ or the guidman, or some are or other about the house. It wud be weel dune if ye wud speak to him.” Ardwell now came forward, muttering some sort of apology, which Foote instantly stopped by saying: “My dear sir, an apology is not necessary; I am fair game for every one, for I take any one for game when it suits me. You and I must become acquainted, for I find that we are brother-poets, and that we were this morning companions in misfortune on ‘the sacred snows of Erickstane.’” Thus began an intimacy which the sequel will show turned out to be a lasting one. The two parties now joined at the breakfast-table, as they did at every other meal for the next twenty days.

DYERS’ CLOSE.
Old houses being demolished to make room for extension of Heriot Watt College.

[Page 364.]

‘Foote remained quiet for a few hours after breakfast, until he had beat about for game, as he termed it, and he first fixed on worthy Mrs Little, his hostess. By some occult means he had managed to get hold of some of the old lady’s habiliments, particularly a favourite night-cap—provincially, a mutch. After attiring himself à la Mrs Little, he went into the kitchen and through the house, mimicking the garrulous landlady so very exactly in giving orders, scolding, &c. that no servant doubted as to its being the mistress in propriâ personâ. This kind of amusement went on for several days for the benefit of the people in Moffat. By-and-by the snow allowed the united parties to advance as far as the Crook, upon Tweed, and here they were again storm-stayed for ten days. Nevertheless, Foote and his companion, who was well qualified to support him, never for a moment flagged in creating merriment or affording the party amusement of some sort. The snow-cleared away at last, so as to enable the travellers to reach Edinburgh, and there to end their journey. The intimacy of Foote and Ardwell did not end here, but continued until the death of Foote.

‘After this period Foote several times visited Scotland: he always in his writings showed himself partial to Scotland and to the Scotch. On every visit which he afterwards made to the northern metropolis, he set apart a night or two for a social meeting with his friend Ardwell, whose family lived in the second house from the head of that pretty row of houses more than half-way down Leith Walk, still called Springfield. In the parlour, on the right-hand side in entering that house, the largest of the row, Foote, the celebrated wit of the day, has frequently been associated with many of the Edinburgh and Leith worthies, when and where he was wont to keep the table in a roar.

‘The biography of Foote is well known. However, I may add that Mr Mouat and Mr M’Culloch died much lamented in the year 1793. David M’Culloch (Wee Davie) died in the year 1824, at Cheltenham, much regretted. For many years he had resided in India. In consequence of family connection, he became a familiar visitor at Abbotsford, and a favourite acquaintance of Sir Walter Scott.[272] Mr Lockhart tells us that, next to Tom Moore, Sir Walter thought him the finest warbler he had ever heard. He was certainly an exquisitely fine singer of Scotch songs. Sir Walter Scott never heard him sing until he was far advanced in life, or until his voice had given way to a long residence in India. Mr Lockhart also tells us that David M’Culloch in his youth was an intimate and favourite companion of Burns, and that the poet hardly ventured to publish many of his songs until he heard them sung by his friend. I will only add that the writer of this has more than once heard Burns say that he never fully knew the beauty of his songs until he heard them sung by David M’Culloch.’

[GABRIEL’S ROAD.]

Previous to 1767 the eye of a person perched in a favourable situation in the Old Town surveyed the whole ground on which the New Town was afterwards built. Immediately beyond the North Loch was a range of grass fields called Bearford’s Parks, from the name of the proprietor, Hepburn of Bearford in East Lothian. Bounding these on the north, in the line of the subsequent Princes Street, was a road enclosed by two dry-stone walls, thence called the Lang Dykes; it was the line by which the Viscount Dundee rode with his small troop of adherents when he had ascertained that the Convention was determined to settle the crown upon the Prince of Orange, and he saw that the only duty that remained for him was to raise the Highland clans for King James.[273] The main mass of ground, originally rough with whins and broom, but latterly forming what was called Wood’s Farm, was crossed obliquely by a road extending between Silvermills, a rural hamlet on the mill-course of the Leith, and the passage into the Old Town obtained by the dam of the North Loch at the bottom of Halkerston’s Wynd. There are still some traces of this road. You see it leave Silvermills behind West Cumberland Street. Behind Duke Street, on the west side, the boundary-wall of the Queen Street Garden is oblique in consequence of its having passed that way. Finally it terminates in a short, oblique passage behind the Register House, wherein stood till lately a tall building containing a famous house of resort, Ambrose’s Tavern. This short passage bore the name of Gabriel’s Road, and it was supposed to do so in connection with a remarkable murder, of which it was the scene.

The murderer in the case was in truth a man named Robert Irvine. He was tutor to two boys, sons of Mr Gordon of Ellon. In consequence of the children having reported some liberties they saw him take with their mother’s maid, he conceived the horrible design of murdering them, and did so one day as he was leading them for a walk along the rough ground where the New Town is now situated. The frightful transaction was beheld from the Castle-hill; he was pursued, taken, and next day but one hanged by the baron of Broughton, after having his hands hacked off by the knife with which he had committed the deed. The date of this off-hand execution was 30th April 1717. Both the date and the murderer’s name have several times been misstated.[274]

Adjacent to this road, about the spot now occupied by the Royal Bank, stood a small group of houses called Mutrie’s Hill, some of which professed to furnish curds and cream and fruits in their seasons, and were on these accounts resorted to by citizens and their families on summer evenings. One in particular bore the name of ‘Peace and Plenty.’

The village of Silvermills, for the sake of which, as an access to the city, Gabriel’s Road existed, still maintains its place amidst the streets and crescents of the New Town. It contains a few houses of a superior cast; but it is a place sadly in want of the sacer vates. No notice has ever been taken of it in any of the books regarding Edinburgh, nor has any attempt ever been made to account for its somewhat piquant name. I shall endeavour to do so.

In 1607 silver was found in considerable abundance at Hilderstone, in Linlithgowshire, on the property of the gentleman who figures in another part of this volume as Tam o’ the Cowgate. Thirty-eight barrels of ore were sent to the Mint in the Tower of London to be tried, and were found to give about twenty-four ounces of silver for every hundredweight. Expert persons were placed upon the mine, and mills were erected on the Water of Leith for the melting and fining of the ore. The sagacious owner gave the mine the name of God’s Blessing. By-and-by the king heard of it, and thinking it improper that any such fountain of wealth should belong to a private person, purchased God’s Blessing for £5000, that it might be worked upon a larger scale for the benefit of the public. But somehow, from the time it left the hands of the original owner, God’s Blessing ceased to be anything like so fertile as it had been, and in time the king withdrew from the enterprise a great loser. The Silvermills I conceive to have been a part of the abandoned plant.[275]]

[INDEX.]

THE END.

Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Mr W. B. Blaikie (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.) gives a list of the occupants of a first-class tenement some years subsequent to the ’45 Rebellion: ‘First-floor, Mrs Stirling, fishmonger; second, Mrs Urquhart, lodging-house keeper; third-floor, the Countess Dowager of Balcarres; fourth, Mrs Buchan of Kelloe; fifth, the Misses Elliot, milliners and mantua-makers; garrets, a variety of tailors and other tradesmen.’

[2] Pamphlet circa 1700, Wodrow Collection, Adv. Lib.

[3] Brown Square finally disappeared with the making of Chambers Street.

[4] Mr William Cowan, in vol. i. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, says this exemption applied to the three eastmost tenements in Princes Street.

[5] The late Bruce J. Home drew up in 1908 ‘A Provisional List of Old Houses Remaining in High Street and Canongate,’ which was printed, with accompanying map, in the first volume of The Old Edinburgh Club Book. The statement is therein made ‘that since 1860 two-thirds of the ancient buildings in the Old Town of Edinburgh have been demolished.’ The map showed, coloured in red, the remaining buildings of the Old Town which had survived until the beginning of the twentieth century.

[6] This jest was doubtless based on Swift’s famous poem on Vanbrugh’s house (1704). The peculiar architectural features of Allan’s ‘goose pie’ have been almost entirely obliterated by recent alterations. Only the two circular upper stories remain in their original form.

[7] ‘My mother was told by those who had enjoyed his plays, that he had a child’s puppet stage and a set of dressed dolls for actors, which were in great favour with old and young.’—C. K. Sharpe’s note in Wilson’s Reminiscences.

[8] King’s Bridge crosses King’s Stables Road, and the access from it is Johnston Terrace.

[9] When Mrs Cockburn, author of ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ entered on occupation of the house in 1756, it was described in the Baird titles as ‘my lodging in the castle-hill of Edinburgh, formerly possessed by the Duchess of Gordon.’

[10] A Board-school now occupies the site of the mansion. The doorway referred to is rebuilt into the school-house.

[11] George, sixth Earl of Huntly, took his last illness, June 1636, in ‘his house in the Canongate.’ George, the first duke, who had held out the Castle at the Revolution, died December 1716, at his house in the Citadel of Leith, where he appears to have occasionally resided for some years. I should suppose the house on the Castle-hill to have been inhabited by the family in the interval.

