Romantic Edinburgh

j: I I f-1

/.-. ,f' A

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Class

ROMANTIC EDINBURGH

THE CASTLE FROM THE GRASSMARKET,

From a water-colour after W. L. Leitch.

ROMANTIC

EDINBURGH

BY

JOHN GEDDIE

WITH BIGHT COLOURED AND FORTY-ONE BLACK-AND-WHITE
ILLUSTRATIONS

SECOND EDITION, REVISED

LONDON: SANDS £ CO.

NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

1911

" Mine own Romantic Town

INTRODUCTORY

IN bringing out, for the Coronation Year of George
V., a new and revised edition of this book, acknow-
ledgment has to be made to Bailie Macfarlane,
Convener of the Museum Committee of the Town
Council, for permission to reproduce, in colour or in
black-and-white, a selection of the views of Old
Edinburgh, in which the Municipal Museum is so rich.
Thanks have also to be given to Mr T. L. Usher, of the
Park Brewery, for leave to reproduce the water-colour
drawing of Edinburgh, in the opening year of the reign
of Queen Victoria, that is to be found at page 212.
The growth of the City and the removal of ancient
landmarks in the interval since the first edition appeared,
have rendered necessary many additions and alterations.
Doubtless there are errors that remain uncorrected. It
is hoped, however, that the volume provides — brought
up to date — " a Vade Mecum which the explorer of
Edinburgh can take with him on his walks, or profitably
peruse at the fireside."

The author has to thank his friend, Mr Bruce J.
Home, for his kindness in reading the proofs, and for
many valuable suggestions.

228525

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAG»

I. THE OLD AND THE NEW . . i

II. NOR' LOCH AND NORTH BRIDGE . n

III. THE HIGH STREET AND ST GILES . . 24

IV. OLD HIE-GAIT LIFE . . . .43
V. FROM THE TRON TO THE CASTLE HILL . . 45

VI. THE LAWNMARKET AND THE CASTLE HILL . 60
VII. THE CASTLE ...... 71

VIII. THE NETHERBOW PRECINCTS . . .85

IX. THE CANONGATE ..... 96
X. HOLYROOD . . . . . .112

XI. THE KING'S PARK . . . . .124
XII. ROUND THE FLODDEN WALL—THE COWGATE . 130

XIII. ROUND THE FLODDEN WALL— THE UNIVERSITY 142

XIV. ROUND THE FLODDEN WALL— THE GREYFRIARS

AND GRASSMARKET . . . .156

XV. NEWINGTON AND GRANGE . . . .172

XVI. FROM MORNINGSIDE TO THE WEST KlRK . 189

XVII. THE NEW TOWN— PRINCES STREET . . 204

vii

Contents

CHAP.

XVIII. THE CALTON . ... .220

XIX. GEORGE STREET AND ITS ENVIRONS . . 229

XX. THE WEST END . ... 244

XXI. THE WATER OF LEITH .... 254

XXII. LEITH, PORT AND BURGH . . . .268

XXIII. PORTOBELLO . . 279

INDEX. .... .283

Vlll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

IN COLOUR

The Castle from the Grassmarket (from a water-colour after

W. L. Leitch) ..... Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Advocate's Close (from a water-colour by James Heron) . 56
Allan Ramsay's Shop, opposite Niddry's Wynd (from a

water-colour by M. P. Taylor) .... 90
Trinity College Church before 1848 (from a Lithograph) . 130
The Old Mint (from a water-colour by D. Ritchie) . -135

Crombie's Land, Wester Portsburgh (from a water-colour

by James Drummond) . . . . .166

Plainstanes Close, Grassmarket (from a water-colour by

R. Noble) 169

Princes Street in 1837 (from a water-colour by J. D.

Swarbreck) . . . . . .212

IN BLACK-AND-WHITE

The Castle from East Princes Street Gardens . . 14

St Giles Church from the East . . . .28

The " Heart of Midlothian " 28

The"MercatCroce" 36

St Giles Church, Interior ..... 36

Lower High Street and Tron Kirk . . . 44

ix

List of Illustrations

FACING PAGE

Parliament Square ...... 48

The Royal Exchange ...... 54

The Mound from Princes Street Gardens . . .58

The Bow-head and Lawnmarket (from a water-colour after

W. L. Leitch) 60

Somerville's Land, Lawnmarket (from a drawing by B. J.

Home) ....... 64

View from the Castle, towards Calton (from a sketch made

in 1848) . . .... 70

St Margaret's Chapel ...... 72

The Netherbow (from an engraving in the Scots Magazine,

1764) • .84

John Knox's House . ... 94

White Horse Close ...... 94

Canongate Tolbooth ...... 96

Moray House (from a water-colour after J. Nash) . . 100

Bakehouse Close ...... 102

The Chapel Royal, Holyrood Abbey . . . 112

Arthur Seat from St Leonard's . . . .112

Holyrood and Arthur Seat . . . . .114

James V.'s Tower, Holyrood Palace . . . .116

Holyrood Palace, showing "The Regent Murray's Lodging"

(after a drawing by E. Blore) . . . .118

Holyrood Palace, Principal Doorway . . . .120

Queen Mary's Bedroom . . . . .122

Charles I.'s Bed . . . . . .122

The University ....... 142

Gosford's Close, on site of George IV. Bridge (from a water-
colour by W. Geikie) ..... 148

Old Grey friars . . . . . . .156

Heriot's Hospital . . . . . .156

List of Illustrations

FACING PAGE

Swanston ....... 190

Roslin Chapel ....... 190

Craigmillar Castle ...... 192

Merchiston Castle . . . . . .192

Princes Street, looking Westward .... 204

The Scott Monument . . . . . . .218

The Calton Hill from the South-west .... 224

Mons Meg ....... 230

George Street, looking East ..... 230

The Water of Leith Valley, from the Dean Bridge . . 260

ROMANTIC EDINBURGH

CHAPTER I

THE OLD AND THE NEW

ON a plan of Edinburgh of the year 1765 there is traced,
at the bottom of that Hollow of the Winds which divided
what is now known as the New Town from the Old, the
solitary pier of a bridge. It is the footprint of Old
Edinburgh setting out for fresh woods and pastures new.
The first step is half the journey. This one had been
meditated for a century, and it was taken at last timidly
and tentatively. The ground below was marshy and
unstable ; not long had it been reclaimed from the waters
of the Nor' Loch. The fields beyond were bare and
wind-swept. Like David Hume, the good town was
loth to begin its flitting — to come down from its high
chambers which, if they were confined and hard of access,
looked abroad over wide prospects of land and sea — and
go forth from the narrow closes, clarty but cosy, to pitch
its tent on those cold slopes fronting the north. For a
couple of years after it had laid down, with all due pomp
and ceremony, the stepping-stone in the valley, it rested
there, balancing and hesitating. Not until 1772 was the
work complete, and the way open and passable " between
the High Street and the fields to the north."

..;',: .:/:;:;.Tlie Old and the New

As yet the New Town was not. Plans had been
drawn, and a few sanguine and adventurous spirits had
begun to build But the population north of the Rubicon
consisted chiefly of the dwellers in the " Beggars' Row "
of St Ninian's and the Calton — folk at odds with fortune,
whose more reputable employments were smuggling,
and poaching on the privileges of the Incorporated
Crafts within the city bounds ; and the villagers of
Moultrie Hill and Broughton. The Nor' Loch still
slumbered under the shadow of the Castle Rock,
although it had much shrunk from its former proportions
and become a swamp, offensive to the nostrils of a more
fastidious generation. Until the gap was formed for
the North Bridge, through the line of the old Cap-and-
Feather and Hart's Closes and the Green Market, the
great wall of lofty houses that, on the left hand and on
the right, hemmed in High Street and the Canongate
remained almost intact. From the Castle Hill to the
Netherbow, and from the Netherbow to Holyrood,
stretched this noble thoroughfare — the wonder and
admiration of all comers — pierced only by innumerable
closes, and by a few narrow wynds. The close and
unbroken ranks of those tall old tenements must have
deepened exceedingly the impression they gave of
height and strength and stateliness. The visitor might
well fancy that he had wandered within the walls of
some huge fortification — some rock-cut Eastern city,
from which egress was possible only to those who held
the clue to its labyrinth of straitened passages.

Fortified and defended the Old Town was on all
hands against access and influences from without.
Towards the sun, it is true, it had spread a little beyond
its walls and ports in a maze of squalid and straggling

" Hampered in a Honeycaim "

streets ; although in this direction also it was hemmed
in by the Burgh Loch and the Burgh Muir, and the
roads leading south and west were ill-made and unsafe.
On the north side no egress could be found for wheeled
carriages until the low latitudes of Leith Wynd were
reached, and only in favourable weather could the
sedan chair make the parlous descent into the valley by
the short cut of the steep and malodorous Halkerston's
Wynd. For the traveller London-wards the nearest
route lay through the adjoining burgh of Canongate,
and forth into the outer world by the Water Gate, Abbey
Hill, and Restalrig, .beyond which he must 'brave the
terrors of highwaymen and footpads in passing through
the Figgate Whins, on the site now occupied by Edin-
burgh's sea-bathing suburb of Portobello. Returning,
he must pass barrier after barrier, ending with the
Netherbow, where, as at other ports and exits of the
city, stood on guard the toll-keeper and the town watch.
Under these conditions grew up the strangely
marked features of the social life and customs, as well
as of the architecture, of the Edinburgh of last century.
But, by the time when George the Third became King
and the Jacobite risings were beginning to fade into a
tradition, the old capital was already irking itself of
being so isolated and self-contained. It was tired of
being chained, like Prometheus, to its rock. Down to
the days of the early Jameses, its houses are believed to
have been straw-thatched and comparatively low. The
nature of the site and the exigencies of defence required
that it should build ever higher and closer on its confined
and narrow space. Like the structure of some coral reef,
the high "lands" rose, storey after storey, till they
overtopped the pinnacles of St Giles. The citizens, in

3

The Old and the New

Dunbar's phrase, were " hampered in a honeycaim " of
their own making. To the needs and conditions that
had reared the grey old city on the ridge succeeded the
problems of modern life. Sanitation, or as it was
concretely called in those days, "the disposal of the
town's fulzie," grew a crying question. The craving for
more air and light and space became irresistible. It
manifested itself in the decade before the founding of
the North Bridge, and during the years when that
structure was in progress, in a somewhat indiscriminate
removal of ancient landmarks which were felt to be
obstructive. " Claudero " raised his voice in vain in
raucous denunciation of the destroyers of the Gothic
porch to the courtyard of Holyrood, and of those who
had laid impious hands on the Mercat Cross and the
Netherbow.

When at length the pent-up forces became too
strong for the retaining walls, it was through the North
Bridge that the breach was made. The upper strata of
Old Edinburgh society, the store of wealth and of new
ideas which had been gathering since the Union, began
to flow chiefly by this channel towards1 the north. Lords
of Session and city merchants, philosophers and divines,
not to speak of the commoner clay, were by and by
emptied forth into the New Town. David Hume, the
representative of the new era of free thought, was
himself, as we have seen, caught in the current and
stranded on the bank opposite. Champions of the
older philosophy and theology stood for a time on the old
ground and in the old ways ; fashion lingered long in
the Edinburgh closes. But the fiat for change had gone
forth, and the opening of the North Bridge was the final
signal.

4

Changed Times, Changed Manners

Contemporaries of that event were vaguely aware of
its far-reaching and many-sided significance ; although,
at the time, it was spoken of as merely the forming of a
new and shorter road of access to the port of Leith. The
more orthodox and conservative shook their heads over
the symptoms of growing laxity in morals and manners
that immediately became visible in their eyes.
" Theophrastus," in an appendix to Hugo Arnot's
" History," laments the declension in the once strict and
exemplary religious habits of the people, apparent to
anyone who compared the Edinburgh of 1763 with that
of 1783. In the former year — that in which the North
Bridge centre pier was laid — " it was fashionable to go
to church, and people were interested in religion.
Sunday was observed strictly by all ranks as a day of
devotion ; it was disgraceful to be seen on the streets
during the time of public worship." Twenty years
later, " attendance in church is much neglected ; Sunday
is made a day of relaxation ; families think it ungenteel
to take their domestics to church with them ; the streets
are often crowded in the time of worship ; and, in the
evenings, they are often loose and riotous. Family
worship is almost totally disused; and it is even wearing
out among the clergy." Old things were being swept
away with what seemed, even to the unhistorical eye,
ruthless and unthrifty haste. Revolutionary ideas
poured in through the gap of the North Bridge. Not
with impunity did Edinburgh " come out of its shell " —
break from its grey chrysalis on the hill, and flutter out
into the open. *

Most portentous of the signs of the times was that
modification of the habits and the point of view of the
Scottish clergy concerning which " Theophrastus " raises

5

The Old and the New

his note of alarm. A minister of the Church — John
Home of Athelstaneford — had written a tragedy, which
had been acted on the stage of the Old Playhouse in
the Canongate ; and other clergymen of the Establish-
ment had witnessed and applauded the performance.
He had been chased from his kirk by the zealots while
the North Bridge was being founded. But scarcely had
the arches spanned the valley when the Spirit of Evil,
whom the " unco guid " of the time believed they saw
embodied in the theatre, took up new and bolder
ground, on the further side of the valley. Beside the
north-eastern abutment of the Bridge, on the spot now
occupied by the General Post Office, rose the first
regularly licensed theatre in the Scottish capital. This
ground, on the green slope of Moultrie Hill overlooking
the Physic Gardens, and facing the range of the Old
Town dwellings, had been the site of the house of the
Provost of Trinity College Church, and had afterwards
been part of the " green " of the Orphan Hospital where
the open-air preachings were held, and to which
thousands had trooped across the valley to listen to the
eloquence of Whitefield. Great, it seems, was the
wrath and despair of that evangelist when, returning to
the scene of his labours, he found the place " appropri-
ated to the service of Satan," and the preaching green in
the course of being transformed into " Shakespeare
Square." The rise of the playhouse walls where the
Gospel tent had been pitched, he called the " plucking
up of God's standard, and the planting of the Devil's
instead." Whitefield himself had been banned and
excluded from the pulpits of the Secession Presbytery
for lax and unsound doctrine. We can imagine the
feelings with which these excellent but narrow-minded

6

From Preaching- Green to Theatre

men watched from the battlements opposite the rise of
this fortress of the enemy.

And yet the Old Theatre Royal, afterwards to be so
closely associated with the genius and triumphs of the
Siddonses and Kembles, with the Hurrays and Sir Walter
Scott, and with the other names and events that shed
lustre on the Edinburgh stage of the end of last and the
early part of the present century, did not ill fulfil the
aspiration of its first manager and proprietor, David
Ross, that it might be the means of promoting " every
moral and every virtuous principle." Long before the
Bridge was complete, the cream of Edinburgh society,
grave and learned divines among the rest, had begun to
acquire the habit of resorting to the shrine of the
mimic muses across the valley ; and Bozzy's lines, recited
at the opening of the Theatre on pth December 1767,
grew of less and less application to the attitude of the
Scottish mind towards the stage —

Mistaken zeal, in times of darkness bred,
O'er the best minds its gloomy vapours spread ;
Taste and religion were opposed in strife,
And 'twas a sin to view this glass of life.

Not without some peril and adventure would the
passage be made after dark, even when the North Bridge
had stretched its helpful arm across the gap, in those
days of linkboys, and sturdy beggars, and unpaved and
unlighted streets. The hollow between the Old and
New Towns has always been a very Cave of the Winds.
It is the chief channel by which the East Wind —
Edinburgh's great enemy, since her English invaders
come no longer to burn and raid, but as pilgrims of the
beautiful — breaks in upon her streets and squares. By

7

The Old and the New

this way steals in the main body of the fogs and " haars "
out of the North Sea, that choke the valley, blot out
of sight the towering houses of the Old Town, or spread
a grey veil through which their outlines loom vague and
gigantic like a city of cloudland. Past the piers and
parapets of the North Bridge the gales of the west rush
with redoubled fury, bearing wild flurries of snow
brought down from the Highland hills, or onsets of rain
that have crossed the whole breadth of the country from
the Atlantic, to spend their force on what the author of
" Picturesque Notes " calls " the high altar of the northern
temple of the winds." The sweep of the blast must
have been yet stronger before the Earthen Mound —
Edinburgh's next great means of exodus to its northern
fields — had risen high enough to break the force of the
breezes from the west. The Bridge, in its early years,
had open balustrades, and we read of public complaints
that " passengers continue to be blown from the pave-
ment into the mud " in the middle of the roadway.
Those openings also afforded unpleasing glimpses of the
"blood and slaughter" in the Fleshmarket below.
Plainly, it was high time they were closed.

Then, as now, the passengers by the Bridge had
sights worth seeing. We can easily imagine the delight
with which the citizens of the years before the outbreak
of the American War gazed upon the wonderful
spectacle, then possessing all the charm of novelty,
afforded from this high vantage-ground. The near
surroundings and accessories are strangely altered, but
the framework and the main features of the scene
remain. The Castle Rock — which Robert Louis
Stevenson has called "the most satisfactory crag in
nature ; a Bass Rock upon dry land " — blocks out a

8

North Bridge Prospects

great part of the south-western horizon, and casts its
" warlike shadow " over the ground which it has
dominated throughout the recorded history of the city.
The solid mass of the Old Town buildings — " Auld
Reekie " itself, ragged with spires and chimney-tops on
its skyline ; the smoky grey of its ground colour
strangely scored and chased by the darker shadings of
its closes, and the high relief of its many-storeyed gables
— continues the line of the Castle battlements down the
long slope towards Holyrood. Rising in a sheer cliff
above the roofs of the Canongate, the Salisbury Crags
shine ruddily in the sunlight, or hang black and
threatening in foul weather, like the crest of a tidal wave
about to break and engulf the town below. Behind is
the couchant lion of Arthur Seat ; and looking east-
ward past its sides one can descry, from the parapet of
the Bridge, the pyramid of the North Berwick Law, the
uplifted edge of the Bass, the links and sandhills of
Gullane, the woods of Gosford, and the waters of the
Firth, across which flashes after nightfall the winking eye
of the May.

The " Craig-end of Calton," on the other side of the
valley, did not bear in those days its sheaf of prison
towers ; nor had monuments begun to rear themselves
on the Hill behind. The green slopes and precipices,
still carrying a fragment of the chapel of St Ninian and
the stones of the old Calton burying-ground, may,
however, have looked none the less picturesque on that
account. The prospect from the North Bridge a
hundred and forty years ago was, in many respects, even
more spacious and unobstructed than it is to-day.
Princes Street had been planned on the line of the old
Lang Gait, but the first house only began to rise in

9

The Old and the New

1769; the stately front of that magnificent thoroughfare
did not shut out the glimpses of Fife. The buildings on
the west side of the Bridge, at the northern end, did
not come into existence till half a century later, and their
erection raised a strong protest from Lord Cockburn,
from " The Man of Feeling," and from other citizens of
taste of the day, who complained that the block closed
out the much-admired view of the Castle and the valley
from Shakespeare Square and Waterloo Place. On
their site a great railway hotel has now climbed the
skies from the level of the hollow below, and this
structure, too, has encountered aesthetic objection on
the ground that it dwarfs by its bulk and height the
surrounding buildings, and hampers the free look-out
from the North Bridge.

Westward along the hollow, although the Mound
and its classic fagades break the middle distance, one
can see out and away beyond the city spires and the city
smoke. If the sea bounds the view to the east, the
woods clothing the sides of Corstorphine Hill close the
prospect in the other direction. Surely in no spot
within the limits of a busy hive of population, or nowhere
else except in Edinburgh, can one view so wonderful a
mingling of the beauties of nature and of art, of the old
and the new, of precipices of the living rock rising out of
gardens, and glimpses of green country and wave-beaten
islands caught between the white and pillared fronts of
Grecian temples and masses of high-piled masonry
black with age and reek.

10

CHAPTER II

NOR' LOCH AND NORTH BRIDGE

HITHERTO we have only looked abroad from the
Bridge on the level of the eye or above it. But there
is a world below that has seen great changes since the
arches first bestrode the valley. That the changes have
been wholly improvement would be a bold thing to say.
But they seize one with a keen sense of the contrast of
the present with the past.

In the depths of the hollow to the eastward many
smoky industries have pitched their camp. Foundries
and breweries now occupy the site of the gardens and
pleasances of the burghers of the Canongate and the
lower High Street, whose close-ends used to be " steikit "
with stone and lime when the town hermetically sealed
itself in time of war. The space once occupied by the
ancient Trinity College Church with its adjoining
Hospital and College, the princely foundation of the
Queen of James II. of Scots, is covered by signal-boxes
and platforms and a spider's web of railway lines.

Long ago, too, the tentacles of the Waverley Station
seized and swallowed the ground on which, at the
making of the North Bridge, stood the first Orphan
Hospital, the original Lady Glenorchy's Chapel, and the
Old Physic Gardens, among the earliest of the many

ii

Nor' Loch and North Bridge

venerable institutions which have been ejected or
destroyed by the tide of change that has swept through
the valley. The Gardens, the first planted in Scotland
for the promotion of the study of botany, hardly waited
to fall under the shadow of the Bridge. The erudite Sir
Robert Sibbald and Sir Andrew Balfour, the eminent
physician and naturalist, the original projector of the
Royal College of Surgeons and of the Royal Infirmary,
had been at the founding of the Gardens a hundred
years before, when the ground had been in part
recovered from the Nor' Loch, which, once on a time,
stretched almost to the Craigs of Calton. But the
Loch strangely revenged itself in the troubles of the
Revolution. The besiegers of the Castle bethought
them to drain it as a means of approaching the
defences of the citadel, and the escaped flood over-
flowed the Gardens, and covered the beds of costly
exotic plants with the refuse of the town drains.
Botany had ultimately to flit and seek other " lown "
quarters for its herbs and flowers under the lee of
Holyrood, by Leith Walk, and finally in Inverleith
Park.

This same Nor' Loch, the dwindling residue of
which was still visible to the earlier passengers over
the Bridge, had curious vicissitudes as a feature of
Edinburgh landscape, and played an ambiguous part
in the city's history. According to most authorities,
the whole period of its stay in the valley was not much
more than three centuries. Geologists, on the other
hand, have held, from the configuration and character
of its bed, that there must always have been a lake,
or at least a marsh, in this spot. Certain it is that the
Loch existed before 1450, the date that has been

12

A Moat of Defence

assigned for its formation as part of the defences of
the town against " skaith " from the " auld enemies "
across the Border.

The north side of Edinburgh in those remote days
probably presented a precipitous front, a continuation
of the Castle cliffs, descending into a wilderness of
swamp and brake, in the snuggest corner of which,
near St Margaret's spring and the Wellhouse Tower,
King David of pious memory is supposed to have
laid out a modest garden of trees and herbs. This
craggy face has been gradually smoothed over with
a mass of "travelled earth," which has been found
covering the lower part of the slope to a depth of
thirty feet and more. It is the accumulated rubbish
of old Edinburgh, a " kitchen-midden," in which have
been picked up coins and fragments of armour and
other relics of the life of a fighting past, when the
" back lands " and narrow slips of pleasure ground of
the Auld Reekie closes descended to the very edge of
the Loch, whereon the well-to-do citizen might keep
a " boat o' his ain " for paddling out on a fine evening
among the swans and smaller water-fowl, and, belike,
after nightfall, quietly smuggle over "an anker of
Hollands " from a friend in Leith.

Thus, while defence was its main purpose — down
to the '15, when the magistrates gave orders to the
sluice-keepers at the foot of Halkerston's Wynd to
raise its level in order to keep Borlum and his
Highlanders at a distance — the Loch was made to
serve for the sport and recreation of the townsfolk.
Bonspiels were played on its frozen surface in hard
winters, and the town drew a small revenue from the
"eel-arks" of the Loch. Among its pastimes must

13

Nor' Loch and North Bridge

be reckoned, we fear, the torture and judicial murder
of many a poor wretch who had fallen under the
ban of the savage laws of the time. Heretics and
suspected witches have been drowned in the Nor'
Loch, as a thrifty substitute for, or test preliminary
to, the major penalty of burning at the stake. There
is record of a band of eleven gipsies, men and women,
being thus disposed of, in the days when to belong to
the wandering race was proof conclusive of capital
crimes. For the punishment of the incontinent a
special pool was reserved. This fateful water and its
margins have been the scene also of private tragedy
and of public riot. The " image of Saint Geille," long
the palladium of the city, and carried in procession
at its high festivals, was dragged hither ignominiously
by the zealots of the Reformation, and "droonit"
before being given to the flames. There were more
reasons than one why the Nor' Loch should have
taken an ill savour.

