[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.