The Citadel seems to have been a little nest of aristocracy, of the Cavalier party. In 1745 one of its inhabitants was Dame Magdalen Bruce of Kinross, widow of the baronet who had assisted in the Restoration. Here lived with her the Rev. Robert Forbes, Episcopal minister of Leith [afterwards Bishop of Orkney], from whose collections regarding Charles Edward and his adventures a volume of extracts was published by me in 1834. [The Lyon in Mourning is here referred to, from which Dr Chambers published a number of the narratives in his Jacobite Memoirs (1834), and from which he also utilised some information of the Rebellion of 1745 in the preparation of his History of the Rebellion. At his death he bequeathed the work to the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, where it now remains. It consists of eight small octavo volumes of manuscript of about two hundred pages, each bound in black leather, with blackened edges, and around the title-page of each volume a deep black border. The collection was the work of the Rev. Robert Forbes, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who became in 1762 Bishop of Ross and Caithness. It was treasured by his widow for thirty years, and then bought by Sir Henry Stewart of Allanton in 1806. Dr Robert Chambers unearthed it for historical purposes, and later purchased it from Sir Henry Stewart. Some relics which Forbes succeeded in obtaining from his correspondents—such as a piece of the Prince’s garter, a piece of the gown he wore as Betty Burke, and of the string of the apron he then had on, a fragment of a waistcoat worn by the Prince, and other things—were preserved on the inside of some of the boards of the volumes. The Lyon in Mourning was edited by Mr Henry Paton from the manuscript in the Advocates’ Library, and published in three volumes by the Scottish History Society (1895).] Throughout those troublous days, a little Episcopal congregation was kept together in Leith; their place of worship being the first floor of an old, dull-looking house in Queen Street (dated 1615), the lower floor of which was, in my recollection, a police-office.

[12] Webster’s Close became Brown’s Close when the property changed hands, and two brothers of that name occupied the house. To Brown’s Close the recently formed Society of Antiquaries of Scotland removed in 1794 from Gosford’s Close, because the latter was too narrow to admit of the members being carried to the place of meeting in sedan-chairs.

[13] Before the Government bounty had supplemented the poor stipends of the Scotch Church up to £150, many of them were so small that the widow’s allowance from this fund nearly equalled them. Such was the case of Cranshaws, a pastoral parish among the Lammermoor Hills. A former minister of Cranshaws having wooed a lass of humble rank, the father of the lady, when consulted on the subject, said, ‘Tak’ him, Jenny; he’s as gude deid as living!’ meaning, of course, that she would be as well off as a widow as in the quality of a wife.

[14] ‘The monograms of the name of our blessed lady are formed of the letters M. A., M. R., and A. M., and these stand respectively for Maria, Maria Regina, and Ave Maria. The letter M. was often used by itself to express the name of the Blessed Virgin, and became a vehicle for the most beautiful ornament and design; the letter itself being entirely composed of emblems, with some passage from the life of our lady in the void spaces.’—Pugin’s Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume, 1844.

[15] Keith’s History.

[16] The New College and Assembly Hall of the (United) Free Church.

[17] Fellows.

[18] Busy.

[19] Not improbably this was done in a spirit of literal obedience to the injunction (Matthew vi. 6): ‘Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet.’ Commentators on this passage mention that every Jewish house had a place of secret devotion built over the porch.

[20] When Colonel Gardiner occupied it the house was known as Olive Bank. It was later changed to Bankton House by Andrew Macdowall, who, when raised to the Bench in 1755, took the title of Lord Bankton.

[21] Bankton House has been burned down and rebuilt since this was written.

[22] History of Edinburgh, p. 205, note.

[23] Before Major Weir took up house in the West Bow he is said to have lodged in the Cowgate, where he had as a fellow-lodger the fanatic Mitchell (Ravaillac redivivus), who attempted to shoot Archbishop Sharpe.

[24] Sir Andrew Ramsay was provost of the city, first from 1654 till 1657, and then continuously for eleven years, 1662-73. It was he who obtained from the king the title of Lord Provost for the chief magistrate, and secured precedence for him next to the Lord Mayor of London.

[25] The Rev. Mr Frazer, minister of Wardlaw, in his Divine Providences (MS. Adv. Lib.), dated 1670.

[26] Satan’s Invisible World Discovered.

[27] The causeway. A skirmish fought between the Hamiltons and Douglases, upon the High Street of Edinburgh, in the year 1515, was popularly termed Cleanse the Causeway.

[28] Cane.

[29] Hamstringed.

[30] Memorie of the Somervilles, vol. ii. p. 271.

[31] This house was demolished in 1836.

[32] Jackson’s History of the Stage, p. 418.

[33] See Notes from the Records of the Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: 1842. In the eighteenth century a lady’s ‘night-gown’ was a special kind of evening-dress, often of silk brocade, &c., other than full dress; and a gentleman’s night-gown was a dressing-gown, not a bed-garment.

[34] It was a ball in the room of the Old Assembly Close building which Goldsmith describes in the letter quoted, and in which public assemblies were revived in 1746. The new rooms in Bell’s Wynd were opened in 1756.

[35] Called the ‘Ovir Bow Port.’ It stood about the line of the present Victoria Terrace.

[36] This house was demolished in 1835, to make way for a passage towards George IV. Bridge.

[37] Taken down in 1839.

[38] Demolished in 1833.

[39] The narrow, crooked West Bow, descending very steeply from the Lawnmarket to the Grassmarket, has been almost wholly obliterated by Victoria Street, a comparatively wide and gradually sloping street which crosses the line of the old West Bow from George IV. Bridge. Victoria Street was built in 1835-40; and only a few houses on one side of the head of the Bow still stand, and these have been rebuilt.

[40] From whom it got its name—James’s Court.

[41] A ‘land’ still standing (1912) as it was when Hume lived there. It was also the residence of the Countess of Eglinton when she left the Stamp Office Close in the High Street. See [p. 192].

[42] Burton’s Life of Hume, ii. 173.

[43] Formerly called Blair’s Close ([p. 19]). The name was altered to Baird’s Close when the Gordon property passed into the possession of Baird of Newbyth.

[44] Mrs Cockburn, writing to Miss Cumming at Balcarres, describes ‘a ball’ she gave in this house. ‘On Wednesday I gave a ball. How do ye think I contrived to stretch out this house to hold twenty-two people, and had nine couples always dancing? Yet this is true; it is also true that we had a table covered with divers eatables all the time, and that everybody ate when they were hungry and drank when they were dry, but nobody ever sat down.... Our fiddler sat where the cupboard is, and they danced in both rooms. The table was stuffed into the window and we had plenty of room. It made the bairns all very happy.’—Mrs Cockburn’s Letters, edited by T. Craig Brown.

[45] His lordship died September 20, 1722 (Brunton and Haig’s Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice).

[46] A stuff brought, I believe, from Spain, and which was at one time much in fashion in Scotland.

[47] Lady Stair’s Close was originally a cul de sac. When the Mound was begun a thoroughfare was cut through the garden, making the close the principal communication between the Lawnmarket and Hanover Street, then the western extremity of the New Town. The name it first bore was ‘Lady Gray’s Close,’ after the wife of the builder of the house, and that of Lady Stair’s Close was given to it (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii.) early in the eighteenth century, when the house passed into the possession of the first Lady Stair, a granddaughter of Sir William Gray of Pittendrum. Lord Rosebery, who represents a branch of the Primroses (other than that to which the second viscount, mentioned below, belonged), restored the house and presented it to the city in 1907.

[48] ‘Grace, Countess of Aboyne and Moray, in her early youth, had the weakness to consult a celebrated fortune-teller, inhabiting an obscure close in Edinburgh. The sibyl predicted that she would become the wife of two earls, and how many children she was to bear; but withal assured her that when she should see a new coach of a certain colour driven up to her door as belonging to herself, her hearse must speedily follow. Many years afterwards, Lord Moray, who was not aware of this prediction, resolved to surprise his wife with the present of a new equipage; but when Lady Moray beheld from a window a carriage of the ominous colour arrive at the door of Darnaway, and heard that it was to be her own property, she sank down, exclaiming that she was a dead woman, and actually expired in a short time after, November 17, 1738.’—Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xcii.

[49] Lady Primrose’s story forms the groundwork of one of Sir Walter Scott’s best short stories, My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror.

[50] This story loses its point by the discovery made in St Peter’s upon Cornhill, London, of the marriage register of the second Earl of Stair with Lady Primrose, 27th March 1708. Thus they were married persons several years before the presumed date of this story. Miss Rosaline Masson announced the discovery in an article in Chambers’s Journal for 1912, entitled, ‘The Secret Marriage of Lady Primrose and John, Second Earl of Stair.’ She makes this comment: ‘The testimony of John Waugh, Parson, has lain buried for over two hundred years in the old Register in the city; but the tale, whispered one day, some time about the year 1714, in the High Street of Edinburgh, first among the strutting gallants and loungers at the Cross at noon, and later on, over the delicate tea-cups, in the gossipy gatherings of the fair sex—that tale was nowise buried. It has never died. Did not Kirkpatrick Sharpe repeat it, sixty years after Lady Stair’s death, to young Robert Chambers, at that time collecting material for his inimitable book, Traditions of Edinburgh?’ The article further tries to answer the question why the Earl of Stair and the young widow made this clandestine marriage, which gave opportunity for the story.

[51] Negroes in a servile capacity had been long before known in Scotland. Dunbar has a droll poem on a female black, whom he calls ‘My lady with the muckle lips.’ In Lady Marie Stuart’s Household Book, referring to the early part of the seventeenth century, there is mention of ‘ane inventorie of the gudes and geir whilk pertenit to Dame Lilias Ruthven, Lady Drummond,’ which includes as an item, ‘the black boy and the papingoe [peacock];’ in so humble an association was it then thought proper to place a human being who chanced to possess a dark skin.

[52] Raised to the Bench with the title of Lord Kerse.

[53] The lintel bearing this legend is preserved in a doorway at the top of the staircase of the Free Library, George IV. Bridge. The Cowgate portion of the Library building (1887-89) occupies the site of Sir Thomas Hope’s house.