Still, standing on the North Bridge of to-day, one
cannot help regretting that Edinburgh should have
served its old moat of defence so ungratefully as to
turn it first into a receptacle for its cast-out dross and
garbage, and then to drain off what was left of it in
order that a passage might be made for its railway
traffic. What an opportunity was lost with the falling
through of the favourite scheme of the Earl of Mar-
Mar of the Rebellion — by which a pure stream would
have been diverted into the hollow, and a stagnant and
evil-smelling pond would have been transformed into
a cleanly and ornamental piece of water, stretching
from the West Church to beyond the arches of the
North Bridge ! Of that project, once hopeful and

14

[To face page 14.

•e«

"What might have been"

feasible, all that remains — if it does remain — is the
name of " Canal Street " clinging to one of the accesses
to the Waverley Station.

One's fancy dwells lingeringly and wonderingly
on the vision of "what might have been" — on the
Castle Rock rearing itself out of deep water and, in
place of a trail of engine smoke, a placid lake, reflecting
the garden and palaces of the Old and New Towns
and their connecting bridges. Edinburgh was other-
wise to "dree its weird." The Great and the Little
Mound — the latter on the site of what is now the
Waverley Bridge — rose and spread athwart the valley.
The spaces of low ground between and to the
westward became more noisome. Robert Chambers
could remember when the ground now forming West
Princes Street Gardens still contained pools — remnants
of the Nor' Loch — where excellent skating and sliding
were to be had in winter, and desert patches, meet
scenes for the battles with stones and fists between
the Old Town and New Town callants. Lord Cockburn
speaks of it in 1816 as still holding a filthy and
impassable swamp, "the receptacle of many sewers,
and seemingly of all the worried cats, drowned dogs,
and blackguardism of the city." So solitary was it
that part of the space was utilised by the volunteer
companies of the day for ball practice ; and until well
into the century the damp bed of the old Nor' Loch
was the resort of snipe and water-fowl.

It was Walter Scott's friend, Skene of Rubislaw,
who set about reclaiming this " pest-bed," and turning
it into the beautiful gardens which divide Old from
New Edinburgh. The author of " Waverley " records,
in January 1826, how, "after a good day's work," he

Nor' Loch and North Bridge

strolled from his house in the neighbouring Castle
Street into the new pleasure-grounds laid out by this
Good Samaritan, and found all very good. " It is
singular," he writes in his Journal, "to walk close
beneath the grim old Castle, and think what scenes it
must have seen, and how many generations of three-
score and ten have risen and passed away."

The coming of the railway has brought the greatest
change of all. A "river of human life," swift and
strange, has taken a forth-right way through the trough
where once lay the " Dead Sea " of the Nor' Loch.
Growing steadily stronger with lapse of years, it has
scoured for itself a wider channel under the West
Kirkyard, past the foot of the Castle Rock, and through
the Craigs of Calton. But the focus of its forces is
under and around the arches of the North Bridge.
Here converging currents from south and north, and
from east and west, meet and jostle ; and there are
times and seasons when travelling and holiday-making
humanity swells in an autumn flood that seethes and
eddies about the piers and abutments. Under stress
of this irresistible movement, older structures are
continually being undermined and toppling down.
The Waverley Station is the centre of a dissolving
view of city alterations. Looking down upon it in
this year of grace, you behold a furrowed and spreading
"sea of glass," from which escape the smoke and the
shriek of the toiling locomotives ; and, bounding it,
ancient walls that crumble to their ruin, and new walls
that climb the sky in their place ; while at night, when
you can carry your eye away from the brilliant
constellation of the New Town lamps and the dimmer
but more impressive galaxy that irradiates the dark

16

A New North Bridge

mass of the Old Town, the gulf below is seen to be
filled with many-coloured lights, fixed and moving.

The Bridge itself is not the same structure that
Lord Provost Drummond opened with civic state in
1772, and across which migrated the "conscript fathers
of the city " on their way to a freer air. It has needed
repeated widening and renewal to accommodate the
growing stream of traffic between the Old and New
Town. A hundred years after its erection it was
broadened by the device of throwing out brackets for the
support of the footways. More lately it has received
entire renovation in arch, pier, and roadway. It became
a new North Bridge — lock, stock, and barrel. None the
less, but rather the more, does it remain what Lord
Rosebery has called it — " the foundation of the city's
beauty " ; for, while the roadway has been widened, the
gradient has been altered, and the level heightened.
On the inimitable site has been placed one of the most
spacious thoroughfares of the kind in Europe.

Alas that this great and necessary improvement
should have disturbed or destroyed so much of the
substance and the shadow of the past ! The original
breach in the walls of the Edinburgh of last century
has been widened threefold by the changes that have
accompanied the building of the new North Bridge. To
right and to left the older dwellings have fallen under the
scythe of the city improvers, not singly, but in swathes.
The tall and stately frontages of hotels and of bank and
newspaper offices have risen in their place. One may
look in vain on the eastern side of the Bridge for any
trace of Halkerston's Wynd, named after David
Halkerston of that ilk, who held it bravely, and to the
death, against Hertford's ruthless onslaught. Steep

17 B

Nor' Loch and North Bridge

and narrow though it was, this minor outlet of the city,
leading down to the dam and sluices of the Nor' Loch,
was of historic and even strategic interest in Edinburgh
annals. Alongside of it were other closes, with their
fore and back " lands," occupied in their time by bishops
and feudal lords, and later by Jacobite lairds and
magnates of the law. Adjoining the head of the wynd,
in the High Street, stood the timber-fronted house to
which " Allan Ramsay, periwig-maker," brought his
bride, and where, " at the sign of the Mercury, opposite
Niddry's Wynd," he wrote plays and lyrics and printed
broadsheets before he removed to " Creech's Land," in
the Luckenbooths.

All have disappeared ; and along with them has,
of course, gone the eastern side of the old " Cap-and-
Feather Close," a portion of which remained to the last
an actual part of the former Bridge Street. In this
close — not improbably in one of the humble tenements
whose windows continued to look down on the
passengers who crossed the North Bridge, possibly on
the site afterwards associated with literature as the
publishing house of Adam Black and of the " Encyclo-
paedia Britannica " — was born another genuine Scottish
poet, who loved dearly the " Edinburgh plainstanes "
and the sound of the " Tron Kirk bell"— Robert
Fergusson.

On the other, or western, side, all the old buildings
that interposed between North Bridge Street and
Cockburn Street — itself an earlier " improvement " that
cut traversely across a series of famous High Street
closes, and thus through a section of city history — have
gone "at one fell swoop." In their place, next
neighbour to the Bridge, and overlooking it as well as

18

A Dissolving View of Changes

Market Street and the Railway Station, lying many
storeys below, rise the new offices of the Scotsman
newspaper. Part of the site, on the edge of the valley,
appears to have been once occupied as a " town
Judging " by the monks of the Abbey of Newbattle ; and
it has some claim to be the spot on which stood, in the
years 1568 and 1569, a house occupied by John Knox.

Better remembered are the associations of the Old
Fleshmarket Close with the drinking " howffs " and
drinking customs of the Edinburgh of Burns's day,
when, as W. E. Henley paints it (laying on his colours
over thick), it was " a centre of conviviality — a city of
clubs and talk and good-fellowship — a city of harlotry
and high jinks — a city, above all, of drink.

Whare couthie chiels at e'enin' meet,
Their bizzin' craigs and mou's to weet."

The name of these Old Edinburgh Clubs was legion,
and some of the most famous of them met in the Old
Fleshmarket Close. Here and in the neighbourhood
their traditions lingered longest. Near the head of
the close, in the remanent fragment of this famous alley,
which still gives a narrow access from High Street to
Cockburn Street, is the turnpike stair up which Pitt's
friend, Henry Dundas, first Lord Melville, had his
chambers while he was a struggling advocate, and the
"laigh cellar" where Burns's crony and publisher,
William Creech, began business as a bookseller. But
the lower section has been finally swept away, and with
it have gone visible links with the Burke and Hare
murders and Deacon Brodie, and with the tavern
gatherings, the Homeric feasts, and the bacchanalian
orgies, in which judges of the High Court, of the lost

19

Nor' Loch and North Bridge

type of Lord Hermand and the " mighty " Newton, did
not disdain to play a leading part.

They were a natural, and almost a necessary, out-
come of the conditions of the domestic and business life
of the time in which they originated, those social
meetings in chop-house and oyster-cellar. There was
scant room for the sedater hospitalities of home in those
days, when even families of title and estate were pigeon-
holed in narrow chambers up many flights of stairs in
some tall tenement, where they could shake hands with
their neighbours on the other side of the close — when,
as related in Chambers's " Traditions," a leading Scots
lawyer, afterwards raised to the bench, had to accom-
modate his household in three rooms and a kitchen : the
children, with their nurse, having their beds made down
nightly in the room of the head of the family, the
housemaid sleeping under the kitchen dresser, and the
one manservant seeking his night's quarters elsewhere ;
and when a thriving goldsmith in Parliament Square
"stowed away his menage in a couple of small rooms
above his booth, plastered against the walls of St Giles."

Men, and eke women, including women of quality,
had, in those Auld Reekie days, to seek social diversion
abroad, and, not being hard to please as to fare or
surroundings, they found it in the tavern. There were
clubs of many kinds, and for all ranks — clubs that kept
alive the Jacobite tradition, and clubs that celebrated in
deep draughts the " Glorious Revolution " ; societies like
the Easy Club, for which " Honest Allan " wrote his
first poems, and the Crochallan Fencibles, of which
Robert Burns was admitted a member, that gave more
than a passing thought between bumpers to letters ;
and others that devoted themselves to drinking, pure

20

Auld Reekie Days

and simple. While the learned judge or the eminent
counsel would be firing off broad jests and quaffing
jorums of punch and magnums of claret in Clerihugh's
Tavern, Writers' Court, or. in Paterson's Chop-house, in
the Fleshmarket Close, his clerk would be found regaling
himself with mutton pies and " twopenny " in " Lucky
Wood's, in the Cowgate," or some other howff suited to
his degree. Gentle and simple, these eighteenth-century
revellers could not, as Councillor Pleydell boasts in
" Guy Mannering," be charged with the fault of Sir John
Falstaff in wandering from tavern to tavern in East-
cheap. They were conservative even in their excesses
in the matter both of their drink and of their drinking
quarters. After business hours, boon companions and
clients knew where they were to be found.

If jest and conversation were lacking in refinement,
they were certainly not wanting in boisterous vigour.
Our great-grandfathers, and our great-grandmothers as
well, had a fine gift for calling a spade a spade. They
knew, also, how to combine thrift and pleasure. They
supped sumptuously on rizzered haddies or sheep-head
and trotters in lowly quarters, where they could them-
selves keep an eye on the progress of the cooking.

The names bestowed upon their convivial societies
often reflected the rough wit and the manners of the
day. The members of the " Spendthrift Club " were
debarred from spending more than "a groat and a
bawbee" on supper. The " Six-Foot Club" were tall
fellows, and mighty men also in potations, as those who
have met with a company of them at Hunter's Tryst, in
the tale of " St Ives," can testify. The " Marrowbones
Club " feasted on marrow bones, in the belief that " a
large quantity of drink could be superimposed " on that

21

Nor' Loch and North Bridge

dish. Their meeting-place was long in Paterson's Chop-
house, and the members, each of whom had his silver
spoon, bearing his own coat of arms and the club motto,
Nil nisi Bonum, included a host of the luminaries of the
law and of Edinburgh society. The " Cape Club," of
which Fergusson was a member, is understood to have
taken its name from the difficulty with which one of its
founders, who lived in the outlandish region of St
Ninian's Row, weathered the " Cape " of Leith Wynd on
his way home, with the contents of more than one
" lang-craig " as cargo under his belt. They found
housing in later years in Bourgois's, made famous by the
Frenchman who was its first landlord for " its matchless
steaks on the grill and unrivalled porter." Here, too, in
the building whose gable-erid projected, until the other
day, cheek-by-jowl with the North Bridge, the " Poker
Club " lingered out its last days, and the " Edinburgh
Select Subscription Library " had its beginnings.

The last survivor and perpetuator of some of the
traditions and more seemly customs of these old-time
Clubs — the " Presbytery " — continued to meet, under the
staff of its " Moderator," and in the inspiring presence
of its other heirlooms of the past, in Gilchrist's Tavern,
up a "common stair," in Mylne's Square, until the
demolition of this nook of Old Edinburgh compelled the
Presbyters to remove to the neighbouring Cockburn
Street, where the Club shortly after expired, from change
of air. Mylne's Square, built by and named after one of
the " Royal " line of Master Masons, who constructed the
first North Bridge, was a confined courtyard, hemmed
in by many-storeyed, many-windowed houses, to which
access was had from North Bridge Street by a flight of
steps, and from High Street by a narrow entry.

22

" The end of an Auld Sang "

In one of the tenements on the west side of the
Square, now laid in the dust, lived Lord Justice-Clerk
Alva, who died in the year that the North Bridge was
founded. The stairway was often ascended by the old
fox Lovat, in his crooked game of hide-and-seek with
the law. Afterwards, this house with the narrow
windows and quaint gables witnessed the levees of the
first Earl of Hopetoun, when, in the early years of last
century, after his return from the Peninsular campaigns,
the warrior became Lord High Commissioner. Beside
the High Street entrance was the " laigh shop " of Mrs
Macleuchar, opposite the Tron Kirk, whence the
" Antiquary " and his companion started in the Hawes
fly for the Queen's Ferry, and the spot where Neil Gow
began selling fiddles and reel music ; and in what are
now the cellars of a bank, the Scottish Commissioners,
furtively, and in fear of the raging mob of patriots
without, attached their signatures to the Treaty of
Union, and so made " an end of an auld sang."

CHAPTER III

THE HIGH STREET AND ST GILES

FROM its first beginnings the heart of Edinburgh has
beat in its High Street. Nay, during nearly all the
centuries of its history, this famous thoroughfare has
contained the body, as well as the soul, of the Scottish
capital. It was not only the centre and chief part, it
was Old Edinburgh Town itself— that Old Edinburgh
which Carlyle in his posthumous " Historical Sketches "
describes as " a sloping high street and many steep side-
lanes, covering like some wrought tissue of stone and
mortar, like some rhinoceros skin, with many a gnarled
embossment, church steeple, chimney head, Tolbooth
and other ornament or indispensability, back and
ribs of the slope," on which stands the " City on the
Rock."

Earlier writers have found this figure of a backbone
and the connected ribs appropriate to " the King's Hie
Street" and its wynds and closes, using that title as
descriptive, not merely of the " place" between the
Church of St Giles and the Netherbow, to which it was
once restricted, but of the broad highway that extends,
under different names, from the Castle Esplanade to
Holyrood. Other quaint similes were employed to
express the singular aspect and structure of Edinburgh's

24

The Genesis of the High Street

main street, as it presented itself to the eyes of visitors
well accustomed to the appearance of mediaeval towns
and town life ; one of them likens it to " an ivory comb,
whose teeth on both sides are very foul, although the
space between 'em is clean and sightly." Two or three
centuries ago, much as now, the height of its buildings,
the spaciousness of its roadway, and the contrasting
narrowness and darkness of the diverging closes, chiefly
impressed the newcomer. Fynes Moryson praised, in
1598, the "fair and broad streete," which was "sole
ornament" of the town ; and, a few years later, Taylor,
the Water Poet, breaks out, after his wont, into a
rhapsody over its beauty, noting shrewdly enough,
however, that while merchants and tradesmen lived
on the High Street, the houses of the gentlefolks were
" obscured in bye-lanes and closes."

The thoughtful visitor may still, as in the days of
our Scottish Solomon, " reason out the genesis, the
manner of growth, and the shape taken by the ancient
city," as turning into the High Street by the
North Bridge he passes up it towards the Castle, or
down towards the Palace, and glances as he goes into
the depths of the steep and dingy closes that plunge
down, to right and left, into the bounding valleys.
Great, indeed, have been the changes of three centuries ;
and every year removes a landmark, or defaces some
venerable feature of this historic street. With the
widening of the North Bridge, as we have seen, an
interesting part of the Old Town has been swept into
the dust-bin. And other " improvements," destructive
of memorials -of the city's past, are in progress or in
contemplation. The extended Council Chambers have
swallowed up Clerihugh's Tavern ; the close-heads on

25

The High Street and St Giles

the north side of the Lawnmarket, and on the south
side of High Street between Parliament Square and the
Tron, lead to open spaces instead of closely ranked
files of historic houses ; " New Street " itself is a thing of
the memory. An ancient building in Campbell's Close,
sorely stricken with decay, is going the way of its fellows.

Yet the imprint of its history remains, and will long
remain, on Edinburgh High Street. In its plan and
architecture one can still recognise the natural product
of the site, and of the conditions under which the town
first took root and grew. It was a city of refuge and
defence, the joint offspring of the Castle and the Abbey,
which guarded and enclosed it to the west and east, as
did its marshes on the north and south. The old
citizens had perforce to build "close and high" when
their rock left them so little space to build upon. " On
one side was the Border, and on the other the High-
lands. The houses huddled together on the confined
and comparatively safe foothold of the ridge, like
refugees from a flood."

To this day the ground on which the High Street
stands carries more houses and population, and perhaps
more history and romance, than any corresponding area
in Europe. Many of its famous houses and picturesque
closes have been weeded out, but many are left. The
old " fifteen- and sixteen-decker " buildings have been
purged away by fire ; but the High Street can still
reckon nine and ten storeys in its " backlands," and
faces the thoroughfare with a bold front, five, six, and
seven storeys in height. Aloft, from its many windows,
it flaunts its washings, to the wonder of the visitors
below ; a few forestairs project into the pavement ; a
few " laigh shops" dive down below the level of the

26

The Cockpit of Scotland

plainstanes, and a few timber-fronted gables overhang
them. To those who know where to go in search of
them, moulded doorways with armorial bearings, dates,
and texts ; carved finials and dormers ; locks and door-
handles ; " tirling-pins," " stands " for sedan-chairs, link-
extinguishers and other memorials of the Edinburgh of
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries
are not difficult to find.

For one feature of the old High Street, those who
know their Edinburgh only from the pages of the
historian and the romancist will look in vain. While
huge lateral breaches have been made in its walls, the
main channel of Old Edinburgh life has been swept
almost clean of obstructions — if we except the Town
Wells, memorials of the city's first water supply. We
have seen that the Netherbow and the Mercat Croce dis-
appeared in the middle of last century. Sometime later
the City Guard House at the Tron, the headquarters of
the " Town Rats," went the way of all the earth. The
Luckenbooths and the Tolbooth lingered in their places
until nearly the end of the second decade of the present
century.

These and other buildings, dropped down in the
fairway of traffic, were of strategic as well as social
importance in the city's annals. Like the closes, they
were rallying points and places of refuge in the times
when the High Street was the cockpit of Scotland —
the ground whereon, as has been said, private and
party feuds, the jealousies of the nobles and the
burghers, and the quarrels between the Crown, the
Plebs, and the Kirk, were for centuries settled at the
sword's point. The bruilzie, long known as " Cleanse
the Causey," in which Cardinal Beaton nearly lost his

27

The High Street and St Giles

life in 1515, was but one of many street frays in which
the same cry was raised.

Between the time when young Roland Graeme rode
down the street towards Lord Setoun's lodging in the
Canongate, and the time when Dandie Dinmont
shouldered his way to Writers' Court, much blood was
spilt in Edinburgh High Street ; and it was well for a
hot-tempered Borderer or Highlander, with family and
personal feuds on his hands, if he knew of some friendly
port, in an adjoining booth or wynd, where he could
take shelter in case of his getting the worst of it in
attempting to " keep the crown of the causey." Young
King Jamie himself, as we know, found such a place of
refuge handy, when, coming down the High Street from
the Tolbooth in 1591, he got mixed unwittingly in a
fray, and, fleeing into a close-head, stood " shaking for
fear in a skinner's booth." Worse still was his plight,
five or six years later, when he was besieged in the
Tolbooth itself by an enraged populace, and, escaping,
vowed that he would " raze to the ground " the accursed
and tumultuous town.

Occasionally the Netherbow would divide a hostile
army or parliament encamped in the Canongate from a
rival faction whose headquarters were in the Edinburgh
Tolbooth ; or cannon shot from High Street and St
Giles would reply to the fire of the Castle, when city
and citadel stood out, as they often did, for opposing
sovereigns and religions. One can understand the need
of the order given in 1552 by the Burgh Council to
the occupiers of booths and chambers in the High
Street, " heich and laigh," that, because of the " great
slauchters and tulzies" that had taken place, they
should take care to have "lang weapons at hand,

28

ST GILES CHURCH FROM THE EAST.

THE "HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN.'

[ To face page 28.

The Crown of St Giles

and sally forth incontinent when the common bell
rang."

The Crown of St Giles, which has a recorded history
almost coeval with that of the High Street itself, has
always been the chief ornament of Old Edinburgh.
The Cathedral or Collegiate Church, dedicated to
Edinburgh's patron saint, holds a more prominent
place than ever in the ancient thoroughfare, out of the
midst of which it rises like some massive grey rock,
crusted with Gothic ornament. It is believed that a
Christian place of worship has stood on the spot ever
since the time when, as is supposed, Northumbrian
King Edwin founded the town and named it as his
" burgh." But of the parish church of the straw-
thatched Anglian hamlet there is no trace ; and, since
the removal more than a hundred years ago of the
north doorway, with its grotesque early Norman
carvings, there are few vestiges left of the twelfth-
century St Giles which was burned, along with the
town, during an English raid in 1385.

The bases of the tower and the adjoining arches of
choir and nave may belong to the earlier structure ;
and marks of fire have been detected on some of the
pillars. But the church arose in more stately form and
spacious dimensions on its restoration by Robert III.,
who bestowed it on his Abbey of Scone to meet the
expenses of royal coronations. Succeeding kings
showed it favour, although it long remained a simple
vicarage under the Perthshire religious house. Fresh
sanctity came to it along with the "armbone of St
Giles," which was brought thither by Preston of Gorton,
"with the aid of the King of France," in 1454, and
which continued to be carried along with the image of

29

The High Street and St Giles

the patron saint in the Saint's day procession, and on
other high and solemn public occasions, to the sound of
"talbron, trumpet, shalm, and clarioun," until it dis-
appeared in the tempest of Knox's Reformation. Not
long after its coming, a Papal Bull erected the church
into a collegiate charge ; the building was lengthened
and heightened as it grew in fame and in wealth ; and,
in its palmy days, the forty altars of St Giles were
served by seventy officiating priests.

It was probably under the first " Provost of the
College Kirk," William Forbes, who bestowed his
garden, lying between the church and the Cowgate, to
be used as a burial-ground by the parishioners, that the
beautiful mural crown of St Giles arose in its present
form. But, under the Old Religion, the Metropolitan
Church never rose to the dignity of the seat of an
episcopal see. Its status of Cathedral came late, and
was short-lived ; St Giles knew the jurisdiction of
Bishops only during the sixty years between the fling-
ing of Jenny Geddes's stool and the Revolution, and
even then but intermittently.

Within and without, the fabric of St Giles bears the
scars, honourable or otherwise, of the tumults, invasions,
civil wars, and conflagrations of the past. Legend and
history cling to its walls. It has been put to base as
well as noble uses. Councils of barons and of prelates
have met in it in time of national danger ; it has given
shelter to the Estates of the Realm and to the High
Court of Justice ; it is the traditional scene of the weird
" High Mass " celebrated on the eve of Flodden. Knox
thundered in the " Hie Kirk " against the idolatries of
Rome and the " monstrous regimen of women." When
his voice grew too weak to be heard in the Choir he

30

Scars of Time and War

" dang the pulpit to blads " in the adjoining and more
restricted space of the Tolbooth Church, forming the
southern side of St Giles. These were but two out of
the four places of worship into which St Giles was
divided after the Reformation, the others being the
West Kirk, which occupied the nave, and the Old Kirk,
which found dark housing in the portion of the transept
lying under the tower. Parts of St Giles have been
turned to use as an Exchange, as Police Office, and as
Town Clerk's quarters ; " Haddo's Hole," over the north
porch, has been crowded with Covenanting prisoners
awaiting execution or shipment to the Plantations ; the
tower has been used as a lock-up for suspected witches
and as a weaving shop ; there, too, cannon have been
mounted and have exchanged shots with the guns of
the Castle. Misfortune of another kind fell on the
Choir of St Giles, in 1829, under the name of the
" renovation " of the High or East Kirk by the hands
of Burn, who so cleared and smoothed the old fabric,
without and within, in accordance with the deplorable
architectural taste of the day, that the citizens con-
gratulated themselves on it having been made "as
fresh as if it were new." Fragments of carved masonry
removed during this despoilment have found refuge in
rock-gardens and walls in the city and suburbs.

