It may add to the curiosity of the whole affair, that when the Assembly was reconstituted in February 1746, after several years of cessation, the first of a set of regulations hung up in the hall[33] was: ‘No lady to be admitted in a night-gown, and no gentleman in boots.’ The eighth rule was: ‘No misses in skirts and jackets, robe-coats, nor stay-bodied gowns, to be allowed to dance in country-dances, but in a sett by themselves.’
In all probability it was in this very dingy house that Goldsmith beheld the scene he has so well described. At least it appears that the improved Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd (which has latterly served as a part of the accommodations of the Commercial Bank) was not built till 1766.[34] Arnot, in his History of Edinburgh, describes the Assembly Room in Bell’s Wynd as very inconvenient, which was the occasion of the present one being built in George Street in 1784.
PAUL ROMIEU.
At this angle of the Bow the original city-wall crossed the line of the street, and there was, accordingly, a gate at this spot,[35] of which the only existing memorial is one of the hooks for the suspension of the hinges, fixed in the front wall of a house, at the height of about five feet from the ground. It is from the arch forming this gateway that the street takes its name, bow being an old word for an arch. The house immediately without this ancient port, on the east side of the street, was occupied, about the beginning of the last century, and perhaps at an earlier period, by Paul Romieu, an eminent watchmaker, supposed to have been one of the French refugees driven over to this country in consequence of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This is the more likely, as he seems, from the workmanship of his watches, to have been a contemporary of Tompion, the famous London horologist of the reign of Charles II. In the front of the house, upon the third story, there is still to be seen the remains of a curious piece of mechanism—namely, a gilt ball representing the moon, which was made to revolve by means of a clock.[36]
‘HE THAT THOLES OVERCOMES.’
Pursuing our way down the steep and devious street, we pass an antique wooden-faced house, bearing the odd name of the Mahogany Land, and just before turning the second corner, pause before a stone one of equally antiquated structure,[37] having a wooden-screened outer stair. Over the door at the head of this stair is a legend in very old lettering—certainly not later than 1530—and hardly to be deciphered. With difficulty we make it out to be:
HE YT THOLIS OVERCVMMIS.
He that tholes (that is, bears) overcomes; equivalent to what Virgil says:
‘Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.’
Æneid, v.