[54] While King’s Advocate, Sir Thomas Hope had the unique experience of pleading at the Bar before two of his sons who were judges—Lord Craighall and Lord Kerse. There is a tradition that when addressing the Court he remained covered, and that from this circumstance the Lord Advocates still have this privilege, although they do not exercise it. Probably the custom introduced by Sir Thomas Hope originated in his being an officer of state, which entitled him to sit in parliament wearing his hat, and he claimed the same privilege when appearing before the judges.

[55] See a Memoir by Sir Archibald Steuart Denham in the publications of the Maitland Club.

[56] The site of Chiesly’s house is that occupied by the Episcopal Church Training College in Orwell Place.

[57] In The Domestic Annals of Scotland the place of his execution is given as Drumsheugh, and Sir Walter Scott says he was hanged near his own house of Dalry.

[58] This was the first High School, built in 1578 in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery, of which David Malloch, or Mallet, was janitor in 1717. The building faced the Canongate. In 1777 it was replaced by the building now facing Infirmary Street and used in connection with the university. It is this later building that is associated with Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Lord Cockburn, and other eminent men of the last quarter of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth century.

[59] The Mechanics’ Library was discontinued when the Free Library was opened. Bailie Macmoran’s house is now used as a university settlement.

[60] After being the residence for a time of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and other notable citizens, it was latterly occupied by the widow (the seventh wife) of the Rev. David Williamson—‘Dainty Davie’—minister of St Cuthbert’s Church at the time of the Revolution.

[61] The house is marked No. 21. Its back windows enjoy a fine view of the Firth of Forth and the Fife hills. The registration of his lordship’s birth appears as follows: ‘Wednesday, 30th September 1778, Henry Brougham, Esq., parish of St Gilles (sic), and Eleonora Syme, his spouse, a son born the 19th current, named Henry Peter. Witnesses, Mr Archibald Hope, Royal Bank, and Principal Robertson.’ The parts of the New Town then built belonged to St Giles’s parish.

[62] These verses are to be found in a curious volume, which appeared in London in 1618, under the title of Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners, by Geffray Mynshul, of Grayes Inn, Gent. Reprinted, 1821, by W. & C. Tait, Edinburgh. The lines were applied specially to the King’s Bench Prison.

[63] A large white house near the Castle, on the north side of the street, and now (1868) no more.

[64] Katherine Nairne was the niece of Sir William Nairne, later a judge under the title of Lord Dunsinnane, and it was currently reported that her escape from the Tolbooth was effected through his connivance. Sir William’s clerk accompanied the lady to Dover, and had great difficulty in preventing her recognition and arrest through her levity on the journey.

[65] Up to the year 1830, when George IV. Bridge gave easy access to Parliament House, this quaint custom was followed by Lord Glenlee, who walked from his house in Brown Square, down Crombie’s Close, across the Cowgate, and up the Back Stairs.

[66] Napier of Merchiston.

[67] This projection is still a notable architectural feature in the open space at the back of the tenement referred to. The original windows have been built up. One of the lettered stones bearing the words, ‘Blessit be God for all his giftis’—a favourite motto with old Edinburgh builders—was removed to Easter Coates house, where it may still be seen in that now old building adjoining St Mary’s Cathedral.

[68] From this tradition it was known as ‘The Cromwell Bartizan.’ Dunbar’s Close did not get its name from its supposed association with Cromwell’s soldiers, but from a family that lived in it. At an earlier period it was known as Ireland’s Close.

[69] Edinburgh was not in this respect worse than other European cities. Paris, at least, was equally disgusting. Rigord, who wrote in the twelfth century, tells us that the king, standing one day at the window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the dirt thrown up by the carriages produced a most offensive stench, resolved to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved. For a long time swine were permitted to wallow in them; till the young Philip being killed by a fall from his horse, from a sow running between its legs, an order was issued that no swine should in future run about the street. The monks of the Abbey of St Anthony remonstrated fiercely against this order, alleging that the prevention of the saint’s swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they pleased was a want of respect to their patron. It was therefore found necessary to grant them the privilege of wallowing in the dirt without molestation, requiring the monks only to turn them out with bells about their necks.

[70]

‘To recreat hir hie renoun,

Of curious things thair wes all sort,

The stairs and houses of the toun

With tapestries were spread athort:

Quhair histories men micht behould,

With images and anticks auld.

The description of the qveen’s maiesties
maist honorable entry into the town of
edinbvrgh, vpon the 19. day of maii, 1590.
By john bvrel.’—Watson’s Collection of Scots
Poems (1709).

[71] In the early times these privileged beggars were called ‘Bedesmen,’ from telling their beads as they walked from Holyrood to St Giles’. From the erection of the Canongate Church in 1690 the ceremony took place there, until it was discontinued in the first years of Queen Victoria’s reign. A well-known worthy of this community was reputed in 1837 to possess property which yielded an annual income of £120.

[72] We learn from Crawford’s History of the University (MS. Adv. Lib.) that the service was read that day in the Old Kirk on account of the more dignified place of worship towards the east being then under the process of alteration for the erection of the altar, ‘and other pendicles of that idolatrous worship.’

[73] Notes upon the Phœnix edition of the Pastoral Letter, by S. Johnson, 1694.

[74] Wodrow, in his Diary, makes a statement apparently at issue with that in the text, both in respect of locality and person:

‘It is the constantly believed tradition that it was Mrs Mean, wife to John Mean, merchant in Edinburgh, who threw the first stool when the service-book was read in the New Kirk, Edinburgh, 1637, and that many of the lasses that carried on the fray were preachers in disguise, for they threw stools to a great length.’

[75] A newspaper commenced after the Restoration, and continued through eleven numbers.

[76] Small stools.

[77] See St Giles’, Edinburgh: Church, College, and Cathedral, by the Rev. Sir J. Cameron Lees, D.D.; also Historical Sketch of St Giles’ Cathedral, by William Chambers, by whom the cathedral was restored in 1872-83. Regarding the reinterment of Montrose, there is a narrative, with some fresh light on the subject, in the paper, ‘The Embalming of Montrose,’ in the first volume of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. The monuments to Knox, the Earl of Murray, and the Marquises of Argyll and Montrose are quite modern.

[78] St Giles’ churchyard was divided into two terraces by the old city wall (1450), which was built half-way down the sloping ground on the south side of the High Street. A part of this wall was exposed in 1832 when excavations were made for additional buildings at the Advocates’ Library.

[79] Previous to 1681 the inhabitants of Edinburgh were supplied with water from pump-wells in the south side of the Cowgate.

[80] Which also were destroyed in the fires of 1824.

[81] The Wemysses’ footman was one of the few arrested on suspicion of being a ringleader in the Porteous riot.

[82] John’s Coffee-house was then situated in the north-east corner of Parliament Close.

[83] Baijen-hole, see [note], [p. 155].

[84] In the early times above referred to, £100 was accounted a sufficient capital for a young goldsmith—being just so much as purchased his furnace, tools, &c., served to fit up his shop, and enabled him to enter the Incorporation, which alone required £40 out of the £100. The stock with which George Heriot commenced business at a much earlier period (1580)—said to have been about £200—must therefore be considered a proof of the wealth of that celebrated person’s family.

[85] Peter had, in early life, been kidnapped and sold to the plantations. After spending some time among the North American Indians, he came back to Scotland, and began business in Edinburgh as a vintner. Robert Fergusson, in his poem entitled The Rising of the Session, thus alludes to a little tavern he kept within the Parliament House:

‘This vacance is a heavy doom

On Indian Peter’s coffee-room,

For a’ his china pigs are toom;

Nor do we see

In wine the soukar biskets soom

As light’s a flee.’

Peter afterwards established a penny-post in Edinburgh, which became so profitable in his hands that the General Post-office gave him a handsome compensation for it. He was also the first to print a street directory in Edinburgh. He died January 19, 1799.

[86] Provost Creech was the first who had the good taste to abandon the practice.

[87] See Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen, vol. ii. 137 (1762).

[88] An Edinburgh term applied to a class of rogues. Probably a corrupt pronunciation of the English word cully—to fool, to cheat.

[89] Where the North Bridge now stands.

[90] A full description of the old Parliament Hall, with a plan showing the divisions and the arrangements of the ‘booths,’ is given in Reekiana; or, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh. It is not now called the Outer House.

[91] Several of the illustrations in the present section are immediately derived from a curious volume, full of entertainment for a denizen of the Parliament House—The Court of Session Garland. Edinburgh: Thomas Stevenson. 1839.

[92] A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest. By David Abercromby, M.D. London, 1691. P. 60.

[93] John Sinclair of Murkle, appointed a Lord of Session in 1733.

[94] Alexander Leslie, advocate, succeeded his nephew as fifth Earl of Leven, and fourth Earl of Melville, in 1729. He was named a Lord of Session, and took his seat on the bench on the 11th of July 1734. He died 2nd February 1754.

[95] Sir Walter Pringle of Newhall, raised to the bench in 1718.

[96] Andrew Fletcher of Milton was appointed, on the resignation of James Erskine of Grange, Lord Justice-clerk, and took his seat on the bench 21st June 1735.

[97] Probably Gibson of Pentland.

[98] Hew Dalrymple of Drummore, appointed a Lord of Session in 1726.

[99] Afterwards Lord Dreghorn.

[100] Author of a Treatise on Election Laws, and Solicitor-general during the Coalition Ministry in 1783.

[101] Afterwards Lord Polkemmet.

[102] Afterwards Lord Eskgrove and Lord Justice-clerk.