The latest addition to St Giles is an important and
interesting one — the new Chapel Royal of the Knights of
the Order of the Thistle, which forms an adjunct to the
Choir on the south side. Under the will of the late
Earl of Leven and Melville, a sum of ^"40,000 was set
aside for the restoration of the Chapel Royal at Holy-
rood — the nave of the Abbey Church — as a Thistle
Chapel ; but it was found that the terms of the bequest

The High Street and St Giles

could not be fulfilled. Through the liberality of Lord
Leven and the other heirs, effect has in part been given
to the testator's wishes in the form of this richly ornate
Gothic structure, one feature of which is its wealth of
heraldic embellishments.

The old Church has fallen on kindly days and into
appreciative hands. Within it, as around it, obstruc-
tions have been cleansed away — all except the three-
pence charged to its week-day visitors at the entrance.
It is again a noble Church, impressive in the grey
austerity of strong and clustered pillars, and the dim
rich light that shines through its storied windows. It
has become something of a National Valhalla for the
great in Church and State — a Temple of Reconciliation
preserving the ashes or the memory of men of opposed
creeds and parties.

In the Albany Aisle we are asked to recognise
evidence of the remorse and penitence of Robert, Duke
of Albany — who certainly was a benefactor of St Giles
— for the ruthless murder of his nephew David, Duke of
Rothesay and heir to the Scottish throne. The Earl
of Moray — the " Good Regent " of some, the " Traitor
Bastard " of others — sleeps in the Moray Chapel, where
sculpture, stained glass, and inscription tell the tale of
his virtues and of his assassination at the hands of
Bothwellhaugh. In the Chepman Aisle — built by the
"Scottish Caxton" in honour of James IV. and his
Queen, Margaret Tudor — is a recumbent statue of " the
Great Marquis of Montrose." On the other side of the
Church, in the Chapel of St Eloi, built by the Craft of
Hammermen, a similar honour has been paid to the
name of his rival and enemy, " the Great Marquis of
Argyle." The sepulchral monument of the family of the

32

Memorials of War and Peace

Napiers of Merchiston — of whom one was the Inventor
of Logarithms — has been removed from the interior to
the exterior of the Choir. Tablets have been placed in
remembrance of Dean Hanna, who read, for the first
and last time, the new service book in St Giles, and of
the humble kail-wife who, according to " constant oral
tradition," interrupted the reading with the flight of her
three-legged stool and the stinging words, " Deil colic
the wame o' ye ; would ye say mass i' my lug ? "

Other memorials there are to the champions who,
on one side or the other, fought out with tongue, pen, or
sword the long struggle between Prelacy and Presbytery
in or around St Giles; and the liturgies and service books
over which their quarrels so often raged are laid out for
the inspection of the curious. From the walls and
pillars hang the tattered flags of old Scottish regiments ;
and brass, marble, or granite commemorate later and
distant battles in which " good Scots blood " has been
freely shed, not in civil or religious strife, but for the
needs of the Empire. St Giles may still lay claim to be
the centre of the nation's religious life ; and within it
the General Assembly of the Church is opened annually,
with the Queen's representative, the Lord High Com-
missioner, seated in state in the royal pew under the
groined roof of the Preston Aisle. But its walls and
atmosphere now breathe lessons of unity and forbear-
ance, rather than of the strife and division of old.

33

CHAPTER IV
OLD HIE-GAIT LIFE

A BROAD and busy highway now runs past the northern
flank of St Giles, while to the south Parliament Square,
its space lately restricted by the projection into it of
the new Thistle Chapel, enjoys — at least when the
Courts are not sitting — something of cloistral seclusion.
Far different were the surroundings of the High Church
in that Edinburgh of the past in which the imagination
loves to dwell. The High Street traffic drained slowly
and with difficulty past the Great Kirk, through a series
of narrow lanes and crooked passages — the " Krames,"
the " Purses," the " Kirk Stile," the " Parliament Close."
Tall buildings were jammed into the middle of the
main street, and raising high their peaked gables, " held
the licht frae the Parish Kirk," as Dunbar complained
four centuries ago. These were the " Luckenbooths,"
which dipped their height — where the " Stinking Stile "
gave access through the block, opposite the head of
Warriston's Close, to the north porch of St Giles — in
order that street passengers might catch a glimpse of
the clock on the tower.

Adjoining to the west was the Old Tolbooth — the
" Heart of Midlothian " — the Prsetorium of the town.
By turns it had been the meeting-place of Scottish
Parliaments, of the College of Justice, and of stormy

34

The Heart of Midlothian

Kirk Assemblies; but latterly it degenerated into a
Prison, the character in which it will live in perpetual
memory, as the place of durance of Jock Porteous and
of Effie Deans. The western end of this grim edifice is
believed to have been old in Mary Stewart's time. On
a platform looking towards the Lawnmarket was the
place of public execution after 1785 ; and over the
northern gable were affixed the heads of " traitors " —
among others those of Morton, Montrose, and the
Marquis of Argyle. The lock of the Old Tolbooth
and other relics of Edinburgh's Bastille have found
shelter at Abbotsford.

More to the south, and also ranging close up to the
western gable of St Giles, stood the New Tolbooth, or
Laigh Council House, built, in Queen Mary's reign, with
the stones of the old Chapel of the Holy Rood in the
Cowgate. Like its older companion, it was the scene
of historic events — of State trials, meetings of the
Estates, and ecclesiastical gatherings — before it was
given up to the business of the City Fathers, who
deliberated here, in a long, low, dimly-lighted room,
until better quarters were provided for them in the Royal
Exchange. Partly on its site, and on the ground which,
until after Knox's time, sloped down towards the
Cowgate as the Churchyard of St Giles, have risen the
Signet Library and the rest of the classic pile where the
High Court of Session is now accommodated ; while at the
eastern entrance to Parliament Square, the Police Offices
of the burgh rise beside the spot where towered, until
swept away by fire, the loftiest and, to the taste of our
ancestors, the finest of those Towers of Babel which
were the roosting-places of Old Edinburgh society.

So precious was space around the High Kirk, that,
35

Old Hie-Gait Life

as Sir Walter Scott tells us, the little booths of the
merchants were "plastered against the Gothic projec-
tions and abutments," for all the world like swallows'
nests ; and the goldsmith's shop of George Heriot —
" Jingling Geordie " — where his master and gossip, King
James, came often to chat and bargain with the founder
of the Hospital, was a tiny " krame " sheltering under
the western gable of St Giles. Not less famous in its
own way was the shop at the eastern end of the Lucken-
booths in which Allan Ramsay set up his wig-blocks
when he removed from the sign of the Mercury. Here,
in an upper room commanding a magnificent view of
the Firth through the vista of the High Street, the
poet-barber established his circulating library, and
received as visitors Gay and Smollett ; here afterwards
" Creech's Land " gathered a fresh and rich crop of literary
associations as the bookseller's shop of William Creech,
the place of publication of the " Mirror " and the
" Lounger," and the resort of all the wits and pundits of
letters of the Edinburgh of the end of last century.

Nae mair we see his levee door,
Philosophers and poets pour,
And toothy Critics by the score,
In bloody raw.

Pageant and tragedy were alike familiar to the High
Street and the precincts of old St Giles, in the times
before the changes of a more peaceful age had swept
away the screen of 'obscuring buildings which had so
long veiled "the irregular and grim visage of the
Cathedral." Of State ceremonials there remains but a
ghost, seen on the days when the heralds and pursuivants
of the Lyon Office mount the Cross — the ancient shaft

36

THE "MERCAT CROCE "

ST GILES CHURCH, INTERIOR.

[To face page 36.

'••' , V : ;/

The Mercat Croce

of which has been drawn a little aside from its old
position and raised on a new pedestal by the liberal act
of Mr Gladstone — to make a royal proclamation to the
lieges, or when the Lord High Commissioner " walks "
in procession from Holyrood to open the General
Assembly in St Giles.

Perfunctory and sadly shorn of their former splendour
are the modern High Street ceremonials, compared, for
instance, with those that attended the visit of Charles I.
to his Scottish Capital in 1633, when he opened the
first Parliament held in the New Parliament House, and
the last in the ancient kingdom ever graced by a kingly
presence. "The Old Tolbooth and all St Giles
Cathedral," says Thomas Carlyle, " never looked so
brave. In the bowels of the High Cross fountain there
circulates, impatiently demanding egress, a lake of
Claret. Judge if this decoration is a popular one ! And
a little further on, at the public Weigh-house — what the
Scots call a Tron — see the blunt edifice, by plaster,
planks, draperies, and upholsteries, is changed to an
Olympus, on which hover — the Nine Muses of Antiquity,
and much else ! " — among the rest, the figure of Fergus
the First, the mythical ancestor of the royal line, " in
ane convenient habit," to promise his successor, already
with the shadow of doom over him, all manner of good
fortune.

Rivers of red wine used to flow at the Cross on
King's birthdays and other high festivals; and it is
recorded that at the Restoration — the occasion when
the " kail-wives of the Tron " made a bonfire of their
stools, Jenny Geddes's, it is said, among the rest — as
many as "thirteen hundred dozen of glasses" were
broken on the spot by loyal citizens. But red blood —

37

Old Hie-Gait Life

the blood of the best as well as of the basest of the land
has flowed still more freely. Who can count the
harrowing, weird, or quaint spectacles of which Cross,
Tron, and Tolbooth have been the centres ? From the
Cross at midnight sounded the mysterious summons
that was the presage of Flodden ; and the citizens
gathered round it and looked on with feelings unutter-
able when the " Solemn League and Covenant " was
burned here in 1682. It was the spot appointed for
major punishments ; while its neighbour, the Tron, was
the witness of penalties inflicted on minor offenders of
the law. Aloft on the scaffold the heads of traitors,
patriots, and martyrs fell under the knife of the
" Maiden," and thieves and outlaws of distinction had
their pre-eminence in birth and crime marked in the
manner of their death, as when, in 1603, Alastair
Maegregor of Glenstrae was hanged his own height
higher than his clansmen, partners with him in "the
slaughter of Glenfruin." Not far off was the pillory
where " dyvours " or bankrupts were exposed in yellow
bonnets and piebald suits, and the " tree mare," ridden
on by the drunkard and the scold.

Attached to the Weigh-house, or Salt Tron, was the
City Guard House, " a long, low, ugly building, a black
snail crawling up the middle of the High Street"; and
here was the headquarters of the town sweeps and of
those famous protectors of the peace of the burgh, the
Town Guards. The beginnings of this body of armed
police are lost in antiquity ; but for more than a hundred
years after their reorganisation, in 1696, the Lochaber
axes — of which specimens are preserved in the Municipal
Museum — the black uniform and the cocked hats, bound
with white tape, of the " Town Rats " were conspicuous

38

"Town Rats': and "Town Gallants"

in the High Street, except, as their many foes and
critics sneered, when they were wanted. They were
part of the humours as well as of the machinery of
order of Old Edinburgh ; and the ghost of the Black
Squad continued to hang about King Charles's statue in
Parliament Square, in the shape of two or three time-
battered and red-nosed veterans, down to the days of
the Waverley Novels. They were recruited chiefly from
the Highlands, and to these hot-tempered Celts, many
of them discharged soldiers, the dialect of the High
Street was an alien tongue. Small wonder if a perpetual
war was waged between them and the " town callants,"
and especially the " baxter lads," who were lodged in the
vicinity of the Mealmarket and the Tron.

Of these historic feuds, and of the life and humours
of the High Street generally, we get the most vivid
pictures in the poems of Robert Fergusson. The unfor-
tunate bard of the " Plainstanes and the Causey " had
himself many a brush with the " black banditti," whose
exploits he has sung. He paints for us the old " Fourth
of June" celebrations, when, in honour of the King's
birthday,

Our bells screed aff a loyal tune,
Our ancient Castle shoots at noon,
WiJ flagstaff buskit ;

and how " the blue-coat bodies " march up from the
Canongate to cast their scarecrow duds and draw their
yearly alms ; but chiefly how the " City Guard "

In military art weel lear'd,

Wi' powdered pow and shaven beard,

Gang through their functions ;
By hostile rabble seldom spared

O' clarty unctions.
39

Old Hie-Gait Life

To Hallowfair, and to Leith Races also, those heroes
repair, the " stumps erst used to filabegs, now dight in
splatterdashes " ; and after the exploits and hard knocks
of the day are over, they console themselves in some
favourite howff, where they meet their kin, the chairmen
and caddies, over their native usquebaugh — " whisky for
porters, chairmen, and City Guard."

In Fergusson's verse we see a whole panorama of
Old Edinburgh street life, in the days when the
" cumbersome and stinking bigging " that sheltered the
Guard still " rode the rigging " of its main thoroughfare,
and before " the crown of the causey " had been levelled
away, under the direction of the portly city magnates,
in three-cornered hats and kneebreeches, made so
familiar to us in " Kay's Portraits." As soon as

Morn wi' bonny purple smiles,
Kisses the air-cock o' St Giles,

the "barefoot housemaids" are abroad, scrubbing the
turnpike stairs, and exchanging amenities with other
early risers. The "stair-head critics" gather in the
Luckenbooths,

Wi' glowering eye
Their neighbours' sma'est faults to descry.

Lawyers, merchants, and their clerks repair to business,
to issue forth anon to meet their clients at the Cross, or
to forgather in some favourite coffee-house or oyster-
shop, when the bell gives the signal for the locking of
places of business at two o'clock. This old-fashioned
dinner hour was a busy time during the " Sitting of the
Session," at " Rob Gibb's " and " Indian Peter's " ;

Barkeepers now at open door
Tak' tent as folks gae back and fore ;
40

Old High Street Fashions

and there is much replenishing of snuff mulls and
sampling of Hollands gin. Business is resumed in the
afternoon, until, at the " five-hours bell," the lawyers'
clerks begin to " show their faces and rax their een " ;
or when

Auld St Giles at aught o'clock

Gars merchant loons their shoppies lock.

It is now the leisure hour, when fashion comes forth
from its closes and throngs the plainstanes ; ladies in
hoops and pattens, with the " modest bongrace " over
the face, parade the pavement, exchanging courtesies
with the bucks and " macaronis," or enduring brushes
from " mealy bakers," or the " dunts " of the Highland
chairmen who jostle in the roadway ; while the
" daunderin' cit " delights to stray to the Castle Hill or
elsewhere, to exhibit his " new kaimed wig and silken
hose." Then, with the failing light, the caddie comes
forth with his lanthron ;

Through ilka gait the torches blaze,
And globes send out their blinkin' rays.

The sedan chair and its link-bearers on the way to rout
or assembly are in evidence — hackney coaches only
came in, a little ahead of umbrellas, between 1760 and
1780 — the place of fashionable resort, perhaps, some
" laigh " oyster-cellar. The noisy ten-hours drum " gars
a' the trades gang daunderin' hame." But the night is
only beginning in the Clubs, whose members, "jocose
and free, gie a' to merriment and glee," whether they
quaff claret and punch in the company of judges of
Session and reverend divines in Daunie Douglas's,

Old Hie- Gait Life

or Stewart's Oyster-Shop, or more lowly in their
tastes,

To Lucky Middlemass loup in

And sit fu' snug,
Owre oysters and a dram o3 gin,

Or haddock lug.

Old Edinburgh, it must be confessed, was a dirty as
well as a picturesque place. The visitors who praised
most the stately aspect of its High Street had some-
thing to say in censure of the " sluttish " ways and
usages of its inhabitants — usages, it may be said, which
were almost imposed on them by the conditions under
which they lived. The reproaches which William
Dunbar addressed to the "merchants of renown" in the
first years of the sixteenth century were not inapplicable
in the last half of the eighteenth. " Nane may pass
your principal gaits," complained the poet, " for stink of
haddocks and of skates." The streets, before Flodden,
swarmed with "common minstrels" and beggars, and
were cumbered with " vile crafts."

At your Hie Cross, where gold and silk
Suld be, there are but curds and milk ;
And at your Tron but cockle and wilk,
Panshes, puddings for Jock and Jame.

And, after Culloden, Edinburgh still bore the
reproach of being " the dirtiest town in Europe." The
customs of the closes are preserved in the experiences
of Humphrey Clinker and Winnifred Jenkins, and in
the famous law plea concerning the " waterdrap " in
Mary King's Close. Pigs rooted in the dunghills of the
High Street ; fish offal and cabbage leaves were strewn
in front of the Tron ; the oyster-criers had their stances

42

Clarty, but Cosy

at the head of the Fishmarket Close, near the chief
rendezvous of the literati and people of fashion ; stalls
and booths invaded the roadway ; by the Cross Well
stood a long queue of "water caddies"; the streets
were " infested " with ballad singers. A petition from
the "nobility, gentry, and magistrates" inhabiting the
steep and strait passage of Burnet's Close throws a
curious light upon the town and its customs in 1714.
They complain that, by widening and improving their
close, they had only made it " a convenient short-cut to
the slaughter-house," so that they are " masterfully and
cruelly opprest by the pudding-wives, nausious servants
carrying beast's blood, their graith, tripes, and other
nastiness," and by "the rustick servants and mastive
dogs of the fleshers, driving up the Wind their great
fedd cattle, Highland cowes, sheep, and lambs."

Truly the beggar's toe galled the noble's kibes in
Auld Reekie Hie Street. Poverty and riches elbowed
each other on the pavement, and entered and issued
from the same close-head. Long after the court had
forsaken the city, and after the clash of arms had
ceased to be heard on the causeway, saint and sinner,
gentle and simple, dwelt amicably together; and a
section of one of the High Street tenements would last
century have shown a section of society from top to
bottom, arranged in regular strata, touching each other,
yet never mixing. The humble tradesman lived on
the ground floor or in the cellar, while the lord of
Session or the dame of quality mounted to the fourth
or fifth storey.

It was this strange conjunction of squalor and
fashion which gave its peculiar charm to the old High
Street. The modern street may be airier and better

43

Old Hie-Gait Life

swept ; but neither street nor street life can compare in
picturesqueness with the Edinburgh known to Queen
Mary and John Knox, to Montrose and the Cove-
nanters, or to Dr Johnson and Dr Adam Smith. The
change by which the dregs of the population rose to
the top of the High Street houses, and filled the place
once occupied by the best and most gifted of the land,
was already noted and commented on before the close
of last century. "The Lord Justice Clerk Tinwald's
house," says a writer of 1783, "was lately possessed by
a French teacher ; Lord President Craigie's is possessed
by a Rouping-wife or Saleswoman ; Lord Drummore's
house was lately left by a Chairman for want of
accommodation." The mansion of the great Marquis
of Argyle, in the Castle Hill, had already fallen to the
estate of a hosier's shop ; and the house that belonged
to the Duke of Douglas at the Union was in the
occupation of a wheelwright.

There can be no doubt that the improvement of
Edinburgh meant for long the degradation of the High
Street. A crowd in that quarter of the city is apt to
this day to be a gathering of the " great unwashed " ;
vice and penury are found housed in panelled rooms
that are reached by staircases of carved oak. But the
tide has turned from ebb ; and with more air and light,
prosperity and even gentility may flow back again into
the High Street.

44

LOWER HIGH STREET AND TRON KIRK.

[To face page 44.

CHAPTER V

FROM THE TRON TO THE CASTLE HILL

To this day the " Tron Corner" is the great trysting-
place of the Old Town ; and glass is still abundantly
broken at it with the ringing-in of the New Year. We
may take it as the starting-point of a rapid survey of
the High Street closes and houses as far as the Castle,
returning hither later to continue the tour down
towards Holyrood.

The formation of the South Bridge, in 1785, was the
next great breach made in the continuity of the High
Street, after the building of the North Bridge, which
the new thoroughfare prolonged southward in a series
of arches bestriding the Cowgate valley in the direction
of the University. It was part of a grand scheme of
improvements carried out under Provost Sir William
Hunter Blair, who has left his name stamped on Hunter
Square and on Blair Street. It removed old Merlioun's,
or " Merlin's Wynd," called after the Frenchman —

Merlin, who laid Auld Reekie's causey,
And made her o' his wark richt saucy ;

and the scheme included the levelling of the High
Street, by which the "causey's crown" finally dis-
appeared. Kennedy's Close, on the site of Hunter

45

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

Square, was also swept away, and with it the house in
which George Buchanan died, " without means to defray
his funeral expense." The Tron Kirk, a dingy building
dating from Charles I.'s reign, with a Dutch-looking
tower, which was replaced by a spire after the great fire
of 1824, was left, where it still is, an island at the inter-
section of traffic.

By a new plan of city improvements, a whole series
of old closes from the Tron to the neighbourhood of
Parliament Square, on the south side of the High
Street, have been weeded out, and replaced by open
spaces, and by blocks of " model tenements." The
sanitary advantages of this change are manifest ; but
alas for the landmarks of Edinburgh history that have
been carted into oblivion with the old houses of Bell's
Wynd, and of Stevenlaw's, Burnet's, Borthwick's, the
Old Assembly, the Old Fishmarket, and the Covenant
Closes !

It would take a book to recount their story ; and,
indeed, Mr John Reid has devoted a volume to the
purpose. Stevenlaw's Close was once the home of the
" merchant princes " of the town ; near its head was
the " Black Turnpike " — according to one tradition, the
place of refuge of Mary Stewart after Carberry. The
not less celebrated " Clamshell Turnpike," the episcopal
residence of that " magnificent housekeeper " but poor
priest, George Crichton, Bishop of Dunkeld and Abbot
of Holyrood in the days of James V., stood at the High
Street entrance to the adjoining Bell's Wynd. Here, in
" my Lord Hume's lodging," Mary and Darnley are said
to have sought shelter after the " slauchter of Davie " ;
here harboured later the blue-gowned " Bedesmen of St
Thomas " and the remnant of the City Guard. In a

46

Departed Landmarks

third storey in Bell's Wynd lived quietly the father of
the " Admirable Crichton," while his son was pursuing
his meteor-like course through the universities of the
Continent ; from it issued the first numbers of the
Edinburgh Gazette ; and Burns often entered it bringing
songs for the " Museum" of his friend James Johnson,
engraver and music-seller. It was sacred not only to
music and letters, but to the " art of periwig-making,"
which had an "academy" and a professor, and kept
" live bears on the premises " in Bell's Wynd. " St
Mary's Chapel " flitted hither from Niddry's Wynd. It
was also the headquarters of Masonry, and the building,
now removed, in which the Grand Lodge met, became
successively a Trades' Hall, where assembled the
Incorporations of Wrights and of Weavers (the former
for a time with Deacon Brodie as convener), a
Congregational Church, and a Children's Shelter.

In Burnet's Close lived Dr Hugh Blair and Lord
Auchinleck ; and here, it seems probable, Bozzy was
born. An old sixteenth-century house, with turreted
staircase projecting into the close, a window lighting
the kitchen fireplace, and an oak-panelled oratory
within, seems to have had no particular history ; it has
disappeared with the " eighteen hundreds." On the
other hand, the " long room," entered by a secret door
off the kitchen of an ancient edifice in the branch alley
of Covenant Close, has always been identified with the
signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, when that
national pledge was renewed in 1649. It was, in the
popular belief, miraculously preserved during the great
conflagration of 1700, when the tall lands built by the
persecuting Bailie Robertson were relentlessly consumed
by fire ; but its semi-sacred fame did not prevent it from

47

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

being turned into a tavern and oyster-shop. In
Covenant Close, too, a host of law lords, including
Macqueen of Braxfield, the " Hanging Judge," had
residences convenient to the Court; and in it Nanty
Ewart studied crabbed divinity.

