Scott's public career in literature practically began with the new century. His new duties did not require a change of dwelling-place. Edinburgh continued to be his home, and the centre of his deepest personal interests. The defacement of the city was proceeding merrily, and we cannot doubt that Scott was one of the few who disapproved. An anonymous writer in the Scots Magazine for July 1800 refers to the neglect of the Chapel Royal at Holyrood and the destruction of the Nunnery at Sciennes, and protests against the demolition of the old building Wrytte's House, which had just been begun. It consisted of a keep presiding over a group of inferior buildings, most of it as old as the middle of the fourteenth century, and all delightfully picturesque. The writer gives some details which are worth quoting: 'This magnificent building is adorned with a profusion of sculptured figures, especially above the windows. Above the main door, in beautiful workmanship, are blazoned the arms of Great Britain, with the inscription, J. 6. M. B. F. E. H. R. etc., ... there is a rough but curious piece of sculpture, reminding Nobility of her origin;—Adam digging the ground and Eve twirling the distaff, with the old rhyme beneath:
When Adam delv'd and Eva span,
Quhar war a' the gentiles than?'
Other figures represented the Virtues and the Five Senses. There was a head in bas relief of Julius Cæsar. This, says the writer, is going to be preserved because it has been thought to bear some resemblance to the visage of the celebrated tobacconist whose pious bequest has eventually produced so woful a revolution!
The execrable Vandals who did it were the Trustees of Gillespie's Hospital.
'Duke Luke did this:
God's ban be his!'
But lest we should be tempted to imprecate upon these long-departed Dogberries the curses thundered by Dr. Slop upon the head of poor Obadiah, listen now to Lord Cockburn: 'If I recollect right, this was the first of the public charities of this century by which Edinburgh has been blessed, or cursed. The founder was a snuff-seller, who brought up an excellent young man as his heir, and then left death to disclose that, for the vanity of being remembered by a thing called after himself, he had all the while had a deed executed by which this, his nearest, relation was disinherited.'
One of Henry Erskine's jokes was at the expense of this double-minded old snuff-seller. He suggested for Gillespie's carriage panels the motto, 'Quid rides,' and beneath it:
'Wha wad hae thocht it,
That noses wad hae bocht it?'
After briefly describing the old castle, Cockburn goes on: 'Nothing could be more striking when seen against the evening sky. Many a feudal gathering did that tower see on the Borough Moor; and many a time did the inventor of logarithms, whose castle of Merchiston was near, enter it. Yet it was brutishly obliterated, without one public murmur.... The idiot public looked on in silence. How severely has Edinburgh suffered by similar proceedings, adventured upon by barbarians, knowing the apathetic nature, in these matters, of the people they have had to deal with. All our beauty might have been preserved, without the extinction of innumerable antiquities, conferring interest and dignity. But reverence for mere antiquity, and even for modern beauty on their own account, is scarcely a Scotch passion.'
Another case. In the Scots Magazine for May appeared, among the odd scraps of news, this paragraph—'The elegant villa of Bellevue, the property of the late Mrs. General Scott, in the neighbourhood of this city, has been purchased by the Town Council; the terms, we understand, are a feu-duty of £1050 per annum, with the privilege of buying it up, within seven years, for £20,200. The pleasure ground is to be laid out for building conformable to a plan.'