[103] Alexander Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, the author’s father—appointed to the bench in 1754; died 1782. This gentleman was a precise old Presbyterian, and therefore the most opposite creature in the world to his son, who was a cavalier in politics and an Episcopalian.

[104] Afterwards Lord Braxfield—appointed 1776; died 1800, while holding the office of Lord Justice-clerk. Lord Braxfield is the prototype of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston.

[105] Alexander Lockhart, Esq., decidedly the greatest lawyer at the Scottish bar in his day—appointed to the bench in 1774; died in 1782.

[106] Andrew Pringle, Esq.—appointed a judge in 1759; died 1776. This gentleman was remarkable for his fine oratory, which was praised highly by Sheridan the lecturer (father of R. B. Sheridan) in his Discourses on English Oratory.

[107] Henry Home, Esq.—raised to the bench 1752; died 1783. This great man, so remarkable for his metaphysical subtlety and literary abilities, was strangely addicted to the use of the coarse word in the text.

[108] Sir David Dalrymple—appointed a judge in 1766; died 1792. A story is told of Lord Hailes once making a serious objection to a law-paper, and, in consequence, to the whole suit to which it belonged, on account of the word justice being spelt in the manner mentioned in the text. Perhaps no author ever affected so much critical accuracy as Lord Hailes, and yet there never was a book published with so large an array of corrigenda et addenda as the first edition of the Annals of Scotland.

[109] George Brown, Esq., of Coalstoun—appointed 1756; died 1776.

[110] Alexander Fraser of Strichen—appointed 1730; died 1774.

[111] James Erskine, Esq., subsequently titled Lord Alva—appointed 1761; died 1796. He was of exceedingly small stature, and upon that account denominated ‘Lordie.’

[112] James Veitch, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1793.

[113] Francis Garden, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1793—author of several respectable literary productions.

[114] Robert Dundas, Esq., of Arniston—appointed 1760; died 1787.

[115] The bench being semicircular, and the President sitting in the centre, the seven judges on his right hand formed the east wing, those on his left formed the west. The decisions were generally announced by the words ‘Adhere’ and ‘Alter’—the former meaning an affirmance, the latter a reversal, of the judgment of the Lord Ordinary.

[116] The term of the summer session was then from the 12th of June to the 12th of August.

[117] Henry, first Viscount Melville, then coming forward as an advocate at the Scottish bar. When this great man passed advocate, he was so low in cash that, after going through the necessary forms, he had only one guinea left in his pocket. Upon coming home, he gave this to his sister (who lived with him), in order that she might purchase him a gown; after which he had not a penny. However, his talents soon filled his coffers. The gown is yet preserved by the family.

[118] ‘To See’ is to appoint the petition against the judgment pronounced to be answered.

[119] John Erskine of Carnock, author of the Institute of the Law of Scotland.

[120] Thomas Miller, Esq., of Glenlee—appointed to this office in 1766, upon the death of Lord Minto. He filled this situation till the death of Robert Dundas, in 1787, when (January 1788) he was made President of the Court of Session, and created a baronet, in requital for his long service as a judge. Being then far advanced in life, he did not live long to enjoy his new accession of honours, but died in September 1789.

[121] John Campbell, Esq., of Stonefield.

[122] James Burnet, Esq.—appointed 1767; died 1799.

[123] James Fergusson, Esq.—appointed 1761; died 1777. He always wore his hat on the bench, on account of sore eyes.

[124] Robert Bruce, Esq.—appointed 1764; died 1785.

[125] Alexander Tait, Clerk of Session.

[126] He was the grandson of Lord President Lockhart, who was shot by Chiesly of Dalry (see [p. 75]).

[127] Within the memory of an old citizen, who was living in 1833, the Post-office was in the first floor of a house near the Cross, above an alley which still bears the name of the Post-office Close. Thence it was removed to a floor in the south side of the Parliament Square, which was fitted up like a shop, and the letters were dealt across an ordinary counter, like other goods. At this time all the out-of-door business of delivery was managed by one letter-carrier. About 1745 the London bag brought on one occasion no more than a single letter, addressed to the British Linen Company. From the Parliament Square the office was removed to Lord Covington’s house, above described; thence, after some years, to a house in North Bridge Street; thence to Waterloo Place; and finally, to a new and handsome structure on the North Bridge.

[128] Lord Gardenstone erected the building (in the form of a Grecian temple) which encloses St Bernard’s Well, on the Water of Leith, between the Dean Bridge and Stockbridge. He also founded the town of Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, which he hoped to make a manufacturing centre.

[129] Notes to Redgauntlet.

[130] Lord Grange, whose Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice was published in 1833.

[131] Lord Newton was known as ‘The Mighty.’ Lord Cockburn says it was not uncommon for judges on the bench to provide themselves with a bottle of port, which they consumed while listening to the case being tried before them.

[132] This story is told of John Clerk, who afterwards sat on the bench as Lord Eldin.

[133] It was very common for Scotch ladies of rank, even till the middle of the last century, to wear black masks in walking abroad or airing in a carriage; and for some gentlemen, too, who were vain of their complexion. They were kept close to the face by means of a string, having a button of glass or precious stone at the end, which the lady held in her mouth. This practice, I understand, did not in the least interrupt the flow of tittle-tattle and scandal among the fair wearers.

We are told, in a curious paper in the Edinburgh Magazine for August 1817, that at the period above mentioned, ‘though it was a disgrace for ladies to be seen drunk, yet it was none to be a little intoxicated in good company.’

[134] The principal oyster-parties, in old times, took place in Lucky Middlemass’s tavern in the Cowgate (where the south pier of the [South] bridge now stands), which was the resort of Fergusson and his fellow-wits—as witness his own verse:

‘When big as burns the gutters rin,

If ye ha’e catched a droukit skin,

To Luckie Middlemist’s loup in,

And sit fu’ snug,

Owre oysters and a dram o’ gin,

Or haddock lug.’

At these fashionable parties, the ladies would sometimes have the oyster-women to dance in the ball-room, though they were known to be of the worst character. This went under the convenient name of frolic.

[135] The cry of ‘Gardy loo!’ at this hour was supposed to warn pedestrians; but, as Sir Walter Scott says, ‘it was sometimes like the shriek of the water-kelpie, rather the elegy than the warning of the overwhelmed passenger.’

[136] This highly appropriate popular sobriquet cannot be traced beyond the reign of Charles II. Tradition assigns the following as the origin of the phrase: An old gentleman in Fife, designated Durham of Largo, was in the habit, at the period mentioned, of regulating the time of evening worship by the appearance of the smoke of Edinburgh, which he could easily see, through the clear summer twilight, from his own door. When he observed the smoke increase in density, in consequence of the good folk of the city preparing their supper, he would call all the family into the house, saying: ‘It’s time now, bairns, to tak’ the beuks, and gang to our beds, for yonder’s Auld Reekie, I see, putting on her nicht-cap!’

[137] This gentleman, the ‘revered defender of beauteous Stuart,’ and the surviving friend of Allan Ramsay, had an unaccountable aversion to cheese, and not only forbade the appearance of that article upon his table, but also its introduction into his house. His family, who did not partake in this antipathy, sometimes smuggled a small quantity of cheese into the house, and ate it in secret; but he almost always discovered it by the smell, which was the sense it chiefly offended. Upon scenting the object of his disgust, he would start up and run distractedly through the house in search of it, and not compose himself again to his studies till it was thrown out of doors. Some of his ingenious children, by way of a joke, once got into their possession the coat with which he usually went to the court, and ripping up the sutures of one of its wide, old-fashioned skirts, sewed up therein a considerable slice of double Gloster. Mr Tytler was next day surprised when, sitting near the bar, he perceived the smell of cheese rising around him. ‘Cheese here too!’ cried the querulous old gentleman; ‘nay, then, the whole world must be conspiring against me!’ So saying, he rose, and ran home to tell his piteous case to Mrs Tytler and the children, who became convinced from this that he really possessed the singular delicacy and fastidiousness in respect of the effluvia arising from cheese which they formerly thought to be fanciful.

[138] The dress of the Edinburgh Defensive Band was as follows: a cocked hat, black stock, hair tied and highly powdered; dark-blue long-tailed coat, with orange facings in honour of the Revolution, and full lapels sloped away to show the white dimity vest; nankeen small-clothes; white thread stockings, ribbed or plain; and short nankeen spatterdashes. Kay has some ingenious caricatures, in miniature, of these redoubted Bruntsfield Links and Heriot’s Green warriors. The last two survivors were Mr John M’Niven, stationer, and Robert Stevenson, painter, who died in 1832.

[139] One of the panes is now (1847) destroyed, the other cracked. [The tavern is now out of existence.]

[140] Souters’ clods and other forms of bread fascinating to youngsters, as well as penny pies of high reputation, were to be had at a shop which all old Edinburgh people speak of with extreme regard and affection—the Baijen Hole—situated immediately to the east of Forrester’s Wynd and opposite to the Old Tolbooth. The name—a mystery to later generations—seems to bear reference to the Baijens or Baijen Class, a term bestowed in former days upon the junior students in the college. Bajan or bejan is the French bejaune, ‘bec jaune,’ ‘greenbill,’ ‘greenhorn,’ ‘freshman.’

[141] The fullest account yet published of this extraordinary coterie is that of Mr H. A. Cockburn in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. iii. Creech refers to it in ironical terms as ‘the virtuous, the venerable and dignified Wig who so much to their own honour and kind attention always inform the public of their meetings.’ The reputation of the club was very different.