The associations of the other closes nearer St Giles
have a more convivial and literary flavour. The Old
Assembly Close recalls memories of the eighteenth-
century dancing assemblies, at which Miss Nicky Murray
was presiding genius, and whose stiff formality has been
described by no less a guest than Oliver Goldsmith.
For nearly half a century, down to 1766, the assemblies
abode here, after removal from the West Bow, and they
only halted a little time in Bell's Wynd before depart-
ing, with fashion, to the New Town. In Old Assembly
Close dwelt that Lord Durie, President of the Court,
who was spirited away from the Figgate Whins to the
Borders by moss-trooping " Christie's Will " ; from the
adjoining Borthwick's Close would emerge Lady St
Clair, wife of the builder of Rosslyn Chapel, in almost
princely state, attended by " eighty torch-bearers " ; and
in the Old Fleshmarket Close, still further west, George
Heriot began married life.

Some of the most favoured and famous of the last-
century taverns and coffee-houses were in this quarter.
Stewart's Oyster-House, where the jovial members of
the Mirror Club regaled themselves, and whence they
issued to post poems and articles in Creech's con-
tributors' box, was down the Old Fleshmarket entry,
which gave access also to the office of the old Courant —
frequented, a hundred years after Daniel Defoe's editor-
ship, by Walter Scott and his literary and political
cronies — and to the first Edinburgh Post Office.

48

[To face page 48.

The "Great Fire"

Strangely altered since Sir Walter's time is the
neighbourhood of this eastern access to Parliament
Square or Close to which we have now come. Scott
himself was a looker-on at the fire which failed to destroy
" Salamander Land " but consumed the other sky-raking
tenements, " the pride of Edinburgh," that occupied the
site of the present Police Offices and part of the entrance
to the Square ; while Nasmyth, of the steam-hammer,
surveyed the scene from the Crown of St Giles. John's
Coffee-House stood near the spot to which the Mercat
Croce, raised once again on its " turreted octagon of
stone," has been removed. The narrow passage into
the Parliament Close was Edinburgh's Paternoster
Row ; and in it was the little shop in which Kay sold
prints and took note of the town worthies and characters
who reappear in his " Portraits."

The " Great Fire " entirely altered the aspect of the
Parliament Square. The " President's Stairs," descend-
ing into the Cowgate, disappeared with the fifteen-
storey houses that once rose beside them in a sheer
wall of masonry, 130 feet in height. The quaint fagade
of the Courts of Parliament and of Justice, built in
1632, was replaced, or rather masked, by the present
heavy piazzaed frontage, surmounted by sphinxes that
not inappropriately guard the portals of the law. The
stone figures of" Justice " and " Mercy " that ornamented
the chief doorway have lately been recovered from a
backgarden in Drummond Place, and occupy a place in
the Parliament Hall. The Square is still on most days
a quiet haven to which one can retire from the stir of the
High Street, and call up the visions of the past. For
three centuries and a half the great and the learned of
the land have paced the stones ; counsellors of state,

49 D

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

nobles, and bishops have stood here in high and hot
debate ; the spot has witnessed feasts over which
Royalty presided, and scenes of riot and bloodshed ;
many a poor wretch has taken his last look of the free
sky over the pinnacles of St Giles from the plainstones
of Parliament Square. If spirits walk, it should be
thronged with the ghosts of the eccentric old judges and
the famous advocates who passed in and out so many
hundred times in their lives; and those "maggots of
the law," Peter Peebles and Saddletree, should still be
furtively haunting the place that once held them, soul
and body.

But for many hours of the day almost the only
visible figure in the close may be the leaden, bandy-
legged, and begarlanded Charles II., " bestriding a tun-
bellied charger," and seeming, as R. L. Stevenson says,
to be strolling clumsily ,away from his dangerous
neighbour, John Knox, whose grave, marked simply by
the initials and the date 1572, is a few yards behind.
Opposite is the door of the Court of Justiciary, and in
the south-west corner, under the arcade, the entrance to
the Great Hall of Parliament, now familiarly known as
the "Parliament Lobby." Where the three Scottish
Estates once met under one roof, counsel in black gowns
and powdered wigs walk up and down, if the Court be
sitting, in earnest discourse with agents or clients, or
tourists drop in and stare around upon the effigies of the
mighty men of law ranged round the walls.

A noble and lofty chamber, 1 20 feet in length, and
with a fine old oak roof as its chief ornament, is this
" hall of lost footsteps " of the Scottish Bar ; and it
holds mementoes of the forms and faces— or, at the
least, of the heraldic bearings — of nearly the whole line

The Hall of Lost Footsteps

of illustrious lawyers and statesmen who have graced
the Court of Session since its institution in 1532 by
James V. — the scene depicted on the stained glass of
the great southern window, below which once stood the
royal throne. The great legal and judicial dynasties of
the Dundases of Arniston and the Dalrymples of Stair
are represented by picture, statue, and bust in this
Gallery of Justice ; here, too, are brilliant and familiar
ornaments of the bench and bar, like Henry Erskine,
Henry Cockburn, and Francis Jeffrey ; men who left a
deep mark, sinister or otherwise, on the national history
and on the statute book, such as the " Bluidy
Mackenzie " and Lord President Duncan Forbes ;
judges of the old hard-drinking school — the Newtons,
the Eskgroves, and their compeers — whose judgments
from the bench were flavoured by broad Scots and
sometimes by broad jokes ; and other eminent lawyers,
Mansfield and Brougham among them, who cast only
a reflected or a meteor-like light on the Scottish Courts.
One misses, in the ranks of faces that look down from
its walls, that of Walter Scott. Yet the " Shirra " is the
true genius of the place ; his favourite seat by the fire
is pointed out ; his burly form, crowned by the white
" peak " at which Lord " Peter " Robertson once threw
a jest that was returned with usury, still seems to
hobble back and forth among the other shadows of the
Parliament Hall. It is still, says rumour, a mart and
exchange for gossip; and the brotherhood of the
briefless, with whom Stevenson served his apprentice-
ship, are said to devote themselves, in the dearth of
other work, to the manufacture of " good stories."

But grave business is also done here ; and the
Macer mounts his box in the Lobby, to call the cases

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

that come before the Lords Ordinary of the Outer
House, no longer compelled to deal out justice at
" side-bars " within the Great Hall, but relegated to the
seclusion of four small court-rooms at its southern end ;
or to summon witnesses and litigants before the judges
of the Inner House, who sit in two Divisions, in groups
of four, to hear appeals in civil causes.

Three Libraries, attached to three important legal
bodies, find housing in the precincts of the Parliament
House. One is that of the Solicitors before the
Supreme Courts, whose quarters are in a handsome and
ornate new building of red stone dominating the
Cowgate. The Signet Library, peculiarly rich in works
of Scottish antiquity and topography, is accommodated
in two spacious halls — the upper one remarkable for its
beauty of design and ornament — in the north-western
wing of the Parliament buildings, adjoining St Giles
and the High Street. Older and more famous is the
Advocates' Library, of which Sir George Mackenzie
was founder in the seventeenth century, and David
Hume librarian in the eighteenth.

Since it was burned out of its original quarters by
the fire of 1700, the Advocates' Library has been
lodged chiefly in the " Laigh Parliament House,"
underneath the Great Hall. In the descent to this
somewhat dim and musty world of books, one is
reminded of the free field of acted history, by the Earl
Marshal's pennon, carried at Flodden by " Black John
Skirving." The long, low chamber, with its many-
arched recesses crammed from floor to ceiling with
books, is alleged, by unauthenticated tradition, to have
been the place of question and torture of the prisoners
brought before the Privy Council in the " Killing

52

The Advocates' Library

Time." Some half a million volumes of books and
manuscripts, some of them of a rarity and value beyond
price, are collected here and in the neighbouring apart-
ments ; and among the relics laid open to the eyes of
the visitor are the " King's Confession," Scotland's
renunciation of the Papacy ; the " Solemn League," by
which, two generations later, the nation abjured
Prelacy ; holograph letters of Mary Stewart and of her
great-grandsons, Charles II. and James VII. ; illumin-
ated missals and breviaries ; old black-letter editions of
the classics; and last, not least, the original MS. of
" Waverley," all fitly presided over by a seated figure of
Sir Walter.

The closes on the north side of High Street are as
much crammed with history and haunted by legend as
their neighbours opposite. Time has, if possible, laid
his hand on them more heavily. In one respect, at
least, they have an immense advantage over the alleys
across the way. These dive down, by paths often foul
as well as narrow and slippery, into the murky and
unlovely depths of the Cowgate. The north side closes
are still steeper. Winds from the sea and from the
hills blow freely through some of them ; peeping down
the entries as you walk westward you get an occasional
glimpse, charming as it is surprising, of the sky and the
trees, of the busy crowd and stately frontage of Princes
Street, and beyond these of the Firth and the Fife
hills, when you only looked for an obscure vista of
smoke-grimed dwellings.

Some of these closes have been so swept and
garnished as to lose almost all trace of their former
identity. From the Old Stamp Office Close has been
entirely cleared away Fortune's Tavern, where Assembly

53

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

levees have been held ; where once lived the Countess
of Eglinton, to whom Allan Ramsay dedicated his
" Gentle Shepherd," and possessor, along with her
seven beautiful daughters, of the " Eglinton air "
admired even by the bearish author of " Rasselas."
The Anchor Close and Craig's Close long gave access
to the premises of the Scotsman newspaper ; Dr John
Hill Burton, Professor Blackie, and Alexander Russel
have been among the host of later notabilities, in
letters and journalism, who have been familiar with the
Anchor stairs and the legends preserved above its door-
ways. But the literary history of the close began long
before. Putting aside the tradition of " Queen Mary's
Council Chamber," it was here, under Daunie Douglas's
roof-tree, that the "Crochallan Fencibles" met, with
"blythe Willie Smellie" as presiding genius, and Burns
as a guest. As tavern, or as printing-house, the
"howff" in the Anchor Close has known the faces of a
host of the Scottish literati of the last century and a
half, from the time of Hume and Blair, and Beattie and
Henry Mackenzie downward. Nor can less be said of
the brilliant past of dingy Craig's Close. Here was the
"heigh booth" of old Andro Hart, the printer; here,
two centuries later, Provost Creech held his morning
levees ; here also was the headquarters of Constable,
and of the " Edinburgh Reviewers " ; and in the " Isle
of Man Tavern" Robert Fergusson, David Herd,
Raeburn, and other heroes of the Cape Club spent their
evenings in " mirth, music, and porter deepest-dyed."

The Royal Exchange buildings, in which the
Municipality made its home after abandoning its gloomy
quarters in the Laigh Council House, took the place of
a cluster of ancient houses and closes, of which only a

54

[To face page 54.

The Municipal Museum

faint memory remains. With Mary King's Close
disappeared a host of gruesome ghosts and traditions.
By the entrance to the Exchange quadrangle stood the
" ludging " of the Lord Provost of the day, Sir Simon
Preston of Craigmillar, to which Mary, Queen of Scots,
was conducted by the Edinburgh rabble after her
surrender to the Lords of the Congregation, and where
she slept for the last time in her capital. Clerihugh's
Tavern, in Writers' Court, the scene of the " high jinks "
described in " Guy Mannering," has, as already noted,
been incorporated in the addition recently made to the
Council Chambers.

At the back, these Municipal Buildings rise to a
height of nine or ten storeys, and seem to overhang,
like a sheer cliff, the winding Cockburn Street below.
Within they accommodate, along with the offices of the
burgh officials, a little Municipal Museum, where one
can examine a collection of curious and interesting
mementoes of the old burghal life — carved and inscribed
door lintels, weights and measures, bells and water-pipes ;
the veritable muskets and Lochaber axes in use during
the Porteous Riots, and other " auld nick-nackets " — and
perhaps even more interesting still, a fine series of pictures
in oil and of water-colour drawings and engravings of
the Edinburgh of the past, and, in a separate room, a
valuable collection of Burns's MSS. and other relics of the
National Bard. To the west they now extend to
Warriston Close, steepest of the steep Edinburgh alleys,
whose " steps," plunging down to the level of Waverley
Bridge, have been climbed by many generations of
" town's bairns." It is named after that dour champion
of the Covenant, Johnston of Warriston, who suffered
ignominious death not many yards from the close-head.

55

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

His house had belonged at an earlier date to his
maternal grandfather, the great feudal lawyer, Sir
Thomas Craig, and Cromwell and his officers are believed
to have been entertained here. But the researches of
Mr Robert Miller appear to have established the fact
that Warriston Close had a more illustrious " indweller "
— that where the extension to the Council Chambers
has been built stood the real " John Knox's House," where
the leader of the Scottish Reformation lived during five or
six of the most memorable years of his own and of the
nation's life ; that it was the house to which he brought
home his young bride ; where he supped and held
counsel with ambassadors and nobles ; and whither he
returned, weary enough no doubt, from fiery preachings
in St Giles, or not less fiery interviews with the Queen
at Holyrood.

The east side of Warriston Close has long been
occupied by the printing-house founded by the two
brothers, William and Robert Chambers — one, the
restorer of St Giles, and the other the writer of the
" Traditions of Edinburgh." Further on come Roxburgh
Close, once the town residence of the Kerrs of Cessford,
Earls and afterwards Dukes of Roxburgh; and then
Advocates' Close, named after the astute Revolution
lawyer and King's Advocate, Stewart of Goodtrees,
known to his contemporaries as "Jamie Wylie." We
may imagine Colonel Mannering and Dandie Dinmont
stumbling down the narrow passage, for in it lived
Andrew Crosbie, the original of Councillor Pleydell.
Byres' Close has been nigh-hand squeezed out of exist-
ence. Yet here is a fragment of the stately ancient
mansion, with gables and finialed dormer windows
commanding a grand prospect to the north, in which

56

ADVOCATE'S CLOSE.

From a water colour by James Heron.

Historic Closes

of old abode that time-serving prelate, Adam Bothwell,
Bishop of Orkney and Commendator of Holyrood, who,
after officiating at the ill-starred marriage of Mary
Stewart to the Earl of Bothwell, afterwards placed
the crown on the head of Mary's son. The Queen
herself has feasted in this house ; and so too has
James VI., in the time of the Bishop's successor, Lord
Holyroodhouse, who accompanied his royal master to
England ; and it was the home of the unhappy Lady
Anne Bothwell, of the ballad.

St Giles Street has broken through the ranks of the
High Street houses, whose back lands and gardens
descended, over ground now covered by the Bank of
Scotland and Market Street, to the Town Wall and the
Nor' Loch. The stump of Dunbar's Close is left, but
nearly all trace is lost of the " Rose and Thistle," where
Cromwell's troopers are said to have been quartered ;
while, through the changes in the thoroughfare, the sites
of Beth's Wynd, Adamson's Close, and Fullarton Wynd,
on the opposite side of the way, have become somewhat
conjectural. These ancient alleys, often mentioned in
old Edinburgh annals, occupied ground on or beside
which now stand the statue of the fifth Duke of
Buccleuch and the Midlothian County Buildings. Until
a few years ago, the County business was transacted in
a structure which presented handsome facades of fluted
Ionic columns towards St Giles and the High Street,
and its " seamy side " to George IV. Bridge, where the
passenger, by looking over a low wall, could get a peep
of a narrow passage marking the line of a more cele-
brated High Street close. This was Libberton's Wynd,
memorable for having at its head the scaffold on which
Burke, the murderer, and many other criminals suffered

57

From the Tron to the Castle Hill

the law's last sentence ; and in its lower recesses,
" Johnie Bowie's " — the " Mermaid Tavern " of the
Edinburgh of a hundred years ago — a convivial haunt
of Robert Burns and of his cronies, William Nichol and
Allan Masterton.

The Midlothian authorities have lately replaced the
former County Buildings by a structure, appropriate to
the fine site, that affords more ample accommodation and
present a more seemly frontage to George IV. Bridge.
The name of that wide and handsome street, which here
branches south from the High Street in the direction of
Bristo Port, is a memorial of the visit to Edinburgh of
the " First Gentleman in Europe," whose presence in his
Scottish capital filled its citizens, with Sir Walter Scott
at their head, with loyal enthusiasm. It was one of the
Old Town improvements begun before the close of
George IV.'s reign. Its formation entailed the destruc-
tion of a number of ancient tenements, besides those of
Libberton's Wynd, none of them, however, so well
worthy of preservation as Robert Gourlay's House, in
the Old Bank Close, on whose site now rises the Tudor
frontage of Melbourne Place. " Gourlay's House," lying
conveniently near the Tolbooth, and the property of a
wealthy servitor of James VI., was a frequent scene of
" ward " and refuge in the troublous years at the latter
end of the sixteenth century. The Regent Morton
ranged restlessly up and down the floor of one of its
chambers, " clanking on his finger and his thowmbe," on
the night before his head was set up " on a prick on the
highest gable of the Tolbooth." The King himself
took shelter in it from the lawless attempts of Francis,
Earl of Bothwell. The Earl of Huntly and Kirkaldy
of Grange were among those held in ward in the Old

58

[ To /ace pagre 58.

Old Bank Close

Bank Close, where also occurred, in the year of the
Revolution, the deliberate slaughter, at his own door, of
Sir George Lockhart, President of the Court of Session,
by Chiesley of Dairy.

At the foot of this historic close, which drew its
designation from the fact that the first Bank of Scotland
was housed up its dark entry before removal to the
breezy front of the Mound, was the dwelling in which
the great lawyer, Sir Thomas Hope, founder of the
House of Hopetoun, lived at the time when he helped
to frame the Solemn League and Covenant. The
site is now covered by the Free Library — the gift to
the town of Mr Andrew Carnegie — which rises from
the " dark profound " of the Cowgate, and contributes,
with the Sheriff-Court Buildings and other public
structures, to the architectural effect of George IV.
Bridge.

Bank Street, which continues that thoroughfare at
right angles with the High Street, is an outlet of much
older date from the contracted heart of the Old Town.
Down its winding track, and over the Earthen Mound,
has flowed northward for a century, and still flows, the
stream of Edinburgh's notables, when the hour comes
for their release from the Courts and the Council
Chambers in the High Street. Walter Scott and
Lockhart have often sauntered by this airy road towards
Castle Street, admiring the grandeur of the view, or
discussing the next Waverley novel as they went ; and
Christopher North and Aytoun, with perhaps the
" Shepherd " in tow, have strolled by the Mound to the
New Town, purposing a halfway halt at " Maga's."

59

CHAPTER VI

THE LAWNMARKET AND THE CASTLE HILL

As is now usually reckoned, the Lawnmarket begins
where the line of High Street is intersected at Bank
Street. No longer are its causeys occupied by the
canvas booths of the merchants in lawn and other
woven stuffs from whom it took its name. It is many
a day since the Weigh-house, or " Butter Tron," at the
head of the West Bow, intercepted the prospect Castle-
wards. Dealers in butter and other farm produce, as
well as the sellers of cloth, held their fair in this spacious
" place," almost under the guns of the citadel. It was
the old city's " West End," in which ambassadors and
other visitors of consideration had what was then
thought princely lodging.

At the gateway at the Bow Head, receptions were
given to guests whom Edinburgh delighted to honour.
Thus, at the first coming from France of the fair young
Queen of Scots, welcome was given to her, by a quaint
and ingenious allegory, at the Butter Tron, From a
cloud emerged a " Bonny Bairn," who presented her
with a Bible and a Psalm Book, before "the cloud
steikit," and the bright vision disappeared from sight —
a more significant emblem of Mary's fortunes than
devisers or onlookers imagined. In later as well as

60

THE BOW-HEAD AND LAWNMARKET.
(From a water-colour after W. L. Leitch.)

[Tojacepage 60.

The Lawnmarket

earlier times, the Lawnmarket Weigh-house was used
as a redoubt or blockhouse in defence or attack of the
Castle. Cromwell employed it for both purposes in
1650, finally clearing away the original building, which,
to judge by old prints, had a spire and other picturesque
features. It was " re-edified," in a mean style, at the
Restoration ; and was turned to account, during his
blockade of the Castle, by Prince Charles Edward,
whose officers had their quarters in the adjoining
Milne's Court; finally, it was cleared away in 1822 to
make room for the public entry of George the Fourth.

Till quite recently, two or three of its once character-
istic timber-fronted lands beetled over the Lawnmarket;
one in particular, at the head of West Bow — in which
the founder of the publishing firm of Nelson began
business in a humble way— will be long remembered
and regretted. There were forestairs and " low-browed
shops," in which the imagination could, without difficulty,
place the " Nag's Head," kept by Mrs Saddletree, in the
Lawnmarket, with Effie Deans as " servant lass." Most
of its genuinely archaic features have now gone. But
there are still few street vistas in Europe that excel in
bold pictorial effect the view of the Lawnmarket and
the Castle Hill, whether one gazes back upon it from
the Castle and the Esplanade, or looks up the winding
and narrowing defile towards the battlements of the
citadel. The pavements are raised several steps above
the level of the roadway ; the lofty houses have still, in
gables and windows, some reminiscences of their former
picturesqueness ; while the Assembly Hall spire is a
graceful object in the middle distance.

In the Lawnmarket closes improvements of new and
old date have made a complete transmogrification. To

61

The Lawnmarket and the Castle Hill

the south, where the gardens of the town house of the
Dukes of Buccleuch once sloped all the way down to
the Cowgate, the descent of the remanent alleys is
arrested halfway by the piazzaed terrace of Victoria
Street, overhanging the winding thoroughfare which is
now the chief access to the Grassmarket ; while the
" sanctified bends of the Bow," the quarters of Knights
Templar and Hospitallers, and afterwards of elect saints of
the Covenant and turbulent workers in leather and hard-
ware, are represented mainly by steep flights of stairs.
To the north, the tall walls of the back lands that
domineer over Bank Street and the Mound are already
of an age and standing that entitle them to be counted
among the city antiquities.

There has been of late a gutting-out of historic
Lawnmarket closes, and an open space now extends
from James's Court on the west to Paterson's and
Baxter's Closes on the east. Entering the latter by an
archway wide enough for an Old Edinburgh street, you
can glance from the black-letter inscription on the lintel
let into the wall on the right to the tenement on the
left, within which, one stair up, Burns found humble
lodgings, at is. 6d. per week, with his early friend,
Richmond, when he made his first acquaintance with
Edinburgh society. Lady Stair's Close — before Bank
Street the chief access from the High Street to the
Mound — is immediately adjoining, and Lord Rosebery
has made a gift to the town, after restoration, of the fine
old mansion, built by Sir William Gray of Pittendrum
in 1622. It takes its name from a Countess-Dowager of
Stair who occupied it in the first half of the eighteenth
century, the mother-in-law of the more celebrated Lady
Stair, who " led Edinburgh fashion in the second flat of

62

David Hume at Home

a common stair in a narrow Old Town close," and who
saw, in the time of her first marriage, with Viscount
Primrose, the vision of her peccant husband's bridal in
the Low Countries, as told us in the tale of " My Aunt
Margaret's Mirror."

The Lawnmarket front of this close has been known
since the early part of the seventeenth century as
Gladstone's Land, so named after a worthy burgher
belonging to the same vigorous Border family as the
famous Prime Minister of the name. Its face has altered
of late. But, continuing the exploration of the linked
series of closes behind, one can view in James's Court the
front of a solid and lofty " land," which the years have
altered only by making more weather-beaten and soot-
begrimed since David Hume moved into it, when George
the Third had been two years on the throne. David —
" a fine, guid-natured cratur, but waik-minded," as his
mother described him — had been a tenant of Riddle's
Close, on the opposite side of the Lawnmarket, and had
plunged down into the jaws of the Canongate as far as
Jack's Close before he came to reside in James's Court.

Hume had been content in his home over the way
with " a maid and a cat, cleanliness, warmth, light, and
plenty." And he was happy also here, where his house-
keeping was on a rather more ambitious scale. His
"History" now off his hands, he had more time to
entertain his friends — Adam Smith, Drs Robertson and
Blair, Lord Kames, and the rest — who looked with him
from his windows in the third storey of James's Court
(twice that height above the Mound behind) over the
Nor' Loch and the beginnings of the New Town, to the
Forth and the Fife hills. So much in his element did
the cheerful philosopher feel in his Lawnmarket refuge,

63

The Lawnmarket and the Castle Hill

that when he returned to it from his short experience
of diplomacy and Paris high life, he wrote that he was
settled in James's Court, " body and soul." Yet a few
years later he is found in the first flight of fashion
across the Valley. Boswell afterwards tenanted these
historic chambers, and played the host in them to Paoli
and to Dr Johnson, who, while gambolling clumsily
among the Edinburgh wits, and earning from the wife
of his biographer the title of " Ursa Major," little
dreamed that he had been " entrapped into the arch-
sceptic's very mansion."

Riddle's Close, on the south side of the Lawnmarket,
of which mention has just been made as connected with
Hume and his " History," is one of the best preserved
and most interesting of the Old Edinburgh alleys.
Here, as across the highway, are apparent the taste and
enterprise of Professor Geddes and his associates, who,
in their restorations of Old High Street buildings, have
had in view not merely the preservation of their
picturesque features, but high social and educational
purposes. The close forms a double courtyard, and
the inner sanctuary especially has an air of seclusion
and distinction rarely met with in these days as an
element of the picturesque in the former haunts of Auld
Reekie fashion and letters. Nearly all these closes
have changed their designations more than once in
their time, and this one was long named after Bailie
MacMorran, a worthy magistrate slain in a riot of the
High School boys more than three centuries since. His
house appears to have been occasionally used for civic
entertainments. It is at present occupied as a Mission
and Lecture Hall by the United Free High Church.
King James and his Queen, Anne of Denmark, are said

64

SOMERVILLE'S LAND, LA.WNMARKBT
(From a drawing by B. J. Home.)

[ To face page 64.

Deacon Brodie

to have been feasted, at a banquet given in honour of
the Duke of Holstein, in the principal chamber, which
continues, like the rest of this typical example of
the sixteenth-century town mansion of the better class,
to possess features that are reminiscent of its period
and history. A neighbouring portal invites one to
explore it, not so much by its aspect as by the label it
bears of " Brodie's Close." Within it was the house of
the " Jekyll and Hyde " of Edinburgh domestic annals
and traditions — of that " Deacon - Convener of the
Wrights " whose twofold life of villainy and industry —
of reputable citizenship and of midnight gambling and
burglary — has made a mark in the memory of the town
and of the world. It is the world's way that earlier and
worthier possessors and name-fathers of this Lawn-
market block — the learned and generous Littles of
Craigmillar, who were founders of the University and
its library — should be forgotten, and the infamous
William Brodie held in perpetual remembrance.

At its head, beyond the West Bow and the site of the
Weigh-house, the Lawnmarket tapers into the Castle
Hill, which widens suddenly into the spacious and airy
promenade and exercise-ground of the Esplanade, lying
directly under the guns of the Half-Moon Battery, and
overlooking Princes Street and its gardens, on the north
and on the south the crowded gables and chimney-pots
of the Grassmarket and the West Port. To the left
deviates the comparatively modern thoroughfare of
Johnston Terrace, winding towards St Cuthbert's Church
round the southern front of the Castle Rock, whose
cliffs, tufted with wild flowers and crowned by the walls
and battlements of the citadel, rise sheer above the
roadway, while the ground on the other side slopes

65 B

The Lawnmarket and the Castle Hill

rapidly down to the Grassmarket and the King's
Stables Road.

Scott's "Kittle Nine Steps" have been blasted
away in the interest of public safety. But, straining
the eyes, one can discern, above the trees and shrubs
that screen the western and more accessible side of the
Rock, the postern, with an inscription over it, to which
"Bonnie Dundee" climbed to hold parley with the
Duke of Gordon, the Governor of the Castle, before
riding away to raise the standard of King James in the
North. Continuing the route by the West Princes
Street garden walks and the ruins of the Wellhouse
Tower, under the overhanging crag surmounted by the
Argyle Battery, one can complete the circuit of the
Rock, returning by the Castle Braes back to the Castle
Hill.

This access from the city to the citadel makes a great
figure in local history. It is the neck which unites the
trunk of Old Edinburgh — the High Street — with its head,
the Castle. Before the ground was levelled and " made
up," about the middle of last century, with earth and
rubbish from the foundations of the New City Chambers,
the narrow ridge on which the Castle Hill houses are
built continued in an uneven line to the portal and
drawbridge of the Castle. On this scrimp space of
" debateable land " once stood stake, gallows, and
heading block. Witches and warlocks have been
"worried" on the Castle Hill; "heretics" have been
burned, and traitors — real or suspected — done to death
with tortures, king, nobles, and people looking on.
Here was the scene of the cruel execution of the
beautiful Lady Glamis, suspected of practising sorcery
against the life of James V., her imprisoned husband

66

Castle Hill Scenes

and son spectators of her death from the Castle walls
above. The first smoke of the martyrs of the Reforma-
tion went up from this high place.

The Castle Hill has been an avenue of State pro-
cessions in days when Edinburgh Castle was a royal
residence and Parliament met on the summit of the
Rock ; and the site of the Esplanade was constituted,
by royal mandate, part of the soil of Nova Scotia, in
order that money might be coined by the investiture in
batches of Charles I.'s " baronets of Nova Scotia."
Naturally, this single way of approach to the Castle
has witnessed struggles that decided for a time the fate
of city and kingdom ; and tradition has it that a cannon
ball lodged in the wall of an old building, the most
westerly of the Castle Hill houses, facing the " King's
Bastion," and bearing the date 1630, was the last shot
fired from the guns of Edinburgh Castle in the Scottish
civil wars. This was, of course, in the '45, since when
the " Hill of Strife- and Sorrow" has had time to gather
associations of a more pacific and cheerful kind. The
slopes of the Castle Hill were favourite resorts of the
sweethearting couples of last century ; the " cits "
poured hither from the closes to take the air and to
display their finery ; " wagering " on the green and
open promenade was a form of Sunday desecration
denounced by our stricter forefathers. Crowds still
come to this high place of the city to listen to military
music, and to watch the martial exercises of the
garrison, or to look abroad over the roofs of the Old
Town and the New.

On both sides of the Castle Hill there formerly con-
gregated a number of ancient and stately houses, some
of which had in their day official relations with their

The Lawnmarket and the Castle Hill

neighbour, the Castle. The " Palace " of Mary of Guise
was one of the buildings which had to make way for
the Free Church College and Assembly Hall. Outside
and inside it had many curious architectural features,
in moulded doorways, carved panels, and secret
oratories ; but in its best days it must have been an
inconvenient royal residence. All the more easy was it
to connect this grim lodging with the troublous
experiences of the Queen Regent, brought up in the
gay Court of France, when she attempted to guide the
fortunes of the rough Northern Kingdom. It stood
conveniently near the Castle; and the same could be
said yet more emphatically of the " Gordon House," in
which a Duchess of Gordon lived while her husband
held the citadel for King James at the Revolution
of 1689.

A Board School has now partly usurped the site ;
and the remains of the other " seats of the mighty " on
the Castle Hill — the town houses of great nobles and
country magnates — are few and dwindling. The
names of half-demolished closes recall the fact that
the Semples of Castle Semple — a house whose branches
produced more than one writer of vigorous vernacular
verse — dwelt on the Castle Hill, and that opposite was
the house in which that impetuous rider and fighter,
Sir David Baird of Seringapatam, spent his boyhood.
Ramsay Lane is supposed to be consecrate to the
memory, not of Allan of the " Gentle Shepherd," but
to an early " Laird of Cockpen." But with the cheery
little poet who, with a fine eye to situation, built his
" goose-pie " villa on the edge of the Castle Braes, when
he had made a little competency by his barbering, his
song-writing and other literary ventures, the locality

68

The Head- streams of Presbytery

will always be associated. Ramsay Lodge, in these
days, forms the core of a group of buildings imposingly
and picturesquely disposed on the northern slope and
crest of the Hill, in which the enterprise of Professor
Patrick Geddes has housed one of his " University
Halls," and where the traditions of the spot are duly
reverenced and perpetuated. The adjoining " Outlook
Tower " — of which only the lower storeys have a claim to
antiquity — is another centre of culture, and is identified
with the various schemes, geographical and sociological,
which owe their origin to Professor Geddes.

Since the days when it was found necessary to
supplement the town wells with a supply drawn in
pipes from the Comiston springs, under the brow of
Pentland, Edinburgh has looked up to the Water
House on the Castle Hill, and to the rock-founded
Reservoir which has succeeded it, for the indispens-
able boon of water. To the same high quarter, not the
capital alone, but Presbyterian Scotland, has long been
accustomed, during one season of the year at least, to
turn expectant eyes in search of guidance and refresh-
ment in the ecclesiastical questions which fill so con-
siderable a place in the national consciousness. Since
the Disruption of 1843 a double stream has flowed
from this source. The General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland meets and deliberates in the grace-
ful building (occupied also as the Tolbooth Church)
crowned by Gillespie Graham's far-seen spire, placed
at the junction of the Castle Hill with Johnston Terrace.
" Over the way " is the United Free Church head-
quarters, already referred to, which front the Mound
with two square towers, and with Divinity College,
Church, and Assembly Hall enclose a quadrangle in

69

The Lawnmarket and the Castle Hill

which stands a recently erected statue of John Knox,
the genius loci. These possessions have been restored,
under an Act of Parliament, to the Church which
represents the Union, in 1900, of the United Presby-
terian Church (itself an earlier combination of the
Relief and Secession Churches) with the main body of
the Church of the Disruption, after the momentous
House of Lords decision of August 1904, which decreed
that the property of the Free Church belonged to the
"faithful remnant" who refused to enter into alliance
with Voluntaryism. This residue, the Free Church of
to-day — familiarly known as the " Wee Frees " — meet
close by in Johnston Terrace, and their offices, from
which the larger body have been ejected, face the
Mound. So that the " double stream " of Presbyterian
Church life has now become threefold. Black-coated
ministers and elders, with their womankind, cluster like
bees in the precincts of these ecclesiastical parliaments
during the May meetings; and within the walls are
occasionally heard the sounds of heated controversy as
well as those of grave and earnest debate.

70

[To face page 70.

CHAPTER VII

THE CASTLE

THE beginnings of the history of Edinburgh Castle are,
as the phrase runs, "lost in the mist of antiquity."
Much ink, as well as blood, has been spilt over the site
of this " Maiden Castle," overhanging the " Vale
Dolorous." Historians, philologists, archaeologists have
disputed concerning its names and traditions and their
origin and meaning, and have succeeded mainly in
darkening counsel with their multitude of words. Dim
glimpses of the Rock of Dunedin are caught in Saxon
annals ; vague echoes of the name are heard in Arthurian
legend. The Romans built roads and formed camps
in the neighbourhood ; the military genius of that great
people could not have overlooked the advantages of
the wonderful natural stronghold, which rose like an
island out of its protecting marshes, and dominated the
fertile low country between the Forth and the hills,
afterwards known as Lothian. Edwin, the Northum-
brian King who is supposed to have founded the. burgh
on the adjoining ridge and to have called it by his
name, could not have failed to occupy and fortify the
Rock which commanded the town. But the authentic
records of Edinburgh Castle begin long after his time ;
and we reach solid ground of history only when we

71

The Castle

come down to the days of Malcolm Canmore and
Saint Margaret.

There can be no doubt that Malcolm with the Big
Head — the Malcolm of Shakespeare's " Macbeth " — and
his beautiful and pious Queen made the "Castrum
Puellarum " a place of refuge and of residence, and that
they have left a memorial of their presence in the
little church they built upon its highest platform.
The capital was still at Dunfermline, almost visible
beyond the Firth from the door of St Margaret's
Chapel, and more than three centuries were to elapse
before the Scottish Court and seat of Government
were finally to settle in Edinburgh. The pleasures
of the hunt may have drawn them, for the wild country
that surrounded the Castle was, in those days, full of
beasts of the chase. But no doubt, also, they came
hither for the purpose of overawing and controlling the
Southern and Anglian part of the Kingdom, which was
already leavening the Celtic North with a new culture
and speech ; it was a first step towards the union of the
two ends of the island.

However this may be, the saintly Queen Margaret
was living here in the lowering days of November 1093,
in a fortress and royal lodging all trace of which has
disappeared, but whose form may be traditionally
handed down in the three towers of the city's arms.
With her were her younger children, three of whom
were to be kings, while a third became the Queen
of Henry Beauclerc. She was awaiting news of her
husband and her eldest son, who were fighting in
Northumbria, and when the tidings came of their death,
the frail thread was cut of her own life, worn by sick-
ness and the long vigils in her oratory, of which Bishop

72

[To face page 72.

St Margaret and St David

Turgot tells us. The Castle was immediately invested
by the usurping Donald Bane, and the orphan children
were smuggled away by the western Sally Port, where
long years afterwards Claverhouse held parley with the
Governor. By the same precipitous pathway Margaret's
body was lowered, and, hidden from the enemy's eyes by
a miraculous mist, was borne to its resting-place across
the " Queen's Ferry."

The next to leave his mark upon the Rock was
Margaret's son David, the " Sair Sanct." While hunting
in the neighbouring forest of Drumsheugh on Rood
Day, 1128, he was assailed, in a lonely valley with
precipitous crags on either hand, by a wonderful white
hart with a cross between its antlers. In memory of
the vision and his escape he vowed to found a monastery
on the spot, where accordingly arose the famous Abbey
of Holyrood, planted with Augustinian canons. But,
for long, the monks of Holyrood had to house in the
Castle, and even that airy lodging was not particularly
safe and conducive to quiet religious meditation. It fell
for the first time into the hands of the English as a
pledge for the surrender of William the Lion, captured
at Alnwick, and was given up as part of the dowry of
his Queen, Ermengard.

Another royal lady from the south, Margaret,
daughter of Henry III. of England, found the Rock "a
sad and solitary place" until she and her young
husband, Alexander III., found means to escape from
the clutches of the Scots nobles who kept them apart.
Edinburgh Castle seems to have had its full share of the
"gamyn and glee" of this reign — the Golden Age of
Scotland. But days of peril and disaster were
near. Edward Longshanks captured it in 1291, and

73

The Castle

again in 1296; Wallace recovered it, but for the third
time in a few years it was besieged and taken by the
English, and it was still in their hands in 1311 when
Randolph made his daring and successful midnight
escalade of the rocks behind the Wellhouse Tower.
That ancient structure, by the way, with the Wellhouse
or " Wallace " Cradle — the fragment of masonry on the
cliff above — formed the means by which the garrison
obtained and protected their water supply from St
Margaret's Spring, and by a natural but mistaken
association of sounds the names have become identified
with the exploits of the Scottish Liberator.

For many years the Castle Rock lay dismantled and
desolate ; and the next native monarch who has stamped
his name on its history was David II., the last male
descendant of the Bruce, who, after it had been once
again cleverly captured from the English by Sir
William Douglas, built the lofty keep on the highest
summit of the Rock, known as " David's Tower,"
destroyed long afterwards, along with the fragment
left of "Queen Margaret's Tower," in the siege of 1573.
Here the second David died ; here the early Stewart
Kings entertained ambassadors from France and legates
of the Pope ; from hence the unfortunate young Duke of
Rothesay sent a message to Henry IV. of England,
then vainly besieging the Castle, to meet him in knightly
combat ; on its battlements the Duke of Albany, seeing
a bright meteor flash over Fife, a little before the
miserable death of his nephew in Falkland, pointed to
it as presaging the fell of some great prince — thus
" prophesying the thing that he did know." Then came
Queen Jane Beaufort fleeing hither for shelter after the
murder of her husband, the poet-king James I., in the

74

The Floddcn Wall

Blackfriars at Perth, and carrying with her the young
James II., whom she had to rescue later from the hands
of the ambitious Chancellor Crichton, by smuggling him
outside the walls in an " ark " or clothes-chest A year
or two afterwards the seed of the " Douglas Wars " was
sown in this spot, when, as a signal for their treacherous
slaughter, the " black bull's head " was set on the board
at the feast to which the two young heirs of the House
of Douglas were invited in the new Banqueting Hall-
Edinburgh Castle, town and tower,

God grant thou sink for sin ;
And that even for the black dinour

Earl Douglas gat therein.

About the middle of the fifteenth century measures
were taken to surround the town and the outer defences
of the Castle with walls, perhaps in addition to, or in
substitution for, earlier and weaker defences. They
were afterwards strengthened and extended by the
building of the " Flodden Wall," and they embraced
within their limits the whole of the Old Town from the
Canongate to the Castle, and from the Greyfriars to the
Nor' Loch. This latter, which is said to have been
formed, but which more probably was only enlarged
and deepened, in 1450, made a sufficient defence on the
north ; and on other sides there were " ports " or gates
of entrance and egress — among them the West Portf
the Bristo Port, the Potterow Port, the Cowgate Port]
and, chief of all, the Netherbow Port— protected by
strong towers. Fragments of these old defences are
still to be seen at the Wellhouse Tower, where they
touched the waters of the Loch beside the spot
where Saint David is said to have cultivated his

75

The Castle

" garden of herbs " ; and also, as we shall see, in the
narrow lane of the Vennel ascending from the Grass-
market and bounding Heriot's Hospital grounds, and in
the Pleasance. The place where the " Flodden Wall "
met the base of the Castle Rock is marked by an
inscription on the Married Soldiers' Quarters lying
immediately below Queen Mary's Apartments.

These walls bound the fortunes of town and Castle
more closely together, and served, at least, their purpose
of preserving for more than a century the heart of
Scotland against sudden invasion. Even Hertford,
after he had stormed his way through the "ports,"
battered in vain against the defences of the Rock. The
Castle took the commanding part natural to it in all the
civil broils of those years of violence and unrest, when
the unhappy Kingdom suffered from long minorities,
and was the prey of faction and feud. But royalty was
gradually withdrawing from it the light of its counten-
ance, and making for itself a home of more amenity at
the other end of the city. Mary of Guise spent in the
Castle the last anxious and calamitous months of her
life, and died here in 1560, with the sound in her ears of
the guns of the Lords of the Congregation and their
English allies besieging the French garrison of Leith.
A year later the young Queen of Scots, a vision of
beauty, landed in her native Kingdom, and ascended
to this high place to take possession. Brighter days, it
seemed, were in store for Scotland ; but the fair prospect
was soon overcast. Some of Mary Stewart's best days,
however, were spent in the Palace on the Castle Rock,
which was refurnished and partly rebuilt for her use.
What are now called the Royal Apartments bear above
the doorway the monogram of Mary and of Henry,

76

Lights and Shadows

Lord Darnlcy, with the date 1566; and within, on the
ipth of June of that year, was born their son, James VI.,
destined to unite the warring kingdoms.

Yet, for nearly two hundred years to come, light and
shadow continued to chase each other in the fortunes
of Edinburgh Castle. For three years Kirkaldy of
Grange, as the " Queen's man," defended it against the
party of the Kirk and of the King, and yielded only
when the older buildings were beaten down about his
ears by the batteries sent by Elizabeth. Charles I.,
surrounded by the nobility of Scotland, held his
Coronation Banquet in the Great Hall, in 1633; but a
few years later, Alexander Leslie, the " little old crooked
soldier," and his Covenant men had blown up the gate
with a petard, and carried the fortress by assault,
surrendering it to the faithless King, only to be at
the trouble of afterwards reducing it by blockade.
Cromwell was feasted here on his first visit to Edinburgh,
but when he returned with fire and sword, he had to
march and to counter-march, to fight the battle of
Dunbar, and to batter the walls from the Castle Hill
and Heriot's Hospital before he could again taste of the
hospitality of Edinburgh Castle.

Ill-omened, it was thought, was the bursting of
" Mons Meg " in firing a salute at the coming of James,
Duke of York, to be Scotland's Governor. And the
presage was fulfilled, for in the dark days that followed,
the Castle vaults were filled with prisoners for conscience'
sake. The Earl of Argyle became one of the tenants of
the State Prison — the " Argyle Tower " — whence his
father had been led to death ; and he shared his
father's fate, notwithstanding that his daughter-in-law,
Sophia Lindsay of Balcarres, once succeeded, by her

77

The Castle

courage and presence of mind, in carrying him safely
through all the Castle guards, disguised as her lackey.
When the last of the Stewart kings fled, their ancient
capital seemed, for a time, to go mad with the new
wine of liberty. But although the populace might
wreck the Palace and Chapel Royal, and the " Lords of
Convention " proclaim William and Mary in the
Parliament House, there was Dundee to be reckoned
with outside; and the Duke of Gordon stood guard
over the Castle and the Scottish Regalia, and yielded
to the powers of the Revolution only after a gallant and
stubborn defence.

The later annals of Edinburgh Castle have been
peaceful, except for the fiasco of a Jacobite attempt at
surprise in the '15; and the rather tame exchange of
challenges, in the shape of blockade and cannonade,
when the youthful Prince Charlie held court in his
father's place in Holyrood, and the citadel was defended
by two octogenarian warriors, Generals Guest and
Preston, for King George. The fortune of war declared
itself for Age, but Romance and the " Scottish Muses "
have made themselves the partisans of Youth and the
Lost Cause. The Castle witnessed some of the last
episodes in the last struggle for the Stewarts ; for in its
vaults Jacobite prisoners, both men and women, were
detained, among them that Lady Ogilvy who made
her escape in the garb of a washerwoman, and James
Mohr Macgregor, son of Rob Roy, and father of
" Catriona." In the same dismal quarters were con-
fined the French prisoners of the Great War, not,
however, so strictly that they were without opportun-
ity of looking about them, of planning escape, and even
(if we may trust the story of " the Vicomte Anne de

78

The " Honours of Scotland ':

St Ives ") of making love in the free air of the Castle
ramparts.

Last among the romantic incidents in the annals of
the Rock may be mentioned the recovery, in the dark
and cobwebbed vault, where they had lain hidden and
almost forgotten for over one hundred years, of the
Regalia, or " Honours of Scotland." Once before in
their strange history, the " Honours " had been lost,
when they were carried away from Edinburgh to
Dunottar, to be safe from the hands of Cromwell, and
were thence secretly conveyed, by woman's wit, to the
Kirk of Kinneff, and buried at midnight under the
floor. They reappeared at the Restoration, but at the
Union they were committed to the depths of a huge
oaken chest and sealed up in their vaulted chamber,
lest the sight of the insignia of former independence
might stimulate too strongly the sentiment of Scottish
patriotism. They were raised once more out of their
grave in 1817 — Sir Walter Scott a keenly interested
onlooker. And now the Regalia — the Crown, tradi-
tionally assigned to Bruce, but re-formed and embellished
by later monarchs ; the Sword of State, presented by
Pope Julius II. to James IV. ; the Sceptre, made for
James V., and the Royal Jewels, including Charles I.'s
coronation ring, bequeathed to George IV. by Cardinal
York, the last heir of the old line of Scotland — are laid
out for all eyes to see in the " Crown Room."

Thus it may be said that nearly all that is really
venerable among the relics of its history is gathered on
the summit of the Castle Rock ; and you ascend to
these " fossils of the past " through more recent and less
precious formations. The ascent is easier than of yore,
but is still something of a trial to the short of breath.

79

The Castle

The Moat, now a dry ditch, is supposed to be cut down
to the level of the natural " Spur " of land from whence,
before the Esplanade was formed, it was necessary to
scale the Castle ; and drawbridge, gateway, and guard-
house occupy the place of the Outer Port, against which
so often the enemy has hammered in vain. Up the
steep causeway winds the road, lined on the right by
garrison buildings, while rising precipitately on the left
is the living rock, eked out by masonry, and patched
in the crevices by grass and a clinging tree or two. It
dives under the Portcullis Gate, and comes out upon
the Argyle Battery, while overhead is the Argyle or
Constable's Tower, once the State Prison. A steep
flight of steps leads past the door of this fateful building,
the upper part of which has been restored through the
liberal act of the late Mr William Nelson. So that,
with the help of a little imagination, the visitor is able
to call up the conditions and surroundings in captivity
of " Gillespie Grumach "—the " gleyed Argyle "—and of
Principal Carstaires.

By the stairs, or by an inclined way through Foog's
Gate, one reaches the King's Bastion, where, on the
highest pinnacle of the rock, commanding a surpassingly
fine view of the town and country below, the battered
form of Mons Meg mounts guard over the still more
time-worn fabric of St Margaret's Chapel. Something
of the history of these two ancient neighbours has
already been told. The Chapel, which has been much
patched in the course of the eight centuries it has stood
here, is one of the tiniest as well as oldest of places
of Christian worship in Scotland still covered by a
roof; and its apse has features that make it of

80

" Roaring Meg

peculiar interest to the student of architecture and
ecclesiology.

" Roaring Meg," now chained so immovably to her
rock, has been a traveller in her day. Name and origin
are matters of controversy ; and Gallovidians dispute
the statement that the great piece of ordnance was
forged at Mons towards the end of the fifteenth century,
contending that " Brawny Kim " of Mollance was the
artificer two generations earlier, and helped to place the
monster in position at the siege of Threave Castle.
The Exchequer Accounts appear to prove that this
" great iron murderer " was dragged, with vast toil and
trouble, to old wars and sieges in the West Country
and on the Borders ; and long after being crippled from
active service by the mischance of 1682, this great gun,
of which our forefathers had been so proud, was
ignominiously carried off to the Tower as part of the
spoils of Scotland in the '45 Rebellion, and was only
restored through the good offices of the author of
" Waverley " in 1829.