[142] The following were other eighteenth century Edinburgh clubs:

The Poker Club originated in a combination of gentlemen favourable to the establishment of militia in Scotland, and its name, happily hit on by Professor Adam Ferguson, was selected to avoid giving offence to the Government. A history of the club is given in Dugald Stewart’s Life, and also in Carlyle’s Autobiography, where he says: ‘Dinner was on the table soon after two o’clock, at one shilling a head, the wine to be confined to sherry and claret, and the reckoning called at six o’clock.’ The minutes of this interesting club are preserved in the University Library.

The Mirror Club, formed by the contributors to the periodical of that name. It had really existed before under the name of ‘The Tabernacle.’ ‘The Tabernacle,’ or ‘The Feast of Tabernacles,’ as Ramsay of Ochtertyre calls it, was a company of friends and admirers of Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville.

The Easy Club, founded by Allan Ramsay the poet, consisted of twelve members, each of whom was required to assume the name of some Scottish poet. Ramsay took that of Gawin Douglas.

The Capillaire Club was ‘composed of all who were inclined to be witty and joyous.’

The Facer Club, which met in Lucky Wood’s tavern in the Canongate, was perhaps not of a high order. If a member did not drain his measure of liquor, he had to throw it at his own face.

The Griskin Club also met in the Canongate. Dr Carlyle and those who took part with him in the production of Home’s Douglas at the Canongate playhouse formed this club, and gave it its name from the pork griskins which was their favourite supper dish.

The Ruffian Club, ‘composed of men whose hearts were milder than their manners, and their principles more correct than their habits of life.’

The Wagering Club, instituted in 1775, still meets annually. An account of this club is given in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, vol. ii.

Others may be mentioned by name only: The Diversorium, The Haveral, The Whin Bush, The Skull, The Six Foot, The Assembly of Birds, The Card, The Borached, The Humdrum, The Apician, The Blast and Quaff, The Ocean, The Pipe, The Knights of the Cap and Feather, The Revolutionary, The Stoic, and The Club, referred to in Lockhart’s Life of Scott.

Of a later period than those mentioned above were The Gowks Club; The Right and Wrong, of which James Hogg gives a short account; and The Friday Club, instituted by Lord Cockburn, who also wrote an interesting history of it, recently printed by Mr H. A. Cockburn, in vol. iii. of The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club.

[143] The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by dining at Fortune’s Tavern.

[144] See [note], [p. 157].

[145] ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s Memorials of Old Edinburgh.

[146] Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).

[147] The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in The Abbot—it was the scene of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.

[148] The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any man he had ever seen.’

[149] Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth century.

[150] A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of styling elderly landladies by the term Lucky, said: ‘Why not?—Felix qui pot——’

[151] The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in the Canongate, appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant for July 1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon one of the leaders, with a whip:

‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers, will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other [alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your dutiful servant,

Hosea Eastgate.

‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’

[152] The pillar was restored to Edinburgh, and for some years stood within an enclosed recess on the north side of St Giles’. When Mr W. E. Gladstone rebuilt the Cross in 1885, a little to the south of its former site, between St Giles’ Church and the Police Office, the original pillar was replaced in its old position.

[153] Bishop Forbes inserts in his manuscript (which I possess) a panegyrical epitaph for Ned Burke, stating that he died in Edinburgh in November 1751. He also gives the following particulars from Burke’s conversation:

‘One of the soles of Ned’s shoes happening to come off, Ned cursed the day upon which he should be forced to go without shoes. The Prince, hearing him, called to him and said: “Ned, look at me”—when (said Ned) I saw him holding up one of his feet at me, where there was de’il a sole upon the shoe; and then I said: “Oh, my dear! I have nothing more to say. You have stopped my mouth indeed.”

‘When Ned was talking of seeing the Prince again, he spoke these words: “If the Prince do not come and see me soon, good faith I will go and see my daughter [Charles having taken the name of Betty Burke when in a female disguise], and crave her; for she has not yet paid her christening money, and as little has she paid the coat I ga’e her in her greatest need.”’

[154] ‘Upon the 26th of February [1617], the Cross of Edinburgh was taken down. The old long stone, about forty footes or thereby in length, was to be translated, by the devise of certain mariners in Leith, from the place where it had stood past the memory of man, to a place beneath in the High Street, without any harm to the stone; and the body of the old Cross was demolished, and another builded, whereupon the long stone or obelisk was erected and set up, on the 25th day of March.’—Calderwood’s Church History.

[155] See Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 436.

[156] Waverley Annotations, i. 435.

[157] What is said to be the original Blue Blanket is still preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland.

[158] Scots Magazine, June 1767.

[159] The skeleton of this singular being exists entire in the class-room of the professor of anatomy in the College.

[160] Notes to Waverley.

[161] Waverley Annotations, i. 70.

[162] The buildings in this alley are now demolished.

[163] He is said to have been a nobleman of considerable talent, and a great underhand supporter of the exiled family; see the Lockhart Papers. George Lockhart had married his daughter Euphemia, or Lady Effie, as she was commonly called. In the Edinburgh Annual Register there is preserved a letter from Lord Eglintoune to his son, replete with good sense as well as paternal affection.

[164] The earl was forty-nine and Miss Kennedy twenty.

[165] The anecdote which follows is chiefly taken from The Tell-tale, a rare collection, published in 1762.

[166] Notes by C. K. Sharpe in Stenhouse’s edition of the Scots Musical Museum, ii. 200.

[167] As a specimen of the complimentary intercourse of the poet with Lady Eglintoune, an anecdote is told of her having once sent him a basket of fine fruit; to which he returned this stanza:

‘Now, Priam’s son, ye may be mute,

For I can bauldly brag wi’ thee;

Thou to the fairest gave the fruit—

The fairest gave the fruit to me.’

The love of raillery has recorded that on this being communicated by Ramsay to his friend Eustace Budgell, the following comment was soon after received from the English wit:

‘As Juno fair, as Venus kind,

She may have been who gave the fruit;

But had she had Minerva’s mind,

She’d ne’er have given ’t to such a brute.’

[168] An old gentleman told our informant that he never saw so beautiful a figure in his life as Lady Eglintoune at a Hunters’ Ball in Holyrood House, dancing a minuet in a large hoop, and a suit of black velvet, trimmed with gold.

[169] Snuff-taking was prevalent among young women in our grandmothers’ time. Their flirts used to present them with pretty snuff-boxes. In one of the monthly numbers of the Scots Magazine for the year 1745 there is a satirical poem by a swain upon the practice of snuff-taking; to which a lady replies next month, defending the fashion as elegant and of some account in coquetry. Almost all the old ladies who survived the commencement of this century took snuff. Some kept it in pouches, and abandoned, for its sake, the wearing of white ruffles and handkerchiefs.

[170] A gown then required ten yards of stuff.

[171] This verse appears in a manuscript subsequent to 1760. The name, however, is Sleigh, not Lee. Mrs Mally Sleigh was married in 1725 to the Lord Lyon Brodie of Brodie. Allan Ramsay celebrates her.

[172] James Erskine on ascending the bench first took the title of Lord Tinwald, from his estate in Dumfriesshire. That of Lord Alva he assumed when he purchased the family estate of Alva, in Clackmannanshire, from his eldest brother, Sir Charles Erskine.

[173] The site of Mylne Square is now occupied by the block of buildings directly opposite the north front of the Tron Church.

[174] The first of this name was made ‘master-mason’ to the king in 1481, and the position descended in regular succession in the family till 1710, when they adopted the style of architect.

[175] Lady Glenorchy built a chapel, which was named after her, on the low ground to the south of the Calton Hill. The chapel was swept away, along with that of the fine Gothic building Trinity College Church, for the convenience of the North British Railway. The lady’s name is still preserved in Lady Glenorchy’s Established Church in Roxburgh Place and Lady Glenorchy’s United Free Church in Greenside.

[176] The Canongate seems to have been paved about the same time. In 1535 the king granted to the Abbot of Holyrood a duty of one penny upon every loaded cart, and a halfpenny upon every empty one, to repair and maintain the causeway.

[177] George Lockhart of Carnwath lived here in 1753. Afterwards he resided in Ross House, a suburban mansion, which afterwards was used as a lying-in hospital. The park connected with this house is now occupied by George Square. While in Mr Lockhart’s possession Ross House was the scene of many gay routs and balls.

The Lords Ross, the original proprietors of this mansion, died out in 1754. One of the last persons in Scotland supposed to be possessed by an evil spirit was a daughter of George, the second last lord. A correspondent says: ‘A person alive in 1824 told me that, when a child, he saw her clamber up to the top of an old-fashioned four-post bed like a cat. In her fits it was almost impossible to hold her. About the same time, a daughter of Lord Kinnaird was supposed to have the second-sight. One day, during divine worship in the High Church, she fainted away; on her recovery, she declared that when Lady Janet Dundas (a daughter of Lord Lauderdale) entered the pew with Miss Dundas, who was a beautiful young girl, she saw the latter as it were in a shroud gathered round her neck, and upon her head. Miss Dundas died a short time after.’

[178] Both facts from Moyses’s Memoirs.

[179] In the house to the north of this was a shop kept by an eccentric personage, who exhibited a sign bearing this singular inscription:

ORRA THINGS BOUGHT AND SOLD—

which signified that he dealt in odd articles, such as a single shoe-buckle, one of a pair of skates, a teapot wanting a lid, or perhaps, as often, a lid minus a teapot; in short, any unpaired article which was not to be got in the shops where only new things were sold, and which, nevertheless, was now and then as indispensably wanted by householders as anything else.