" Other times, other fashions " ; and from the
adjoining Half-Moon Battery, on the site of " David's
Tower," and beside the draw-well which in extremity
of siege was the one source of water supply of the
garrison, the Time-gun utters its peaceful daily message
in place of "Meg's" angry roar. Behind is the
entrance to the quadrangle known as the Palace
Square.

The northern side of this square is said to have
been occupied by the Castle Church, described as
a long and large Gothic building of which all trace,
beyond a few fragments of carved stones, has dis-
appeared. Barracks have taken its place and

81 F

The Castle

appropriate also the western part of the quadrangle.
The buildings of historic interest are ranged on the
eastern and southern sides, and form the Royal
Lodging and the Parliament or Banqueting Hall.
Part of the former structure was rebuilt after the
Union of the Crowns, as indicated by the style and
decoration and the date, 1615. The portion actually
associated with royal residence looks down sheerly
from the south-eastern angle of the rock on the
houses of the Grassmarket. There are separate
entrances from the Square to the Crown Room and
Queen Mary's Apartments.

Into both we have already peeped. The bare
outer chamber retains none of the sumptuous furnish-
ing bestowed on it in preparation for the residence
and accouchement of the Queen of Scots — the tapestries
of green brocaded velvet and cloth of gold bearing
the arms ot famous princes and the stories of classic,
scriptural, and mediaeval champions ; the chairs of
gilded leather and damask ; and the books, hangings,
and pictures. The Bedroom — little more than a
closet — retains the faded decorations of its panelling
and a scrap or two of furniture of dubious authenticity
Out of its window Mary must often have looked with
strangely mingled feelings of hope and fear on the
grim, grey city below, which held more foes than
friends, and on Arthur Seat, "a couchant lion, watchful
over Scotland's honour and Scotland's religion."
Here, a few hours after the birth, took place that
famous interview with Darnley in which she "spoke
daggers" to the weakling, as she showed him the
heir of three realms, brought to life in the midst of
" battle, murder, and sudden death." Some have seen

82

A Hall of Arms

the clue to yet another and secret tragedy of the
Stewart dynasty in the discovery in 1830, in a recess
of the outer Palace Wall, close to the entrance of the
Royal Apartments, of the remains of a male infant
wrapped in decayed cloth of gold bearing the letter
" I " ; the mystery, whatever it may be, has been
reburied with the bones in the place where they
were found.

The " Great Hall " of the Castle, the scene of so
many State ceremonials, festivities, and debates,
suffered much from defacement and neglect. It
was divided into floors, and long served as a garrison
hospital and dispensary. The restoration and decora-
tion of this Banqueting or Parliament Hall, as it has
been alternately called, is another of the public-spirited
works of the late Mr Nelson. The spacious room, in
which kings, princes, and ambassadors have feasted,
is now displayed in its full proportions — 80 feet in
length by 30 feet in breadth and 40 feet to the fine
open-timbered roof; the range of windows overlooking
the King's Stables and the West Port are filled in
with the armorial bearings of distinguished figures in
Scottish history ; and the old shields and embellish-
ments, dating from the time when James IV. rebuilt
or refurbished the hall for the home-coming of his
bride, Margaret Tudor, have been carefully preserved
and others added in the same style and taste. In
another sense it has become a " Hall of Arms," for
around the walls are ranged the colours of old regiments
and a collection of arms and armour brought hither
from the Castle Armoury and from the Tower of
London.

A "luggie" or concealed staircase led from the
83

The Castle

Banqueting Hal] to the Royal Lodging ; and another
flight descends to the Prison Vaults below. With
these, the list of the Castle antiquities may be said
to close. For the other buildings on the Rock, in the
occupation of the garrison, are of comparatively recent
date, and of unromantic aspect The encircling walls
and other fortifications on the western part of the
Rock belong chiefly to the closing years of the seven-
teenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries.
The buildings they enclose are of the reigns of Queen
Anne and the early Georges — an unpicturesque and
uninspiring period of architecture — and cannot be
called worthy of the site. There is, however, a certain
quaintness of aspect about the old " Governor's House,"
now part of the Officers' Quarters. The former
Armoury and Magazine, which occupied the north-
western angle of the Rock, has been demolished, and
its place has been taken by a block of buildings,
containing the Garrison Hospital, which imitate the
gabled and crow-stepped Scottish baronial style of
architecture, and from some points of view — and from
some only — combine well with their surroundings.
For purposes of modern warfare, the defences of
Edinburgh Castle are almost as obsolete and harmless
as " Mons Meg " ; it is great as a monument of history,
and as a Mount of Vision.

[To face page 84.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NETHERBOW PRECINCTS

AT the lower as well as at the upper end of the old " Hie
Street of Edinburgh " there was a fighting Border or
Debatable Land. If the Castle guns dominated it
from the west, to eastward it marched with the alien
and often hostile territory of the Canongate — the burgh
of the canons of the Abbey of Holyrood, and in the
days when kings lived in the Palace, the " Court "
quarter of the capital of Scotland. Sometimes in its
history the city came under a cross-fire from these
opposite directions — from the Rock, and from the town's
chief and most accessible "port of entry," the
Netherbow. The spot where once stood this famous
" Temple Bar " of Old Edinburgh is easily discovered
by the constriction of the thoroughfare, which here, on
its long way from the Castle to the Abbey, narrows to
half its width. The Canongate continues the line of the
High Street, and, except that it is more contracted,
dilapidated, and dingy, preserves something of its
general aspect and atmosphere.

At and around the Netherbow are gathered, as at
the bottom of a bag net, a wonderful collection of the
famous scenes, passages, and traditions of Edinburgh
history. Twice, in successive years, the English stormed

85

The Netherbow Precincts

their way into the city through its chief Port, in
prosecution of their " rough wooing " of Mary Stewart
for young Edward of England ; and a century later
another "Lord Protector" had repeatedly to preach,
with similar forcible arguments, from the mouths of
guns mounted at the head of the Canongate and on the
" Dow Craig," or Calton Hill, before the stubborn Scots
would open to him their city gates. Between these
dates the Netherbow was the favourite scene of struggle
and skirmish between the Lords of the Congregation
and the party of Mary of Guise, and later between the
" King's " and the " Queen's " factions in the troublous
early years of the reign of James VI. The militant
Reformers would often issue through the Netherbow to
make a sally against the French garrison of Leith, and
be chased home again by St Ninian's Row and Leith
Wynd ; and the Regent Mar's forces and the faithful
adherents of the imprisoned Queen of Scots pounded
each other, the one from a battery in the Pleasance, and
the other from a platform on Bailie Fullerton's house,
in Fountain Close.

Soon after the Union of the Crowns the old war-
battered structure gave place to a new Netherbow Port.
This was the building with the low vaulted archway and
narrow wicket for passenger traffic, and the central
spire and flanking round towers and turrets, surmounted
by spikes on which were affixed the heads and other
grim remains of traitors and malefactors, so familiar
to the eyes of many generations of Edinburgh citizens.
Cromwell forced his way through it with the strong
hand, and Lochiel's Highlanders surprised its guard
early in a September morning in the '45. But the city
authorities of the latter half of the eighteenth century

86

Netherbow Port

set little store by historic associations or by picturesque
aspect ; and it has already been told that the Netherbow
disappeared about the time of the founding of the North
Bridge. On a new building beside its site there is a
carved effigy of this main gate and defence of the
Flodden Wall. Quite recently some of the architectural
ornaments of the Netherbow have been recovered for
the town from a Leith builder's yard, and have been
placed within the railings of the adjoining John Knox's
United Free Church.

Melancholy changes have overtaken not only the
Netherbow itself, but the whole cluster of wynds and
alleys, front lands and secluded mansion-houses, once
the homes of nobles and church dignitaries, that
intervened between the Port and the Tron. With one
notable and outstanding exception, all have suffered
either demolition or pitiful degradation. There was
a time when scarcely one of these narrow and filthy
closes did not contain the town house of some power-
ful baron, or the official residence of some bishop or
abbot.

When these took flight, with the Court and the Parlia-
ment, the lower end of the High Street and the precincts
of the Netherbow continued to be a haunt of fashion
and literature ; and towards the end of the eighteenth
century law lords, men of affairs, academic dons, and
ladies of rank were still dwelling in content and comfort
in Hyndford Close and other lanes running down to the
Cowgate. Walter Scott, as a school-boy, used to find
his way from the adjoining High School Yards to the
rooms of his maternal uncle, Dr Daniel Rutherford,
professor of botany, who lived in what had been the
family mansion successively of the Earls of Stirling,

87

The Netherbow Precincts

Hyndford, and Selkirk. He was a visitor, also, at the
tea-parties next door of the old Countess of Balcarres,
where he became acquainted with her daughter, Lady
Anne Lindsay, the authoress of " Auld Robin Gray," to
whom he wrote long afterwards of the degradation that
had befallen a spot " once too clean to soil the hem of
your ladyship's garment." " I cannot help thinking,"
he adds, " on the simple and rosy retreats, where worth
and talent and elegance to boot were often nestled, and
which now are the resort of misery, filth, poverty, and
vice." " So wears the world away ! "

Among the other legends of the Netherbow is one
that figures to us the beautiful Jane, afterwards Duchess
of Gordon and hostess of Robert Burns, as a girl, riding
in the vicinity of the Fountain Close on the back of one
of the vagrant swine that in those free-mannered and
insanitary days grubbed in the rubbish heaps of the
High Street ; while her sister, who later became Lady
Wallace of Craigie, whacked the animal with a stick ;
their mother, Lady Maxwell of Monreith, was also a
resident in Hyndford Close.

At the head of the adjoining $outh Gray's or Mint
Close lived the Earl of Buchan, and there, as a tablet
over the street entrance tells, were born Lord Chancellor
Erskine and his brother Harry, the witty Pean of
Faculty. Close by, in Elphinstone Court, lived, in his
advocate days, another Scotsman who rose to be head
of the English bench, Lord Chancellor Loughborough ;
and Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, was born in Bishop's
Close, on the opposite side of the High Street. The
house of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh — a
scholar and wit, as well as the hated King's Advocate
— was in Strichen's Close, adjacent to the old-town

88

Netherbow Mysteries

dwelling of the Abbots of Melrose, the last of whom,
Andrew Durie, died of "grief and horror" at the
sacking of St Giles Church by the Reforming mob.
Tweeddale Court, where a shelter for the accommoda-
tion of sedan chairs still keeps its place, was for well-
nigh two hundred years the mansion of the noble family
of the Tweeddale Hays ; its gardens and lime walks
extended down to the Cowgate. The house, now the
premises of Oliver & Boyd, publishers, afterwards became
the head premises of the British Linen Company's Bank,
and close to the mouth of the court was perpetrated in
1806 the robbery and murder of Begbie, the bank porter,
stabbed to the heart by an unknown assassin, while
passing in with ^"5000 in gold and notes in his possession.

An earlier mystery of the region lying above the
Netherbow was the abduction, from her house in
Niddry's Wynd, of Lady Grange, daughter of that
violent Chiesley of Dairy who killed Lord President
Lockhart in a Lawnmarket close. The plot by which
this wretched woman was spirited away from the High
Street of Edinburgh to a Hebridean rock is supposed to
have been concocted between her husband, Erskine of
Grange — a judge of Session, a brother of Mar of the '15
Rebellion, and the friend of Pope and Lady Mary
Montagu — and the notorious Simon Eraser of Lovat,
whose widow, by the way, lived long in the neighbouring
Dickson's Close.

Still darker stories of the locality belong to a darker
age. The aspect of Blackfriars Street has changed
entirely since it was known as the " Frers' Wynd," and
was the access from the town to the foundation granted
by Alexander II. to the Dominican or Preaching Friars
on the site afterwards occupied by the Old Infirmary.

89

The Netherbow Precincts

In it is the house traditionally assigned to the Regent
Morton ; in their mansion in Blackfriars Wynd the
"lordly line" of St Clair of the Isles held almost
royal state ; and at the foot, near the Cowgate, stood
the " palace " occupied successively by Archbishop
James Beaton and by his nephew, the Cardinal. James
V. occasionally lodged, and his daughter Mary supped,
in this historic dwelling, all trace of which has been
removed. It was the rallying-place of Arran and the
Hamiltons in the famous street fray of "Cleanse the
Causey," their enemies, the Douglases, gathering at the
Netherbow ; and it was in it, on the same occasion, that
the Archbishop's iron " conscience clattered " under his
priest's robe of peace. Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell,
ran Sir William Stewart through the body in the Friars'
Wynd, where also Mitchell, a fanatic Covenanter, fired a
shot in the " Killing Time " at Archbishop Sharpe that
wounded dangerously Honeyman, Bishop of Orkney.
But the most dramatic and sinister scene in the history
of this narrow and picturesque alley — which has been
improved into a commonplace modern street — was when,
late one evening in February 1567, Mary Stewart passed
through it with blazing torches and archer guard after
visiting her sick husband at Kirk of Field, while
Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and his emissaries, carrying
gunpowder for the tragedy, slipped past by the next
alley of Todrick's Close.

We have not nearly exhausted the literary and
artistic memories that cling to this corner of the Old
Town. For, not to repeat the mention already made of
Allan Ramsay's house, wig-maker's shop, and printing-
office, " at the Sign of the Mercury," opposite Niddry's
Wynd, and his playhouse in Carrubber's Close — both of

90

Q

a

H ».

,°° s

5 1

GO

Moubray House

them now memories only — was not Falconer, the author
of the " Shipwreck," born in another, and lowlier,
barber's premises, in World's End Close ? Did not David
Allan, the " Scottish Hogarth," live and give drawing
lessons in Dickson's Close ? Was not the residence of
Walter Chepman, the first Scottish Printer, in Lovat's
Land ? Did not Bassendine's great folio Bible, and his
edition of Sir David Lyndsay's poems, issue from the
Fountain Close? And at the head of Trunk's Close,
opposite, and cheek-by-jowl with " John Knox's house,"
fronting the High Street with forestair and timbered
gable, have we not still with us Moubray House, recently
rescued from demolition by the intervention of the Cock-
burn Association ? It has a history that goes back to the
last quarter of the fifteenth century, to which period may
well belong the heavy corbelling of the blind side which
the house presents to Trunk's or Turing's Close ; and
after ceasing to be the residence of the gentle families
who dined under the figured and painted seventeenth-
century ceiling in the principal room, it descended to
be carriers' quarters, a tavern, and finally a lodging-
house. Down an adjoining close, and now forming a
mission hall attached to the church fronting Jeffrey
Street, which inherits the old name, is the rebuilt chancel
of Trinity College Church, the stones of which lay long
on the slopes of Calton opposite. Some of the carved
fragments of this fine fifteenth-century structure are
scattered and lost. A few are heaped together in the
West Princes Street Gardens. The massive grey fabric,
in Chalmers Close, with its projecting gargoyles and
heraldic ornaments, is one of the few surviving examples
of our pre-Reformation Church architecture.

The purlieus and approaches of the Netherbow
9*

The Netherbow Precincts

are associated, perhaps above all else, with men who
have taken leading parts in the religious life and history
of Scotland. Other dignitaries of the pre-Reformation
Church had their town houses grouped near that of the
Primate in the Blackfriars Wynd ; and, after the great
changes of the sixteenth century, the ecclesiastical
traditions of the spot seem to have been perpetuated.
"Bishop's Close" took its name chiefly from Archbishop
Spottiswoode, the historian ; the house of Archbishop
Sharpe — " Sharpe of that Ilk " — was at the
Netherbow ; Thomas Chalmers once lived in Hyndford
Close ; and Edward Irving has been among the eloquent
evangelists who have raised their voices in Carrubber's
Close. Here, in a little non-juring meeting-house, the
Jacobites of last century had their ecclesiastical head-
quarters ; while the branch of Scottish Episcopacy that
conformed to the law and accepted the Hanoverian
Succession had its first chapel in Blackfriars Wynd, near
by the earliest places of worship in which the Roman
Catholics and the Cameronians of the city ventured to
assemble in days of growing toleration. Religious as
well as social classes were strangely assorted around the
Netherbow.

The hands of time, and of the modern builder, have
effaced, or are effacing, the antiquities of the lower High
Street and the Netherbow. Hardly one is left of the
timber-fronted house, with forestairs and many-paned
windows almost flush with the walls, which were once
characteristic of the locality. The "Heave Awa "
house is the successor to one of the loftiest and
most rickety of these " lands," which suddenly collapsed
one winter midnight in 1861, burying its thirty-five
inmates in the ruins; and its name perpetuates the

92

John Knox's House

words used to encourage his rescuers, by a boy who was
at once pinioned and protected by one of the fallen
oaken beams. In the closes there are still a few half-
erased texts, and fragments of mouldings and armorial
bearings of the proud families that once possessed these
now despised dwellings ; for example, a shield in fine
preservation, with the date 1600, will be found sculptured
over the door of a house on the traditional site of the
Abbot of Melrose's lodging, in Strichen's Close. But
the one memorial of the domestic life and ecclesiastical
struggles of the past, which continues to preserve much
of the aspect it possessed two or even three centuries
ago, is the picturesque and striking building that
projects into the highway, just above the Netherbow,
and has long been known as " John Knox's House."

It has recently been contended, and evidence,
both positive and negative, has been produced in
support of the case, that this venerable dwelling has no
direct association with the life and work of the Scottish
Reformer, whose residence, during at least the greater
part of his stay in Edinburgh, was situated, as we have
found, much nearer to the scene of his ministrations in
the Church of St Giles. It has been shown by Mr
Robert Miller, ex-Dean of Guild, and by other patient
investigators of the town records, that the so-called
"John Knox's House" was in these years in the
possession and, for a period at all events, in the
occupation of a goldsmith named James Mossman, a
zealous Catholic and " Queen's man," who afterwards
suffered on the scaffold, along with Kirkaldy of Grange,
for his attachment to the cause of Mary Stewart. The
error of housing here the " John Knox Legend " is no
older, it is held by these critics, than the beginning of

93

The Netherbow Precincts

the present century, when it made its first appearance
in print in the pages of an Edinburgh Guide-book, by
Stark, who is supposed to have confused the Reformer
with another John Knox, who had a " Close " and local
fame near the Netherbow of still earlier date. On this
showing, the location — gravely accepted in some points
by biographers and historians — of the window from
which Knox preached to the populace ; of the corner of
his " warm study of daills," where he was sitting when
an assassin's bullet struck the candlestick and lodged
in the ceiling ; and the pictures that have been drawn
of his holding deep counsel in these dim chambers
with nobles and ecclesiastics, supping with ambassadors,
and bringing home hither his youthful and gentle-born
second wife, or returning, with tottering steps and
attended by a weeping crowd, to his own door at the
Netherbow, after preaching his last sermon in St Giles
— all this must, we fear, be set down as fond and vain
imaginings.

But even if mistake has been made in the christen-
ing of " Knox's Corner," it must be pronounced a
fortunate one in many lights. It has had the happy
result of preserving for us, wonderfully intact, both
inside and outside, a remarkably fine and interesting
example of the domestic architecture of the Edinburgh
of the middle of the sixteenth century — the most
romantic as well as the most stormy period in the
annals of the ancient town. Probably no less potent
charm than the belief that it was the veritable " manse "
of the strong-willed and undaunted man who was the
real hero of the Scottish Reformation could have
preserved this picturesque old dwelling, with its project-
ing gables and outer stairs, its ornamental carvings and

94

JOHN KNOX'S HOUSE.

WHITE HORSE CLOSE.

[To face page 94.

A Peep into the Past

pious mottoes, its panelled rooms, with their small and
quaintly-placed windows and dusky corners, and its
many irregularities, without and within, from the
common fate of its class, of being condemned and
removed as out of date and an obstruction to the
thoroughfare. A debt of gratitude is due, by
Edinburgh residenters and visitors alike, to the Free
Church of Scotland, and its successor the United Free
Church, for the careful guardianship and tendance
which enable us, at this late time of day, to take a peep
back, if not into the actual home, into the times of
John Knox.

95

CHAPTER IX

THE CANONGATE

IN these days there is little to remind the visitor, as he
passes the now invisible barrier of the Netherbow, that
he has entered new territory. The main street has
become narrower ; the diverging closes are, if possible,
filthier and more squalid than they are above the Port
— that is all. Yet the ground from here down to the
Abbey had, for many centuries, a history and fortunes
and a municipal organisation distinct from Edinburgh.
The burgh of Canongate could trace its origin to a
clearer, if not older, source than its neighbour, the city.
It has been told how King David, of pious memory,
had, in the fourth year of his reign and on the Feast of
the Exaltation of the Cross, an encounter in the vale
between the crags with a miraculous hart, which, in the
graphic relation of old Boece, assailed him with its
" awful and braid tindis," and " dang baith the King and
hes hors to the grund," afterwards "evanishing in the
same place quhare now springis the Rude Well," leaving
in the hands of the astonished monarch the cross or
rood which, by some accounts, it bore between its horns.
In part fulfilment of the vow then made, David, four
years later — in 1128 — conferred on the Canons of the
new Abbey of Holy Rood the right of establishing a

96

CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.

[To face page 96.

The Canons' Burgh

burgh on the land wherewith he had endowed them,
lying between their church and the King's burgh of
Edinburgh, with market and other privileges. Not-
withstanding that it lay open to the brunt of war, the
" Canons' burgh " throve under the dominion of the
Abbey, which possessed many rich benefices, with mills
on the Water of Leith and authority over the adjoining
burgh of Broughton. The main street became known
as the Canon-gait, or way, and this name was gradually
applied to the whole community, which had its
Common Muir where Leith Walk now is, and its
place of execution on the Gallowlee ; its own Tol-
booth and Courts ; its own Bailies, High Constables,
and other officials, including " Doomster," Piper, and
Drummer.

Through the Canongate and out by the Water Gate
and the Easter Road lay the highway to the east
and the south, and by Leith Wynd ran the road to
Leith and the Firth ; so that down to the beginning of
the present century the Canongate was the customary
landfall and point of departure for travellers from and
to London, whether by land or sea. Thus Dr Samuel
Johnson and Boswell, on their memorable tour in 1773,
passed through it, and sojourned in the White Horse
Close, off St Mary's Wynd, just outside the city walls. It
was favourably situated for commerce ; but from the
time, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when
the Scottish Kings began to make the Abbey a
favourite residence, and especially after they built
their Palace at the foot of the Canongate, the locality
became closely associated with the doings of Court
and with the private and public affairs of the Royal
Family.

97 G

The Canongate

The right of sanctuary also drew thither a mixed
multitude, and the Canongate swarmed with courtiers
and cut-throats, nobles and beggars. The removal of
the Court to London was a blow from which the Palace
and the burgh never recovered. But maps of later date
still show the Canongate a comparatively open and airy,
as well as well-built, place, not stifled by " back lands,"
but having gardens and lawns running down on either
side from the houses fronting its main street ; while on
St John's Hill, Dumbiedykes, and the Pleasance were
promenades, where the dwellers of the burgh could
enjoy the magnificent views of the adjoining crags
and hill.

As with other places and people, the greater its
former fortunes, the deeper has been the fall of the
Canongate. Its declension preceded that of the High
Street, and is an old story. Allan Ramsay bewailed
the low estate of " Canongate, puir eldritch hole," and
the losses and crosses that had come upon it with the
Union.

London and Death gars thee look droll
And hang thy heid.

But, as we shall see, gentility had by no means entirely
deserted it even a hundred years later than Honest
Allan's lament. Breweries and other industries have
monopolised the former open spaces and amenities of
the Canongate, and it is now famous for the making of
beer rather than of history. There are said to be more
than twenty breweries within the limits of the ward,
so placed as to tap the seam whose water, from time
immemorial, has lent virtue and reputation to Edinburgh
ale.

Chronicles of the Canongate

The constitution of the quarter has changed with its
fortunes and its means of livelihood. When the control
of the burgh was transferred from the Abbots and
Canons it came into the hands of the Commendators
of the Abbey ; and the Lords Holyroodhouse, Bellenden,
and Roxburgh, and the Governors of George Heriot's
Hospital, were successively Superiors of the Canon-
gate and nominators of its Baron Bailie. Finally, the
town of Edinburgh acquired the rights ; but the form
at least of separate local government — of Canongate
Home Rule — was not abolished until 1856, when it
had enjoyed a corporate existence for seven hundred
years.

More considerate than its superior, the city, of the
memorials of its municipal past, the Canongate retains
its praetorium, the Tolbooth, which stands, nearly half-
way down towards the Palace, with the Parish Church
as its next neighbour, on the left-hand side of the street.
Before reaching it, one passes several spots worthy of
note. On the same side as the Tolbooth, just below
Rae's Close, once on a time the only access to the north
between Leith Wynd and the Water Gate, is the
" Morocco Land," distinguished by the turbaned bust
of a Moor above the door, concerning which there is a
" chronicle of the Canongate " to the effect that it was
built by a local Whittington who, driven from the place
through the part he took in a brawl, returned after many
years spent in Barbary to wed a Provost's daughter, but,
in fulfilment of a vow not to enter the city again except
"sword in hand," never passed within the Netherbow.
New Street, an early "town improvement," in which
once lived, among other pillars of eighteenth century law
and literature, Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, and

99

The Canongate

Henry Home, Lord Kames, has itself been nearly wiped
out, although Lord Kames's house still survives. Jack's
Land, a little further down, is associated with a yet
more illustrious name — that of David Hume, who worked
here on his " History " in the interval between leaving
Riddle's Court in the Lawnmarket and taking up house
in James's Court. The residence of Dalyell of Binns,
that grim hunter of the Covenanters, who vowed that
an enemy of the King should fall for every hair in his
beard, was in Big Jack's Close adjoining.

Looking to the north side of the street, the spacious
Chessel's Court is remembered as the scene of Deacon
Brodie's last exploit of robbing the Excise Office. The
Old Playhouse Close, conspicuous by the double row
of dormer windows, crowned by finials, on the front
tenement, was for a time the home of the drama in the
northern capital — after its removal from Allan Ramsay's
theatre in Carrubber's Close — in days when the play
was introduced surreptitiously as an item in a concert
programme. John Home's tragedy of "Douglas," on
its appearance on this humble stage, cost its author
his kirk.

St John's Street, entered through a " pend " opposite
the site of St John's Cross, was, like the neighbouring
New Street, still a place of fashionable residence when
last century was young. James Ballantyne — " Rigdum-
funnidos" — held "high jinks" in No. 10, on the eve of
the appearance of a new Waverley novel from his print-
ing-office on the other side of the Canongate, none of
the guests enjoying the mystery more than the " Great
Unknown " himself. Two or three doors off are houses
that were once occupied by the famous physician and
friend of Burns, Dr John Gregory, and by the eccentric

100

[To face page 100.

Moray House

Scottish Judge, Lord Monboddo, whose daughter, Miss
Burnett, was one of the " toasts " of the Edinburgh
society of her day, and had her wit and charms cele-
brated by the poet. " Lodge Canongate Kihvinning " is
on the opposite side of St John's Street; the Lodge
room retains something of the appearance it had when
Robert Burns was admitted to the " mystic tie " ; and his
name, as its Poet Laureate, figures on the Lodge records,
some pages after that from which the name of Secretary
Murray of Broughton has been ignominiously erased.
Tobias Smollett lived with his sister, Mrs Telfer, in the
first floor of the house entered by the roundel tower
near the mouth of the pend, and here collected the
materials for his graphic pictures of old Edinburgh life
and customs in " Humphry Clinker."

If poetry and letters haunted this siding in the
Canongate, history, of a grim sort, has repeatedly taken
up quarters in the remarkable building, with the gateway
flanked by slender pyramids and the stone balcony
overhanging the pavement, in the front of the main
street a few yards farther down. Moray House was
built in 1618 by the widow of the Earl of Home. A
generation later it came into the possession of her
sister, the Countess of Moray, and remained for two
hundred years in that family. Cromwell occupied it in
1648, and again in 1650, after the battle of Dunbar.
Here the Protector held levees, and issued orders and
proclamations to the perverted, unruly Scots nation ; here
the resolution is said to have been formed that issued
in the execution of Charles I. It was, it is said, on the
balcony of " Lady Home's Lodging " that the wedding
guests at the marriage of Lord Lorn, eldest son of the
Marquis of Argyle, to a daughter of the Earl of Moray,

101

;; : Thfe '; Canongate

assembled in May 1650, when Montrose was led past,
bound on a cart, on his way to execution at the Cross
of Edinburgh. One of the guests is said to have spat
down upon the noble prisoner, who replied with a look
of lofty disdain. Within twelve years, Montrose's head
was taken down to make room for that of the bride-
groom's father. Three of the onlookers — so says Sir
Daniel Wilson in his " Memorials " — including the gay
and happy bridegroom himself, perished on the same
fatal spot to which Montrose was passing. Truly the
whirligig of time brings in its revenges !

Moray House was the residence of Lord Chancellor
Seafield at the time of the Treaty of Union ; and the
signatories of that deed, hunted by a mob of patriots
from a summer-house in the garden, sought the refuge
of a High Street cellar to complete their work. The
building, which contains some fine hand-wrought ceilings,
is in these days being incorporated in the new structure
of the Provincial Committee's Training College for
Teachers, the main block of which occupies the former
garden of Moray House, and fronts the South Back of
Canongate. On or near this site assembled the King's
Parliament in 1571, while that which acknowledged the
authority of the exiled Queen of Scots was holding
sittings in the Edinburgh Tolbooth ; and in the street
opposite James VI. was received in state by the
Canongate Authorities when, "like a salmon," he
returned to his native capital and the Palace of his
ancestors.

The owner of another Canongate dwelling, a little
lower down the street and over against the Tolbooth,
met the fate, so common among the Scottish nobles of
that day, of execution at Edinburgh Cross, in the year

102

»' w '>•»•» J > ' ' '

BAKEHOUSE CLOSE.

[To face page 102.

Canongate Tolbooth

before the death of Montrose. This was George,
second Marquis of Huntly, head of the great family of
the " Gordons of the North," whose annals are nearly as
full of tragedy and romance as that of the Stewarts
themselves. His father, though deeply concerned in
the affair of the " Spanish Blanks " and other plots,
managed to die in his bed ; his grandfather, the fourth
Earl, was slain at Corrichie in 1562, and the corpse was
afterwards exhumed and was made the object of a
ghastly trial and condemnation in the Parliament Hall.
The Huntly House is a large, timber-fronted building,
bearing on its picturesque front, along with a number of
moral mottoes in Latin, the date of its erection, 1570.
It is a specimen of Old Edinburgh domestic architecture
that stands much in need of rescue, repair, and
preservation. Beside it, in Bakehouse Close, is an
interesting example of a dwelling of a later genera-
tion in the residence of Sir Archibald Acheson, one
of Charles I.'s Secretaries of State and ancestor of the
Irish Earls of Gosford, recognisable by the heraldic
crest of the " cock and trumpet," the initials, and the
date, 1633, graven over the doorway in the courtyard
behind.

Canongate Tolbooth, time-worn and turned to
commonplace purposes, is still a picturesque feature of
the main " gait " of the ancient burgh. It is in the
ornate " Scoto- French " style of the period of its
erection, indicated by the date, 1591, which, with
insignia and dedicatory inscriptions, is imprinted on its
front. It has a bell tower bearing a clock projecting
over the pavement, and a heavy outside stair up which,
in the course of the centuries, many prisoners, mean
and noble, have climbed to judgment. The local

103

The Canongate

tradition that the " Great Montrose " was confined in a
dark cell in the Tolbooth is, however, not borne out by
authentic history. Now that the last semblance of
municipal autonomy has been taken from the Canon-
gate, the old Council Chamber has been turned to
account as a Literary Institute.

On the Tolbooth, and also on the reconstructed
Burgh Cross and the Parish Church beside it, the
Canongate arms — the stag's head with the " Cross
crosslet" between the antlers — is much in evidence.
The Church was built in 1688, after James II. had
appropriated as a Roman Catholic Chapel Royal the
nave of Holyrood Abbey, which from the Reformation
had served the purposes of the parish place of worship.
The old " Canongate Kirk," as having the Palace within
its charge, and housing for a time under the same roof
as royalty, was closely associated with the fortunes of
the Stewarts. The Rev. John Brand made proclama-
tion in it on 2ist July 1565 of the marriage of " Harry,
Duk of Albayne " to " Marie, be ye grace of God,
Queene of Scottis," and a little further on in the same
Parish Register occur the entries : — " Monr> Signior
Dauid wes slane in Halyruidhous, ye ix daye o'
Merche, 1565," and "Ye King's Grace blaun up wi
pudr> in ye Kirk o' Field, ye x o' Februar, 1566." In
explanation of the dates of these quaint and tragic
memoranda, it has to be remembered that up to
1600 the year was reckoned to begin with the 25th
March, Old Style.

Canongate Churchyard is a competitor with the
West Kirk , God's acre for second place after the
Greyfriars in the interest of its monuments and the
riches of its soil in the dust of men of note. A long list

104

Canongate Churchyard

of the eminent persons buried within its walls may be
read at the entrance gate. Adam Smith's tomb is
immediately behind the Tolbooth ; the last twelve
years of the well-spent life of the father of the science of
political economy were passed in the mansion in Panmure
Close formerly belonging to the Earls of Panmure, a
few doors down the Canongate. Dugald Stewart
rests not far off. He shared with Lord Bannatyne,
the last survivor of the Mirror Club, the substantial
dwelling of Whitefoord House, still extant, on the site
whereon stood " my Lord Setoun's Lodging," in which,
as readers of "The Abbot" will remember, Roland
Graeme found shelter after his brawl on the causey.
The benevolent professor of moral philosophy had
trained private pupils for the University — of whom one
was Lord Palmerston — in the " Lothian Hut" in Horse
Wynd, which has given place to " Younger's Brewery."
In Canongate burying-ground, also, a " narrow house "
has been found for artists like David Allan and
" Grecian " Williams, the Runcimans, and Watson
Gordon ; for historians like Bishop Keith ; divines and
physicians like the Bonars and Dr James Gregory ;
town worthies like Provost George Drummond, builder
of the North Bridge and author of the New Town
Scheme; and the founders of Fettes College and
Chalmers' Hospital. There is space allotted to "the
soldiers who have died in Edinburgh Castle " ; and a
memorial carved "for the Society of Coach-drivers"
reminds us that from the inns and courts of the Canon-
gate the stage-coaches used to set out for London, and
that there the citizens of old awaited news from the
South. But no other monument has so strong and
pathetic a claim to notice as the plain tombstone which

The Canongate

Robert Burns, by petition to " the Honourable Bailies
of Canongate," obtained leave to erect, at his own
charge, over the grave of Robert Fergusson, who had
lain until then " among the ignoble dead, unnoticed and
unknown." The lines engraved on it are from the hand
of the greater poet, who freely owned the debt of his
song to that of his unhappy predecessor.

No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
No " storied urn, nor animated bust " ;

This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way
To pour her sorrows o'er her poet's dust.

Two old-time Canongate mansions, once standing on
spacious grounds of their own on the right or southern
side of the street, have met with a full share of the vicissi-
tudes that have overtaken their neighbours. One of them,
Milton House, stood on the site of the residence of the
Superiors of the burgh — the Bellendens and the Ken-s-
and took its name from an eminent Whig judge of the
period of the '45 Rebellion— Fletcher of Milton — who
fled with the rest of the Court to the country when the
Young Pretender occupied Holyrood, and the Jacobite
officers and Highland chiefs made the " White Horse
Close" their headquarters. A public school has risen
in its place. Queensberry Lodge is still extant, but is
in sorry case. The big, plain, dingy building was the
town dwelling of the Dukes of Douglas and of Queens-
berry ; " Prior's Kitty, ever fair," the wife of the third
of the Queensberry Dukes, entertained company in it
in her eccentric style, and sheltered here her protege,
the poet Gay, who made excursions from it to Allan
Ramsay's circulating library in the Luckenbooths, or
to the changehouse of Jenny Ha' on the opposite side

1 06

The White Horse Close

of the Canongate. That " degenerate Douglas," known
as "Old Q."— the last of his line— sold it in the first
year of last century to the Government, who converted
it for a time into barracks ; it now serves the purpose
of a House of Refuge for the Destitute.

Other Canongate houses and closes that have
witnessed history are but wrecks of their former selves.
But the White Horse Close, at the bottom of this long
thoroughfare, retains much of the aspect of the courtyard
of an inn and its surrounding buildings in the palmy
days of this patrician quarter. There is a sixteenth-
century date on one of the gables, and tradition
associates the name with a white palfrey of Mary,
Queen of Scots. But no part of the existing buildings,
which have recently been furbished up and converted
into artisans' dwellings is supposed to be older than the
date 1623, which appears on a dormer window. The
tale of " Waverley " takes a cue from history by lodging
Fergus M'lvor and his tartaned comrades in the White
Horse Close. A century earlier it had been the scene
of the " Stoppit Stravaig," when a vigilant Presbyterian
mob headed back a company of the Scottish nobles and
their followers when setting forth in response to Charles
I.'s summons to confer with him at Berwick where, it
was suspected, their zeal for the Covenant would cool
in proportion as their loyalty to the monarch was
stimulated. Montrose alone slipped through, and
thenceforth became the man of the King instead of the
man of the Kirk.

The ancient hostelry, over which " Lucky Wood "
presided in Allan Ramsay's time, was admirably placed
for the intercepting and entertaining of guests ; for it
was planted just within the " Water Yett," the former

107

The Canongate

entry into the burgh, which stood close to the Palace
grounds at the junction of the " North Back " of Canon-
gate and Abbeyhill. Travellers by the old Easter or
London Road must needs come this way ; and much of
the glory of Canongate departed when the new and
more spacious approach to Edinburgh was formed
along the southern skirts of the Calton Hill.

Tragic scenes have been witnessed in the vicinity
of the Water Port. The Abbot of Kilwinning was
slain here in 1571 in the "Black Saturday" skirmish.
Thirty years later, the adherents of Francis, Earl of
Bothwell, were seized while making their attempt on
the Palace and the King's person, and nine of them
were hanged " incontinent " at the neighbouring Girth
Cross. George, third Marquis of Huntly, was allowed
to ride with his head covered when he was led through
the Water Yett|on his way to prison and death. But
the same privilege was not accorded to a more illustrious
captive, Montrose, who, not long after, by the same
road, went on the same errand.

A quaint building, covering a clear spring of water
and known as " Queen Mary's Bath," almost abuts on
the site of the gateway ; in it, legend asserts, the
beautiful Queen was in the habit of " bathing in milk."
Over the Palace bounds near this point clambered
some of Rizzio's assassins after committing the deed of
blood ; and a richly-chased dagger found in a recess
in the wall has been conjectured to be a relic of the
deed. Outside the Gate stood once the hospital of
St Thomas ; the home of Bishop Crichton's blue-gowned
bedesmen was afterwards occupied by the hired sedan-
chairs and hackney coaches of eighteenth - century
Edinburgh. Further east, and also on the skirts of the

108

The Sanctuary

Abbey grounds, is the mansion-house of Croft-an-Righ
—the "King's Croft"— or, familiarly, " Croftangry," a
name well remembered in "The Chronicles of the
Canongate." It is probably not so old as the time
of the Regent Moray, who is said to have lived in
it ; and " Queen Mary's Tree " in the garden is, like
others of the kind, of doubtful lineage. But, even if
its authentic history go no further back than the period
when it was the family mansion of the Earls of Airth,
it has been next neighbour to the Palace in days when
Scottish Kings still made their home in Holyrood.

All this time we have not overpassed the threshold
of the " Sanctuary of the Canongate." Its frontier is
marked by the " strand," or line of stones in the cause-
way, near which, at the foot of the Canongate, stood
the " Girth Cross." The boundary of the " Sanctuary
Girth " ran northward from this point along the Water
Gate, and southward through the Horse Wynd, and
enclosed the Palace and the whole of the Royal Park
behind. The privilege, which at one time extended to
criminals, was confined after the Reformation to
impecunious debtors. It may have originated in the
sanctuary rights accorded to Saint David's Abbey, but
was latterly recognised as associated with the royal
residence. In the last two hundred years of its exist-
ence, it has been calculated that between 7000 and 8000
persons sought protection from their creditors within
the Liberty of Holyrood. In 1816 there were as many
as 118 of these refugees from the law in residence
within the bounds ; and as the accommodation was
limited, it may be imagined that the little Alsatia at the
foot of the Canongate was often inconveniently crowded
with ambiguous company. The handful of rickety

109

The Canongate

dwellings and ancient inns at the Palace gates have
witnessed curious scenes, and could tell strange tales of
their guests. The "Abbey Lairds," as these lodgers
were called, had the privilege of crossing the bounds of
the Sanctuary between midnight on Saturday and mid-
night on Sunday ; and there are legends of captures by
the stratagem of putting back the hands of the clock,
and of a belated fugitive who, after being chased hot-
foot down the Canongate by the myrmidons of the law,
managed to fling himself prostrate across the boundary
mark just as they seized upon him from behind, and
was adjudged free, since his " nobler parts were in
sanctuary."

The duty of keeping order and administering justice
within the Sanctuary was committed to the " Bailie of
the Abbey," who was appointed by the Hereditary
Keeper of the Palace, and who had in charge to summon
the inhabitants to appear on guard at the Abbey gates
on the occasion of an election of Scottish Representative
Peers in Holyrood. The father of Lord Jeffrey once
held the office of Sanctuary Bailie, which came to an
end, along with the privilege of sanctuary, with the
abolition of imprisonment for debt in 1880. The Courts
were held in the "Abbey Strand," on the right-hand
side of the entrance to the Palace esplanade, where may
still be seen along with an interesting specimen of a
moulded doorway of sixteenth century date, some traces
of the beautiful Gothic porch of the religious house. A
scheme is afoot for restoring this Abbey Porch destroyed
in 1751, along with the adjacent Girth Cross, as a
memorial of King Edward VII. On or near the same
spot, now occupied in part by the Guard House, must
have stood the Tennis Court in which the Scottish

no

The Abbey Porch

monarchs and their courtiers were wont to play at
" caiche-pell," and wherein, it is believed, took place
under King Jamie's patronage in 1599 and 1 60 1, those
stage performances by strolling English companies, of
whom, some have conjectured, William Shakespeare
may have been a member.

in

CHAPTER X

HOLYROOD

A FEW steps across the threshold of the Abbey Porch,
and one is in the full presence of the " House of Kings,"
grey old Holyrood. The very name of this Palace of
the Stewarts has magic in it, and speaks volumes of
history and of romance. Nor, heavily as time and
change have laid their hands upon " Holyrood House "
and its surroundings, does its site or its aspect belie its
strange and romantic story. On two sides of it the
squalor and the noisy industries of a poor quarter of the
city press close up against the walls of this venerable
seat of royal state and sanctity. But on the other sides
are the free air of heaven and the everlasting hills. The
approaches from the Canongate may have lost their
former stateliness ; the monuments and terraces of the
New Town may look down from the crown and slopes
of Calton on the grim and time-battered relic of the
past, stranded in the valley below ; but the outlines of
the red crags and shadowed clefts of its great and quiet
neighbour, Arthur Seat, remain unchanged and
unchangeable by the hand of man, and half the domain
of Holyrood looks much as it did when David selected
the spot as the site of his Monastery.

Of the once magnificent and wealthy religious house,
of which the Palace became heir and successor, only a
fragment is left. Holyrood is by no means a solitary
example of a conventual building being taken possession
of as a residence of the King and Court. The Black-
friars Monastery at Perth, in which James I. of Scots

112

THE CHAPEL ROYAL, HOLYROOD ABBEY.

ARTHUR SEAT FROM ST LEONARD'S.

[To face page 112.

The Abbey Church

met his death, is another familiar instance in Scottish
history. Holyrood was no exception to the rule that
the royal guests, having obtained a footing, soon played
the cuckoo with the original monkish owners. The
Palace occupies part of the ground once covered by the
monastic buildings. The north-west wing — the oldest
and most historic part of the existing structure — partly
screens the view of the fine western front of the Abbey
Church; the Palace walls behind, built in the Merry
Monarch's time, have usurped the place of one of the
square towers of this front, and have actually impinged
on the beautiful Gothic doorway and on the ground
plan of the nave. The ruined and mutilated nave —
afterwards the Chapel Royal — is all that is left of the
Church of the Holy Rude ; but it is sufficient to give an
idea of its former extent and grandeur.

It was cruciform in plan, and had, besides the
western towers, a great central tower rising above the
intersection of the nave and choir with the transepts.
All but a few fragments of these portions of the build-
ing have disappeared ; although by the recent operations
conducted by the Board of Works the foundations
outlining the complete form and extent of the Church
have been laid bare. The cloisters were on the eastern
side of the present Palace, and some remains of the
cloister walk are to be found under the flying buttresses
on the southern side of the Chapel Royal. Here, too, may
be discovered traces, in round-headed windows and dog-
tooth ornament, of the original Norman structure, which
may possibly have arisen under the eye of the saintly
and royal founder himself, and have sheltered his war-
like rival, Fergus, Lord of Galloway, who sought peace
in his latter days within the walls of Holyrood.

113 H

Holyrood

It is probable, however, that no part of the surviving
Abbey buildings go back quite so far as the reign of
David I. From the beginning, the monks held this
exposed and perilous ground by a somewhat insecure
tenure, and were liable to be driven out by fire and
invasion ; it has been seen that for a considerable period
they had to content themselves with housing on the
Castle Rock. Many times, in the fighting centuries
that followed the War of Independence, the Church and
Abbey were burned. Edward II. and Richard II. did
their best to destroy them ; but they rose again after
the invaders had withdrawn. The great restorer and
renovator of Holyrood is believed to have been Abbot
Crawford, and his handiwork, of the latter end of the
fifteenth century, is manifest in the arches and buttresses
of the north and south aisles of the nave, and in the
richly ornate doorway. But nearly all styles of Gothic
are represented in the beautiful wreck of Holyrood
Church, including the nondescript additions that bear
the mark of Charles I. and James VII.

For the vicissitudes in the Abbey fortunes did not
end with the rough handling given to it during the
Hertford Invasion and the subsequent Reformation
struggles. It was at a later period that the " Queir and
Croce Kirk" — the original choir and transepts — fell
into irretrievable ruin, and the materials were disposed
of to " faithful men," in order to provide funds " for con-
verting the nave into the Parish Kirk of Canongate."
The " Royal Martyr " took some pains to preserve and
decorate the church which had witnessed the wedding
and funeral rites of his ancestors, and in which he was
crowned King of Scots; and he designated it the
Chapel Royal. His son James fitted it up for the

114

[To face page III.

The Chapel Royal

Roman ritual, and installed here the first Knights of the
Order of the Thistle. But before the Restoration was
complete the rage of the Revolution mob broke in upon
the building; the very tombs of the Scottish Kings and
Queens were desecrated and the bare walls alone were
left. A last stroke fell on the Chapel Royal after the
middle of last century, when, orders having been given
to repair the ruinous roof, the work was entrusted to a
bungling architect, who burdened the old arches with a
mass of masonry heavier than they could support, with
the result that, in a great storm in December 1768, the
roof collapsed, leaving only the skeleton of the walls,
the vaulting over part of the south aisle, and a portion
of the west front. It has already been mentioned that
an idea, to which expression was given in the will of
the late Lord Leven and Melville, to restore the nave as
a Thistle Chapel, has failed to take form. A report
furnished by Mr Lethaby, the London architect, indi-
cated that the ancient piers and arches are too much
decayed to support the proposed superstructure.

The floor of the Chapel Royal is paved with monu-
mental slabs, covering the burial-places of members of
some of the noblest Scottish families — Douglases
Hamiltons, Gordons, Sinclairs, Sutherlands, Campbells,
Kerrs. Intermixed is the commoner clay of burghers
of the Canongate ; although the parish churchyard
was outside the walls, where the only remaining monu-
ment is one to the memory of a " worthy man and
ingenious mason " of the famous race of the Mylnes, for
many generations Master Masons to the King. Time
and the feet of visitors are obliterating the inscriptions,
some of them old and quaint, on the pavement of the
Chapel ; other slabs and epitaphs are ranged round the

Holyrood

walls, and commemorate dead bishops and nobles.
Within the north-west tower is an imposing monument,
in the form of a marble altar-tomb, to Lord Belhaven,
" Counsellor to King Charles and Master of the Horse
to Henry, Prince of Wales." Inserted in a pillar of the
south aisle is a tablet extolling in Latin the most
dubious virtues of Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney,
and Commendator of Holyrood, who celebrated, not
many paces off, the marriage of Mary and Bothwell in
the Abbey Church, and soon afterwards deserted her
cause. Of greater antiquity are a few stone coffins and
incised slabs that have been recovered from the area
of the Church ; and in the passage leading from the
Palace to the Chapel is pointed out the last resting-place
of Rizzio. Recent operations have exposed the moulded
doorway and oaken door, and cleared the passage
beyond, through which, it is believed, the conspirators
found access, on the night of his murder, to the royal
apartments above.