[180] The present article is almost wholly from original sources, a fact probably unknown to a contemporary novelist, who has made it the groundwork of a fiction without any acknowledgment. Some additional particulars may be found in Tales of the Century, by John Sobieski Stuart (Edinburgh, 1846). In the Spalding Miscellany, vol. iii., are several letters of Lord Grange, containing allusions to his wife; and a production of his, which has been printed under the title of Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice (Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1833), is worthy of perusal.

[181] Here and elsewhere a paper in Lord Grange’s own hand is quoted.

[182] ‘Then, and some time before and after, there was a stage-coach from hence to England.’ So says his lordship; implying that in 1751, when he was writing, there was no such public conveniency! It had been tried, and had failed.

[183] If we could believe Lord Lovat, however, he personally was innocent, and regretted he was innocent, of any association with the abduction of Lady Grange. ‘They said it was all my contrivance, and that it was my servants that took her away; but I defyed them then, as I do now, and do declare to you upon honour, that I do not know what has become of that woman, where she is or who takes care of her, but if I had contrived and assisted, and saved my Lord Grange from that devil, who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would not think shame of it before God or man.’—Letter of Lord Lovat’s quoted in Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale.

[184] About four gallons.

[185] Named after John Cant, a pious citizen of the sixteenth century, who, with his wife, Agnes Kerkettle, was a contributor to the foundation of the Convent of St Catherine of Siena on the south side of the Meadows. The district is now known as Sciennes—pronounced Sheens.

[186] Only fragments of the ancient buildings remain in Cant’s and Dickson’s Closes.

[187] At the head of the Old Bank Close, to the westward; burned down in 1771.

[188] Only a small portion of this building now remains.

[189] The Advocates’ Library.

[190] In the parish of Borthwick.

[191] This anecdote was related to me by the first Lord Wharncliffe, grandson’s grandson to Sir George, about 1828.

[192] Cromarty, at seventy, contrived to marry ‘a young and beautiful countess in her own right, a widow, wealthy, and in universal estimation. The following distich was composed on the occasion:

Thou sonsie auld carl, the world has not thy like,

For ladies fa’ in love with thee, though thou be ane auld tyke.’

C. K. Sharpe, Notes to Law’s Memorials, p. xlvii.

[193] This historic building was demolished many years ago. Its main front faced the Cowgate, and to the north and east were extensive gardens.

[194] In this house, too, Queen Mary was entertained at a banquet given by the citizens. ‘Upon the nynt day of Februar at evin the Queen’s grace come up in ane honourable manner fra the palice of Holyrudhouse to the Cardinal’s ludging in Blackfriars Wynd, ... and efter supper the honest young men in the town come with ane convoy to her,’ and escorted her back to Holyrood.—Diurnal of Occurrents.

Before the opening of the original High School in the grounds of the Blackfriars’ Monastery the pupils were temporarily accommodated in Beaton’s palace.

[195] The title ‘Ambassador Keith’ is usually applied to Sir Robert’s father, who, after several minor diplomatic appointments on the Continent, was the representative of Great Britain at the court of St Petersburg. An interesting sketch of him, under the title of ‘Felix,’ by Mrs Cockburn, is appended to the volume of that lady’s Letters, edited by Mr T. Craig Brown. Miss Keith, known to Edinburgh society as ‘Sister Anne,’ was Scott’s ‘Mrs Bethune Balliol’ of the Chronicles of the Canongate. This gentleman was absent from Edinburgh about twenty-two years, and returned at a time when it was supposed that manners were beginning to exhibit symptoms of great improvement. He, however, complained that they were degenerated. In his early time, he said, every Scottish gentleman of £300 a year travelled abroad when young, and brought home to the bosom of domestic life, and to the profession in which it might be his fate to engage, a vast fund of literary information, knowledge of the world, and genuine good manners, which dignified his character through life. But towards the year 1770 this practice had been entirely given up, and in consequence a sensible change was discoverable upon the face of good society. (See the Life of John Home, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq.).

[196] It is curious to observe how, in correspondence with the change in our manners and customs, one trade has become extinct, while another succeeded in its place. At the end of the sixteenth century the manufacture of offensive weapons predominated over all other trades in Edinburgh. We had then cutlers, whose essay-piece, on being admitted of the corporation, was ‘ane plain finished quhanzear’ or sword; gaird-makers, whose business consisted in fashioning sword-handles; Dalmascars, who gilded the said weapon; and belt-makers, who wrought the girdles that bound it to the wearer’s body. There were also dag-makers, who made hackbuts (short-guns) and dags (pistols). These various professions all became associated in the general one of armourers, or gunsmiths, when the wearing of weapons went into desuetude—there being then no further necessity for the expedition and expediency of the modern political economist’s boasted ‘division of labour.’ As the above arts gave way, those which tended to provide the comforts and luxuries of civilised life gradually arose. About 1586 we find the first notice of locksmiths in Edinburgh, and there was then only one of the trade, whose essay was simply ‘a kist lock.’ In 1609, however, as the security of property increased, the essay was ‘a kist lock and a hingand bois lock, with an double plate lock;’ and in 1644 ‘a key and sprent band’ were added to the essay. In 1682 ‘a cruik and cruik band’ were further added; and in 1728, for the safety of the lieges, the locksmith’s essay was appointed to be ‘a cruik and cruik band, a pass lock with a round filled bridge, not cut or broke in the backside, with nobs and jamb bound.’ In 1595 we find the first notice of shearsmiths. In 1609 a heckle-maker was admitted into the Corporation of Hammermen. In 1613 a tinkler makes his appearance; Thomas Duncan, the first tinkler, was then admitted. Pewterers are mentioned so far back as 1588. In 1647 we find the first knock-maker (clock-maker), but so limited was his business that he was also a locksmith. In 1664 the first white-iron man was admitted; also the first harness-maker, though lorimers had previously existed. Paul Martin, a distressed French Protestant, in 1691, was the first manufacturer of surgical instruments in Edinburgh. In 1720 we find the first pin-maker; in 1764, the first edge-tool maker and first fish-hook maker.

[197] The Highland appellative of Lord Lovat, expressing the son of Simon.

[198] Quarterly Review, vol. xiv. p. 326.

[199] First door up the stair at the head of the wynd, on the west side. The house was burnt down in 1824, but rebuilt in its former arrangement.

[200] [The window-tax was first imposed in 1695, and repealed in 1851.]

[201] An old domestic of her ladyship’s preserved one of her shoes as a relic for many years. The heel was three inches deep.

[202] [The view of the famous ‘Douglas Cause,’ affirmed in the House of Lords in 1771.]

[203] Mrs Grant of Laggan held another opinion of General Simon Fraser. A pleasing exterior covered a large share of the paternal character—‘No heart was ever harder, no hands more rapacious than his.’

[204] Myln’s Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld. Edinburgh, 1831.

[205] Originally the name was the ‘Wynd of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fields,’ as being the approach to the collegiate church so named which stood on the site of the University—the ‘Kirk o’ Field’ of the Darnley tragedy.

[206] Now Chambers Street.

[207] A small ‘bit’ of College Wynd, ending in a cul de sac, is all that remains of this once leading thoroughfare between the city and the ‘Oure Tounis Colledge.’

[208] When it became an unfashionable place of residence it was dubbed by the fops of the town ‘Cavalry Wynd.’ The northern end of Guthrie Street is the site of the old Horse Wynd.

[209] Macgill was King’s Advocate to James VI., and is said to have died of grief when his rival, Thomas Hamilton, was preferred for the presidentship.

[210] Most of the traditionary anecdotes in this article were communicated by Charles, eighth Earl of Haddington, through conversation with Sir Walter Scott, by whom they were directly imparted to the author.

[211] Near by is the Magdalen Chapel, a curious relic of the sixteenth century, belonging to the Corporation of Hammermen. It was erected immediately before the Reformation by a pious citizen, Michael Macquhan, and Jonet Rhynd, his widow, whose tomb is shown in the floor. The windows towards the south were anciently filled with stained glass; and there still remain some specimens of that kind of ornament, which, by some strange chance, had survived the Reformation. In a large department at the top of one window are the arms of Mary of Guise, who was queen-regent at the time the chapel was built. The arms of Macquhan and his wife are also to be seen. In the lower panes, which have been filled with small figures of saints, only one remains—a St Bartholomew—who, by a rare chance, has survived the general massacre. The whole is now very carefully preserved. When the distinguished Reformer, John Craig, returned to Scotland at the Reformation, after an absence of twenty-four years, he preached for some time in this chapel, in the Latin language, to a select congregation of the learned, being unable, by long disuse, to hold forth in his vernacular tongue. This divine subsequently was appointed a colleague to John Knox, and is distinguished in history for having refused to publish the banns between Queen Mary and Bothwell, and also for having written the National Covenant in 1589. Another circumstance in the history of this chapel is worthy of notice. The body of the Earl of Argyll, after his execution, June 30, 1685, was brought down and deposited in this place, to wait till it should be conveyed to the family burying-place at Kilmun.

[212] The amateurs who took the lead as choristers were Gilbert Innes, Esq. of Stow; Alexander Wight, Esq., advocate; Mr John Hutton, papermaker; Mr John Russel, W.S.; and Mr George Thomson. As an instrumentalist, we could boast of our countryman the Earl of Kelly, who also composed six overtures for an orchestra, one of which I heard played in the hall, himself leading the band.

[213] See a different account of this custom, [p. 147].

[214] [‘John M. Giornovicki, commonly known in Britain under the name of Jarnowick, was a native of Palermo. About 1770 he went to Paris, where he performed a concerto of his famous master Lolli, but did not succeed. He then played one of his own concertos, that in A major, and became quite the fashion. The style of Giornovicki was highly elegant and finished, his intonation perfect, and his taste pure. The late Domenico Dragonetti, one of the best judges in Europe, told me that Giornovicki was the most elegant and graceful violin-player he had ever heard before Paganini, but that he wanted power. He seems to have been a dissipated and passionate man; a good swordsman too, as was common in those days. One day, in a dispute, he struck the Chevalier St George, then one of the greatest violin-players and best swordsmen in Europe. St George said coolly: “I have too much regard for his musical talent to fight him.” A noble speech, showing St George in all respects the better man. Giornovicki died suddenly at St Petersburg in 1804.’—G. F. G.]

[215] G. T., it may now be explained, was George Thomson, the well-known and generally loved editor of the Melodies of Scotland. He might rather have described himself as Nonogenarius, for at his death, in 1851, he had reached the age of ninety-four, his violin, as he believed, having prolonged his life much beyond the usual term.

[216] The earl was the leader of the amateur orchestra of St Cecilia’s Hall, which included Lord Colville, Sir John Pringle, Mr Seton of Pitmedden, General Middleton, Lord Elcho, Sir Gilbert Elliot, Mrs Forbes of Newhall, and others of the aristocracy. General Middleton was credited with ‘singing a song with much humour,’ which he sometimes accompanied with a key and tongs. Sir Gilbert Elliot, who played the German flute, was the first to introduce that instrument to a Scottish audience. St Cecilia’s Hall has passed through many vicissitudes since then, and is now a bookbinder’s warehouse, but its fine ceiling and the orchestral balcony at the southern end are still preserved as memorials of its early days.

[217] About seventy paces to the east of the site of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, and exactly opposite to the opening of Roxburgh Place, was a projection in the wall, which has been long demolished and the wall altered. Close, however, to the west of the place, and near the ground, are some remains of an arch in the wall, which Malcolm Laing supposes to have been a gun-port connected with the projection at this spot. It certainly has no connection, as Arnot and (after him) Whitaker have supposed, with the story of Darnley’s murder. [This relic of the Flodden wall is now removed, but a portion of the wall itself still stands behind the houses at the north-east junction of Drummond Street and the Pleasance. Another portion was recently discovered at the east end of Lothian Street, between that street and the Royal Scottish Museum. Another part forms the north side of a cul de sac at Lindsay Place, and at the Vennel is the largest part of this old wall, with one of its few towers, forming the western boundary of the grounds of Heriot’s Hospital.]

[218] Hose in those days covered the whole of the lower part of the person.

[219] This indicates pretty nearly the site of the house of Bassendyne, the early printer. It must have been opposite, or nearly opposite, to the Fountain Well.

[220] Now removed and the site built over. There was also a Cunyie House in Candlemaker Row, which was used as the Mint during the regency of Mary of Guise.

[221] The Assembly Room, afterwards occupied by the Commercial Bank, was in Bell’s Wynd, to which place it was removed in 1756 from the older room in Assembly Close. A scallop-shell above the entrance to Bell’s Wynd long commemorated the site of the Clamshell Turnpike, the lodging of the Earl of Home, to which Queen Mary, accompanied by Darnley, retreated on their return from Dunbar in 1566, rather than enter Holyrood so soon after the murder of Rizzio.

[222] It must have been after Miss Nicky Murray’s day that an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, describing the unruliness of an assembly, writes: ‘I saw an English lady stand up at the head of a sett with a ticket No. 1 of that sett. By-and-bye my namesake, Miss Mary ——, came up, hauling after her a foolish-looking young man, who did as he was bid, and with all the ease in the world placed herself above the stranger, No. 1. The lady politely said there must be some mistake, for she had that place. “No,” said Miss Mary, “I can’t help your ticket, for I have the Lady Directress’s permission to lead down the sett!” The lady had spunk, and scolded, for which I liked her the better; only she dealt her sarcasms about Scotch politeness, Edinburgh manners, and so forth, rather too liberally and too loudly.’

[223] [The right of this house to be called ‘John Knox’s House’ has been strenuously disputed; several other houses in which Knox actually lived have been identified by Robert Miller, F.S.A. Scot., Lord Dean of Guild of Edinburgh, in John Knox and the Town Council of Edinburgh, with a Chapter on the so-called ‘John Knox’s House’ (1898). For the genuineness of the tradition, said not to be older than 1806, see Lord Guthrie’s John Knox and John Knox’s House (1898).]

[224] The following advertisement, inserted in the Edinburgh Courant of August 1, 1754, illustrates the above in a striking manner: ‘If any person has lost a LARGE SOW, let them call at the house of Robert Fiddes, gardener to Lord Minto, over against the Earl of Galloway’s, in the Horse Wynd, where, upon proving the property, paying expenses and damages done by the said sow, they may have the same restored.’

[225] Lord Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 190.

[226] ‘During this peaceable time [1668-1675], he [John, Earl of Tweeddale] built the park of Yester of stone and lime, near seven miles about, in seven years’ time, at the expense of 20,000 pound; bought a house in Edinburgh from Sir William Bruce for 1000 pound sterling, and ane other house within the same court, which, being rebuilt from the foundation, the price of it and reparations of both stood him 1000 sterling.’—Father Hay’s Genealogie of the Hayes of Tweeddale (Edinburgh, 1835), p. 32.

[227] The notes are thus described in the Hue and Cry: £1300 in twenty-pound notes of Sir W. Forbes and Company; £1000 in twenty-pound notes of the Leith Banking Company; £1400 in twenty, ten, and five pound notes of different banks; 240 guinea and 440 pound notes of different banks—in all, £4392.

[228] It was in this part of the High Street also that Robert Lekprevick, the Scottish printer, lived before he removed to St Andrews in 1571.

[229] ‘—— deliure a Jacques le tailleur deux chanteaux de damas gris broches dor pour faire vne robbe a vne poupine;’ also ‘trois quartz et demi de toille dargent et de soze blanche pour faire vne cotte et aultre chose a des poupines.’—Catalogues of the Jewels, Dresses, Furniture, &c. of Mary Queen of Scots, edited by Joseph Robertson. Edinburgh, 1863, p. 139.

[230] A skull represented as Buchanan’s has long been shown in the College of Edinburgh. It is extremely thin, and being long ago shown in company with that of a known idiot, which was, on the contrary, very thick, it seemed to form a commentary upon the popular expression which sets forth density of bone as an invariable accompaniment of paucity of brain. The author of a diatribe called Scotland Characterised, which was published in 1701, and may be found in the Harleian Miscellany, tells us that he had seen the skull in question, and that it bore ‘a very pretty distich upon it [the composition of Principal Adamson, who had caused the skull to be lifted]—the first line I have forgot, but the second was:

“Et decus es tumulo jam, Buchanane, tuo.”’

[231] [Dr David Hay Fleming has shown that the contemporary evidence is all in favour of the Covenant’s having been signed in the Greyfriars’ Church, and not in the churchyard; see a chapter by him in Mr Moir Bryce’s Old Greyfriars’ Church, Edinburgh (1912). And in the same book Mr Moir Bryce has proved that the small strip of ground long erroneously believed to be the Covenanters’ prison was not separated off till 1703-4, and that the Covenanters were interned on a much larger area to the east, now built over.]

[232] The Back Stairs, built on the site of St Giles’ Churchyard, gave direct communication between the Cowgate and Old Parliament Square. It was by this way that Robertson the smuggler escaped from the Tolbooth Church, where he and his accomplice Wilson had been taken, as was usual with condemned prisoners, the Sunday before their execution. It was Porteous’s behaviour at the execution of Wilson that led to the riot and his own death in the Grassmarket.

[233] The pistols belonged to Mr Cayley himself, having been borrowed a few days before by Mr Macfarlane.

[234] A little below the church.

[235] Subjoined is a list of persons of note who lived in the Canongate in the early days of the late Mr Chalmers Izett, whose memory extended back to 1769:

‘Two coaches went down the Canongate to Leith—one hour in going, and one hour in returning.’

[236] Removal.

[237] ‘At a former period, when the Canongate of Edinburgh was a more fashionable residence than at present, a lady of rank who lived in one of the closes, before going out to an evening-party, and at a time when hairdressers and peruke-makers were much in demand, requested a servant (newly come home) to tell Tam Tough the hairdresser to come to her immediately. The servant departed in quest of Puff, but had scarcely reached the street before she forgot the barber’s name. Meeting with a caddy, she asked him if he knew where the hairdresser lived. “Whatna hairdresser is ’t?” replied the caddy. “I ha’e forgot his name,” answered she. “What kind o’ name wus ’t?” responded Donald. “As near as I can mind,” said the girl, “it was a name that wad neither rug nor rive.” “The deil ’s in ’t,” answered Donald, “but that’s a tam’d tough name.” “Thank ye, Donald, that’s the man’s name I wanted—Tam Tough.”’—[From an Edinburgh Newspaper.]

[238] The inscription is now removed.

[239] With the exception of Lord Kames’s house, all the others referred to have been swept away by the North British Railway and the Corporation Gasworks, which at one time occupied the eastern side of the street.

[240] Although it was outside the wall, the city authorities claimed jurisdiction over the Canongate as far as St John’s Cross, notwithstanding that the Canongate was a separate burgh, which it continued to be till the middle of the nineteenth century. Proclamations were made at St John’s Cross as well as at the Mercat Cross in the High Street, and at it the Canongate burgh officials joined the city fathers when paying ceremonial visits to Holyrood.

[241] Strap in Roderick Random was supposed to represent one Hutchinson, a barber near Dunbar. The man encouraged the idea as much as possible. When Mr [Warren] Hastings (governor of India) and his wife visited Scotland, they sent for this man, and were so pleased with him that Mr Hastings afterwards sent him a couple of razors, mounted in gold, from London.

[242] For many years the Practising School for Teachers under the management of the Free Church of Scotland, now the Training College for Teachers under the Provincial Council of Education.

[243] The terraces have long since been deprived of their last semblance of the old gardens; but while recent excavations were being made for an extension of the educational buildings, the statue of the boy was discovered underground in the lowest terrace. The statue is preserved, and forms a connecting link between ‘My Lady Murray’s Yards’ and the ‘Yards’ of the modern school.

[244] On the north side of the High Street, opposite the Tron Church. The site is now covered by the opening of Cockburn Street.

[245] I was indebted to my friend Dr John Brown (Horæ Subsecivæ, p. 42) for drawing my attention to a quotation of Seneca by Beyerlinck (Magn. Theatr. Vit. Human., tom. vi. p. 60), involving this fine expression. Some one, however, has searched all over the writings of Seneca for it in vain.

[246] The close entering by the archway at the east end of the house, now called ‘Bakehouse Close,’ was formerly ‘Hammermen’s Close.’

[247] ‘The Speaking House’ is now recognised as a town mansion of the Huntly family. It is said to be associated with the first marquis, who killed the ‘Bonnie Earl of Moray’ at Donibristle, and died in 1636 at Dundee on his way north to Aberdeenshire. His son, the second marquis, who was beheaded in 1649, was residing in this house ten years prior to his execution, and in it his daughter Lady Ann was married to Lord Drummond, third Earl of Perth.

[248] Which he named Gosford, after the estate in East Lothian, which was acquired by Sir Archibald’s ancestor, a wealthy burgess in the reign of Queen Mary. The Viscounts Gosford take their title from the Irish estate.

[249] In his MS. Diaries in the Advocates’ Library.

[250] In an advertisement in a Jacobite newspaper, called The Thistle, which rose and sank in 1734, the house is advertised as having lately been occupied by the Duchesses of Gordon and Perth. [1868. It is in the course of being taken down to make way for a railway.]

[251] In 1864 this favourite Scottish pastime was resuscitated on Leith Links, and is now enjoyed with a relish as keen as ever.

[252] Archæologia Scotica, i.

[253] A newspaper, giving an account of Lord Palmerston’s visit to Edinburgh in 1865, mentions that his lordship, during his stay in the city, was made aware that an aged woman of the name of Peggie Forbes, who had been a servant with Dugald Stewart, well remembered his lordship when under the professor’s roof in early days. Interested in the circumstance, Lord Palmerston took occasion to pay her a visit at her dwelling, No. 1 Rankeillor Street, and expressed his pleasure at renewing the acquaintance of the old domestic. Dr John Brown had discovered the existence of this old association, and with it a box of tools which were the property of ‘young Maister Henry’ of those days. The sight of them called up within the breast of the Premier further associations of days long bygone.

[254] Robertson, in his Rural Recollections (Irvine, 1829), says: ‘The earliest evidence that I have met with of potatoes in Scotland is an old household book of the Eglintoune family in 1733, in which potatoes appear at different times as a dish at supper.’ They appear earlier than this—namely, in 1701—in the household book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, where the price per peck is intimated at 2s. 6d.—See Arnot’s History of Edinburgh, 4to, p. 201.

[255] A noted brewer, much given to preaching. Of him Claudero says:

‘Our souls with gospel he did cheer,

Our bodies, too, with ale and beer;

Gratis he gospel got and gave away;

For ale and beer he only made us pay.’

[256] This thriving parliamentary burgh originated in a cottage built, and long inhabited, by a retired seaman of Admiral Vernon’s squadron, who gave it this name in commemoration of the triumph which his commander there gained over the Spaniards in 1739. There must have been various houses at the spot in 1753, when we find one ‘George Hamilton, in Portobello,’ advertising in the Edinburgh Courant that he would give a reward of three pounds to any one who should discover the author of a scandalous report, which represented him as harbouring robbers in his house. The waste upon which Portobello is now partly founded was dreadfully infested at this time with robbers, and resorted to by smugglers; see Courant. [Portobello, while remaining one of the ‘Leith burghs’ for parliamentary purposes, was municipally incorporated with Edinburgh in 1896. Claudero’s ‘Frigate Whins’ are better known as the ‘Figgate Whins.’]

[257] Claudero could have little serious expectation that several of these predictions would come to pass before he had been forty years in his grave.

[258] A celebrated and much-esteemed fishing-rod maker, who afterwards flourished in the old wooden land at the head of Blackfriars Wynd. He survived to recent times, and was distinguished for his adherence to the cocked hat, wrist ruffles, and buckles of his youth. He was a short, neat man, very well bred, a great angler, intimate with the great, a Jacobite, and lived to near a century. He had fished in almost every trouting stream in the three kingdoms, and was seen skating on Lochend at the age of eighty-five.

[259] This seems to bear some reference to the seizure of young Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart at Lesmahagow in 1745.

[260] Introduction to Law’s Memorials, p. lxxx.

[261] See letters of Gay, Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, in Scott’s edition of Swift.

[262] In a letter from Gay to Swift, dated February 15, 1727-8, we find the subject illustrated as follows: ‘As to my favours from great men, I am in the same state you left me; but I am a great deal happier, as I have expectations. The Duchess of Queensberry has signalised her friendship to me upon this occasion [the bringing out of the Beggar’s Opera] in such a conspicuous manner, that I hope (for her sake) you will take care to put your fork to all its proper uses, and suffer nobody for the future to put their knives in their mouth.’

In the P.S. to a letter from Gay to Swift, dated Middleton Stoney, November 9, 1729, Gay says: ‘To the lady I live with I owe my life and fortune. Think of her with respect—value and esteem her as I do—and never more despise a fork with three prongs. I wish, too, you would not eat from the point of your knife. She has so much goodness, virtue, and generosity, that if you knew her, you would have a pleasure in obeying her as I do. She often wishes she had known you.’

[263] Record of that Society.

[264] The date over the exterior gateway of the Tailors’ Hall, towards the Cowgate, is 1644; but it is ascertained that the corporation had its hall at this place at an earlier period. An assembly of between two and three hundred clergymen was held here on Tuesday the 27th of February 1638 in order to consider the National Covenant, which was presented to the public next day in the Greyfriars Church. We are informed by the Earl of Rothes, in his Relations of the transactions of this period, in which he bore so distinguished a part, that some few objected to certain points in it; but being taken aside into the garden attached to this hall, and there lectured on the necessity of mutual concession for the sake of the general cause, they were soon brought to give their entire assent.

[265] The announcements of entertainments given at this fashionable place of amusement in the eighteenth century make amusing reading to-day. ‘February 17, 1743. We hear that on Monday 21st instant, at the Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate, at the desire of several ladies of distinction, will be performed a concert of vocal and instrumental music. After which will be given gratis Richard the Third, containing several historical passages. To which will be added gratis “The Mock Lawyer.” Tickets for the Concert (on which are [sic] printed a new device called Apology and Evasion) to be had at the Exchange and John’s Coffee-houses, and at Mr Este’s lodgings at Mr Monro’s, musician in the Cowgate, near Tailors’ Hall. As Mrs Este’s present condition will not admit a personal application, she hopes the ladies notwithstanding will grace her concert.’

[266] Among the audience on the first night of the performance of Douglas were the two daughters of John and Lady Susan Renton, one of whom, Eleanor, was the mother of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, to whom the author in his ‘Introductory Notice’ expresses his indebtedness for assistance on the first appearance of this work. And it was for attending one of the performances that the minister of Liberton Church brought himself under sentence of six weeks’ suspension by the Presbytery of Edinburgh—a sentence modified in consideration of his plea that though he attended the play, ‘he concealed himself as well as he could to avoid giving offence.’

[267] Maitland, in his History of Edinburgh, 1753, says that the encouragement given to the diversions at the house ‘is so very great, ’tis to be feared it will terminate in the destruction of the university. Such diversions,’ he adds, ‘are noways becoming a seat of the Muses.’

[268] The Theatre Royal in Shakespeare Square, where the General Post Office now stands.

[269] Letter of Captain Amory, MS.

[270] The north and south sides only of this square now remain. The west was removed to make a thoroughfare—Marshall Street, connecting Nicolson Square and Potterrow.

[271] The site was midway between Edinburgh and Leith, now represented by Shrub Place.

[272] Sir Walter’s brother Thomas was married to a sister of Mr M’Culloch.

[273] It was also along this road that the anxious citizens, watching on the Castle esplanade, saw the royalist cavalry retiring at full gallop from Coltbridge on the approach of Prince Charlie and his Highland army.

[274] In Mr Lockhart’s clever book, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, the murderer is called Gabriel. A work called Celebrated Trials (6 vols. 1825) gives an erroneous account of the murder, styling the murderer as the Rev. Thomas Hunter.

[275] See Domestic Annals of Scotland, i. 407.

Transcriber’s Note—the following changes have been made to this text:

Footnote 167: ancedote to anecdote—‘an anecdote is told’.

Page 238: encirling to encircling—‘encircling the head’.

Page 291: where to were—‘what were called the Back Stairs’.

Page 371: Newhailes to New Hailes—‘Dalrymple, Miss, Newhailes’.

Page 372: Fyfie to Fyvie—‘Fyvie, Lord’.

Hardcarse to Harcarse—‘Harcarse, Lord’.

Page 373: Jamieson to Jameson—‘Jameson, George’.

Page 374: Moyse's to Moyses's.

North Esk to Northesk.