But the spot where one is tempted most to linger
and moralise, in the vein of the monuments around,
over the evanescence of earthly state, is the corner of
the south aisle, where is placed the sombre and incon-
spicuous Royal Vault. As an inscription tells, it was
put in decent repair by order of the late Queen
Victoria. Here, until the tomb was rifled and the
bones scattered in 1688, lay the embalmed bodies of
King David Bruce, of James II. of Scots, of James V,
and of his first Queen, Magdalen, the fair and much-
loved " Lily of France " who faded so early in our
northern air. Darnley is believed to have been buried
in the Holyrood Vault, to which also in the middle of
last century the supposed remains of Mary of Gueldres,
wife of " James of the Fiery Face," were removed from

116

[To face page 116.

The Royal Vault

the Trinity College Church. The royal place of sepul-
ture is supposed to have been originally close to the
high altar of the Abbey Church, and in the protecting
neighbourhood of that " Black Rude " — a relic of the
True Cross — bequeathed by Saint Margaret to her
children, which may reasonably be regarded as the real
source of the name and sanctity of Holyrood, rather
than the comparatively late and mythical story of the
"White Hart." When it was carried away by Edward I.
and bestowed .upon the great Church of Durham, part
of the glory of the Abbey and of the liberties of Scotland
seemed to go with it. The Royal Vault, and indeed the
whole interior and exterior of the Church, have lately
received the careful attention of the Commissioners of
Works, as Conservators of Holyrood, under the direction
of Mr Oldrieve ; and while the remarkable structure has
been strengthened and protected as far as possible
against the inroads of time and weather, the bases of
the pillars have been uncovered, and several interesting
archaeological discoveries made.

Other notable incidents of the long centuries of war
with England were witnessed within the " Monastery of
the Crag of Holyrood." Parliaments and councils met
there, whereat were provided the funds for buying back
Scotland's independence from Richard Lion-heart ; the
ransom of David Bruce, after the English army, fighting
under the Black Rood, had captured him at NevilPs
Cross ; and the crusading tax imposed under Bagimont's
Roll. Edward Baliol rendered homage to Edward III.
at Holyrood ; John of Gaunt was hospitably entertained
in the Abbey, and out of gratitude his son, Henry IV.,
spared the fane when he came hither afterwards with
hostile intent. The Abbey became an occasional

117

Holyrood

residence of the Scottish Kings from the days of Robert
the Bruce. His son David, we have seen, was buried
beside its high altar. James I., the Poet King, lived
much in it. He was here in 1429 when the Lord of the
Isles humbly implored pardon, dressed only in his
" shirt and drawers," and holding a naked sword by the
point, for his crime of burning the town of Inverness.
In the following year Queen Jane Beaufort bore twin
sons in the Abbey, the survivor of whom, James II., was
wedded and buried within the walls where he was born.
The unhappy Third James also spent much of his time
at Holyrood with his fiddling and other favourites ; and
was married in the Abbey Church to Margaret of
Denmark, who thus brought the Northern Isles to the
Scottish throne.

But Holyrood never witnessed before such splendour
and gaiety as attended the nuptials of James IV. with
Margaret Tudor — the union of the "Thistle and the
Rose " which after a hundred years more of strife was
to bring about the Union of the Crowns. The monastic
house seems to have been converted into a " palace of
pleasant delights," with Banqueting Hall and Great
Chamber, hung with tapestries and provided with
" glassin windows " blazoned with the royal arms, and
with supping and dancing rooms, where Dunbar footed
the " dirry-danton " with Mistress Musgrave ; and ,there
was no room for shaven crowns and conventual peace in
the round of feasting, games, tilting matches, and plays
with which the chivalric and accomplished King wel-
comed his young English bride — not dreaming that
Flodden was only ten years ahead of him.

The father of Mary, Queen of Scots, Pitscottie tells
us, founded, in the spring of 1525, "a fair palace in

118

(To face page 118.

The Palace

the Abbey of Holyrood House, and three fair towers
till rest into, when he was pleased to come," and hither
he brought his beautiful " Queen of Forty Days." But
this oldest part of the existing Palace was actually begun
by James IV., and the oaken piles driven into the sandy
soil to support the edifice have been come upon in the
course of recent excavations. The north-western tower
is probably all that survives of this work, for in 1544
and in 1547, during the troublous minority of Mary,
English armies " brent the Pallais " ; and although it
rose again, and witnessed some of the gayest, and
some of the saddest, scenes in the life of the Queen
of Scots, and of her son and grandson, it again fell
victim to a fire which broke out while Cromwell's
soldiers were in possession. After the Restora-
tion, the Protector's uncouth repairs were removed,
the quadrangle completed in the prevailing French
style of the time, and the present entrance gateway
built in 1671 by Robert Mylne, King's Mason, from
designs by Sir William Bruce of Kinross. James VII.,
as Duke of York and Albany, held Court here ; Prince
Charles Edward took up his quarters at the Palace, and
slept in the bed (afterwards tenanted by the Duke of
Cumberland) where his unfortunate ancestor Charles I.
had lain ; and it was twice a place of retreat for Charles
X. of France. Occasionally since it has been a residence
of royalty ; and annually, at the opening of the General
Assembly, the State Apartments are occupied by the
King's representative, the Lord High Commissioner,
while the elections of Scottish Peers still take place in the
Portrait Gallery. Once again, in the Coronation Year
of George Fifth, it is restored to its old state and uses.
Having now glanced rapidly through the history of
119

Holyrood

this " grey romance in stone," one may better appreciate
the venerable aspect of Holyrood Abbey and the spirit
of the past that broods around and within. The
spacious "place," through which the carriage-drive
passes to enter the Park, is the old West Court of the
Palace, and has witnessed many scenes of pomp and
strife. In the centre is a beautiful carved Gothic
fountain, erected by the Prince Consort, in the style of
an ancient specimen at Linlithgow. Opposite to the
Guard House is the grand entrance, columned and
pedimented, and surmounted by the Royal arms and
crown, and connected by a screen, considerably lower
than the rest of the facade, with the two great flanking
towers, turreted at the corners, that complete the Palace
front. The two towers are uniform, but it needs only a
glance to perceive that the north-western one is of
the greater age, and that the other has been added to
give symmetry to the design. Among the accretions, or
supplementary buildings, of the Palace that have long
ago disappeared is the structure known as "Regent
Moray's Lodging," attached to the north side of this
tower, and shown in a view dated 1826.

The gateway gives access to the Quadrangle or
Inner Court, which has a colonnade around the four sides.
In front and to the right are the Royal Apartments,
still intermittently occupied during the sittings of
Assembly, and now again opened to receive the descend-
ant and representative of the old race of the Scottish
Kings. Their history is comparatively modern and
tame. They embrace, however, some noble rooms with
handsome furniture and rich tapestries, and the elaborate
and beautiful carved and painted ceilings are specially
worthy of note. To nine people out of ten, the romance
of the spot — the very soul of Holyrood — is concentrated

120

HOLYROOD PALACE, PRINCIPAL DOORWAY.

[To face page 120.

The Rizzio Tragedy

in the suite of apartments in the old wing of the Palace,
and reached by a staircase on the left, wherein were
enacted some of the strangest and darkest passages
in the strange and dark drama of the life of Mary Stewart
It is impossible to feel hard-hearted towards the
unhappy Queen of Scots while within the walls where
she suffered so many sorrows and humiliations. What
weighs upon our thoughts as we visit the scene of
Chastelard's frenzy, of the murder of Rizzio, of the folly
and guilt of Darnley and Bothwell, is not the weakness
of one beautiful and friendless woman who was the
centre of the vast maze of plot and crime, but the
treacherous savagery of the times and of the men by
whom she was surrounded. Here still is not only the
stage, but part of the stage-setting of that never-to-be-
forgotten story of Old Holyrood. True, not much of
royal state is suggested by the moderately-sized
Audience Chamber, with its mouldering hangings, and
time-worn furniture and decorations. More sombre
and faded still is the Bedroom adjoining ; while the
small Dressing-room and still tinier Supping-room
opening from it give one a vivid impression of the
narrow space to which even the great ones of the earth
had to accommodate themselves in the indoors life of
the Scotland of the sixteenth century. But the blurred
mirror may have reflected the stern form of Knox, as
he poured his harsh admonitions into the ears of his
weeping and angry sovereign ; Queen Mary's bed, a
frayed and tattered wreck, must have known many a
sad vigil ; the private staircase has echoed to the feet
of Darnley and of Bothwell ; the faded tapestries may
have swayed at the passing of the conspirators hurrying
to the " slauchter of Davie."

121

Holyrood

The incidents of that tragedy, in some sense the
fatal turning-point in Mary's career, are familiar to all.
But only in the little supper-room that witnessed it can
one fully realise the scene so often pictured and
described — the overturned table, the panic-stricken
favourite crouching behind his mistress, the guileful and
jealous husband with his arms thrown about her in
feigned protection, the gaunt, armed figure of Ruthven
at the door, the cruel and relentless faces and drawn
swords around, and in the midst the outraged and
terrified Queen, not long a wife and soon to become a
mother, tasting the very bitterest drop in the bitter cup
of her life. On the landing of the great staircase
outside there used to be pointed out the " irremovable "
stain of Rizzio's blood, on the spot to which the body,
pierced with more than fifty wounds, was dragged by
the murderers. That dark night's work was never wiped
out of Mary's memory; and her words, as- she dried
her eyes and murmured, " I will study revenge," have
the ring of fate. If ghosts walk anywhere, it must be
in those darkling and deserted chambers of Holyrood.

More than one later romance of history is inter-
woven with that of Mary Stewart. It has already been
noted that in the State bed in the audience chamber
Charles I. slept after his coronation as King of Scots,
the Young Chevalier before Prestonpans, and the
" Butcher Cumberland " after Culloden. Below, on the
first floor of the Palace, are " Darnley's apartments,"
also crowded with relics and associations of the past ;
and on the same level is the long Picture Gallery, part
of the addition made by Charles II., from the walls of
which look down the portraits of a hundred kings of
Scotland, painted by a contract by a Flemish artist —

122

QUEEN MARY'S BEDROOM.

CHARLES I.'S BED.

[To face page 122.

The Picture Gallery

De Witt — in the last year of the reign of the Merry
Monarch.

Needless to say, the very names, to say nothing of
the faces, of the bulk of these crowned effigies are
mythical. You can begin the series with Fergus the
First and the year 330 B.C., and long before reaching
King Duncan and Macbeth you will be constrained to
cry out, with Banquo, " What ! will their line stretch
to the crack of doom ? " Paintings of much greater
historic and artistic interest are the curious diptychs
dating from the last quarter of the fifteenth century,
and removed from Hampton Palace in 1857. They
are believed to represent, on the obverse, James
III. of Scotland and his Queen, and to have formed
the altar-piece of the old Trinity College Church. In
the Picture Gallery were held the receptions and levees
of Prince Charles Edward, while he kept brief state in
the Palace of his ill-starred race. Flora M'lvor, and
Edward Waverley, and the Chief of Glennaquoich are
among the many ghosts that haunt it.

The Palace Gardens, although like the rest of
Holyrood, they have of late had the benefit of taste-
ful restorative touches, are remarkable neither for
extent nor for beauty — beyond the beauty of green-
sward and of venerable walls and associations. The
sundial, named as Queen Mary's, is but one of the
many objects in and around Holyrood annexed by
unsupported tradition to that all-pervading genius loci.
It dates from Charles First's time, and was probably a
compliment to his Queen, Henrietta Maria. Outside
these grounds, still reserved for Royalty and its
representatives, stretches to the east and south the free
and wind-swept slopes and hollows of the King's Park.

123

CHAPTER XI

THE KING'S PARK

THE boundaries of this royal domain — this piece of
rough nature, turned to the purposes of a public
pleasure and exercise-ground — are nearly five miles
in circuit ; it rises in Arthur Seat to a height of
825 feet above the sea. Thus it has room and diversity
of surface, and a bold and spacious outlook beyond
any other of its kind. The weather-beaten and time-
stained House of the Stewarts seems to crouch under
the lee of the central hill and of the great crescent-
shaped ridge of precipices — the Salisbury Crags —
that rise almost from the Palace gates and reach
a height of fully 450 feet above its level. Geologists
have found this crumpled square mile of the surface
of Scotland one of the most interesting spots in the
British Isles. It is a very museum of the igneous
rocks ; it is eloquent of the upheavals and outbursts
of the inconceivably remote period when the site of
Edinburgh was a centre of volcanic energies ; and it
has given clues to the geological past of Scotland.

But the King's Park possesses records of much
more recent date and more immediate human interest.
It would take a volume to tell its authentic annals
and to set forth its traditions. It has been the scene
of duels and mutinies, murders and conspiracies.
Within it or on its margin are fragments of old

124

St Anthony's Chapel

religious houses, holy wells and springs, lake and
peak and glen. In the "Duke's Walk" the last of
the Stewarts who enjoyed his royal heritage was
wont to take exercise, and eighteenth-century affairs
of honour were sometimes settled on this spot, then
made more secluded by oak coppice. It is now part of
the parade ground, which has also swallowed up Clockmill
House and its trees. Nearer to the eastern entrance of
the Park is that still more evil-omened trysting-place,
"Mushat's Cairn," known to Jeanie Deans. Hither,
while the pious Cameronian's daughter was holding
parley in the darkness with the mysterious stranger,
came the warning lilt of Madge Wildfire —

When the gled's in the blue cloud,

The laverock lies still ;
When the hound's in the greenwood,

The hind keeps the hill.

On a spur above, looking to the north, with St
Margaret's Loch spread below and its spring of
crystal water welling from under a boulder behind,
is " the chapel, cave, and hermitage dedicated to Saint
Anthony the Eremite," founded by the Logans of
Restalrig, and much esteemed and resorted to by
the seafaring community of Leith, but now a mere
fragment of ruin perched on a rock. A scrap of
ballad minstrelsy clings to this spot also. The
forsaken lady sang —

Now Arthur Seat shall be my bed ;

The sheets will ne'er be pressed by me ;
St Anton's well will be my drink

Since my false love's forsaken me.

In climbing to it from the Palace one passes another
" Holy Well "—that named of St Margaret— the

I25

The King's Park

ornamental Gothic stonework of which was removed
from the fountain of St Triduana, reputed to be
the original Rood Well of many virtues, which had
to yield place to the St Margaret's locomotive works
of the North British Railway. A rival claim, it should
be said, has been put in for the recently restored
" Chapter House " (so-called) at Restalrig. Thus are the
old and the new, the sacred and the utilitarian, brought
into sharp conflict even on the knees of Arthur Seat.

The Hill is provided with a "commodity of good
names." We come upon them whatever route we
choose in ascending or going round it. Between St
Margaret's and St Anton's Well is the " Haggis
Knowe." The great hollow scooped out between the
main hill and the magnificent buttress of the Salisbury
Crags is the " Hunter's Bog," now appropriated as
a shooting range. The Young Pretender traversed
the Bog on his first coming ; mounting a bay gelding
at the Haggis Knowe, he was greeted by a cheering
crowd in the Duke's Walk and by a cannon-ball from
the Castle, which struck James V.'s tower as the
Prince alighted in front of Holyrood. The sharp
ridge that bounds this valley to the eastward and
forms the favourite approach to the summit is the
" Lang Raw." Below the ridge are the curious
outcrops of volcanic rock known as the " Dasses " ;
and between it and the whinny heights of the " Crow
Hill" is a subsidiary glen ending in the expressively
named " Punch Bowl." For those who prefer a steeper
ascent, varied by some crag-work, a way will be found
by the "Hawse," at the head of Hunter's Bog, and
the "Gutted Haddie," under the "Raven Rock" and
the " Lion's Haunch," by ?which the height can be

126

The Wild M'Craws

escaladed almost on its steepest side. Others again,
who prefer roundabout and easy routes, can follow the
carriage drive which skirts the eastern slopes of the
hill and rises to Dunsappie Crag and Loch, from the
bank of which, 370 feet above sea-level, the track is
plain and, except for the final scramble, smooth going
to the top. It carries us almost over the site of the
encampment of the rebels of the '45 ; and higher up,
on the knolls and hollows of the Nether Hill or Lion's
Haunch, is the spot where the mutineers of the Seaforth
Highlanders— the " Wild M'Craws "—entrenched them-
selves in 1778, after having overpowered their officers
on the Castle Esplanade, under the idea that, they were
about to be sold into slavery in the East Indies.

Around the boulders on the summit, blackened by
many a bonfire and rubbed smooth by the exercises
of many generations of schoolboys, there is generally
a fresh wind blowing to cool the brow of the perspiring
climber. The prospect, ranging from Ben Lomond to
the May Island and from Lochnagar to the Lammer-
muirs, is an exceeding great reward for his toil, unless
indeed a "haar" had stolen up behind him from the
Firth and drawn a veil over the panorama.

Should the line of the drive be pursued past
Dunsappie, a scene soon breaks upon us which is
scarcely surpassed by that disclosed from the crown of
the Hill. The roadway gently ascends until it appears
almost to overhang the hollow of the " Windy Gowl "
and the snug village of Duddingston and its Loch,
spread some 300 feet beneath. The low square tower
of the ancient Norman church emerges from among the
roofs and trees amidst which it is set, on a knoll
projecting into a lake bounded by reeds and crags and

127

The King's Park

covered with swans and other water-fowl. Thomson
the landscape painter, was minister of Duddingston ;
Walter Scott was an elder in the parish church, and the
stump of a tree is shown in the manse garden under
which he wrote part of the " Heart of Midlothian." At
the Kirkgate, beside the " loupin'-on stane," still hang
the " jougs" ; King James, of sapient renown, is said to
have resorted to the Sheephead Inn, hard by, to solace
himself with skittles after the cares of state ; Prince
Charlie lodged in another of the village houses. Beyond
are the park trees of Duddingston Lodge, belonging to
the Duke of Abercorn, and half-embracing the waters
of the loch ; and Prestonfield, the seat of the Dicks of
Braid, and now of the Dick-Cunynghames, an old house
that has entertained Dr Johnson and was familiar to
the youth of Henry Cockburn. More apart, Craigmillar
Castle rises from amongst its trees, stately even in ruin ;
and between us and the far blue line of the Pentlands,
the Moorfoots and the Lammermuirs, are spread the
valleys of the Esk and of the Tyne, and the fairest and
richest parts of the Lothians.

Before the carriage-way descends to the lower levels,
it passes through a gap where there is a fine echo.
Precipices rise on the right hand, and on the left the
Hill almost overhangs the "Wells o' Wearie" and the
park road to Duddingston, in the grand red basaltic
columns known as " Samson's Ribs."

Near the Park gate of St Leonard's, the King's
Drive meets the " Radical Road," which, starting from
opposite Holyrood, has skirted the base of the Salisbury
Crags. This is another Park walk unsurpassable else-
where in interest and beauty. The " close-built, high-
piled city" presses to the base of the steep, smooth

128

The Inhabiting Spirit

talus of the Crags ; and when one has ascended to the
summit of the slope — to the " Cat Nick," the immemorial
test of the climbing powers of the Auld Reekie callants
— the sheer cliffs still rise nearly 100 feet above,
although the hollow through which the Drive winds
past St Leonard's braes and Dumbiedykes has sunk
400 feet below. Over the city and its smoke, from a
height above that of the highest level of the Castle
Rock, one can look abroad upon the hills and waters
that encircle the " romantic town."

Sir Walter is the inhabiting spirit of the scene. It
was, as he tells us, " his favourite evening and morning
resort when engaged with a favourite author or new
subject of study." It was to him " the scene of much
delicious musing when life was young and promised to
be happy." His pen can best describe the peculiar
fascination of a stroll around the Radical Road. " As
the path gently circles around the base of the cliffs," he
writes, " the prospect, composed of enchanting and
sublime objects, changes at every step, and presents
them blended with, or divided from, each other in every
possible variety which can gratify the eye and the
imagination." His own imagination has encircled it
with a fresh and never-fading charm.

It was from this romantic path that Reuben Butler
" saw the morning arise " the day after the slaughter of
Porteous. One looks down from it almost on the
turrets of Holyrood and the thatched roof of " Davie
Deans's Cottage." His magic wand created the Radical
Road itself; it was built by the hands of the unemployed
in the distressful times that followed the Great War,
in response to the lament by the author of " Waverley "
concerning the impassable state into which the pathway
had fallen.

129 i

CHAPTER XII

ROUND THE FLODDEN WALL — THE COWGATE

FROM Dan to Beersheba — from the Castle to the Palace
— we have penetrated through the heart of Old Edin-
burgh, and of its neighbour and vassal, the Canongate.
To pick up the remaining threads of its history and to
glance at what is left of its past, it will be enough to
stroll round the line of the ancient mural defences, built,
or rather renewed, after the calamity of Flodden had
left the " Guid Toun " naked and open to the attack of
a victorious enemy. This Flodden Wall has already
been scanned from the North Bridge and from the
Castle Rock, and we have passed through its principal
gateway and defence at the Netherbow. On its
northern side, the city was content, as we have seen,
with the protection afforded by the waters of the Nor'
Loch, which at one time spread eastward until they
reached to the boundaries of the grounds of the Trinity
College Church and Hospital, at the lower end of Leith
Wynd.

Here, close up against the Craigs of Calton, was
situated a supplementary entrance and barrier of the
city — the Leith Wynd, or " New " Port — designed to
protect it against incursion from the north through the
little burgh of Calton, or St Ninian's Row. On the

> » V

A

2

H

B

1 1

D I

B §
o >5

H °

The "Colledge Kirk"

east side of this gate, as shown on Gordon of Rothie-
may's map of 1647, stood " Paul's Work," originally an
hospital for the entertainment of aged poor men,
founded in 1479, and dedicated to the Virgin, by
Bishop Spence of Aberdeen, and afterwards turned
into a woollen manufactory and a house of correc-
tion. To the west lay the "Colledge Kirk" and its
adjoining hospital, with trim gardens extending to the
Loch.

Church and charity were the princely foundation of
Mary of Gueldres, Queen of James II. of Scots, who,
shortly after that monarch's death in 1460, began
raising and endowing this collegiate charge, dedicated
" to the honour and the praise of the Holy Trinity, to
the ever-blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, to Saint
Ninian the Confessor, and to all the Saints and elect
people of God," and provided with a provost, eight
prebendaries, and two clerks, to whom afterwards were
added a dean and sub-dean. The foundress died three
years later, and her remains — their identity has been
disputed — were found enclosed in a leaden coffin close
by the high altar when the church was demolished in
1848, and were removed to Holyrood. The building,
which, next to St Giles, was the most important of the
ecclesiastical antiquities of the city, was removed, along
with the Hospital and other ancient landmarks, from
the sequestered spot on which it had stood for four
hundred years, to make way for the railway. It was a
fine specimen of the Scottish style of the decorated Gothic
of the fifteenth century, and consisted of a choir, with
aisles, apse, and transepts — the nave, though evidently
part of the original plan, never having been com-
pleted. As has been already noted, part of the structure

Flodden Wall- -The Cowgate

has been rebuilt with the old stones, and incorporated
in the new Trinity College Church in Jeffrey Street, a
modern thoroughfare that, along with Colston Street,
has superseded the old Leith Wynd, the site of which
is now covered by railway platforms, sidings, and signal-
boxes.

Beyond the crossing of the Canongate, Leith Wynd
was continued southward by St Mary's Wynd, the
" Rag Fair " of the Edinburgh of Fergusson's day, lined
at one time by rows of booths, full of second-hand
clothes, built against the Town Wall, while on the
other side were carriers' quarters and places of
entertainment for travellers, among them the "White
Horse Inn," where Dr Johnson and his biographer put
up on their way to the Hebrides. It changed more
than its name in becoming St Mary Street, and was
made the scene of the first experiment of the City
Improvement Trust in clearing away slums and building
working-men's houses. Originally it was a road that
led by the eastern outskirts of the town to the Convent
of St Mary of Placentia, and to the Hospital of St
Leonard. At the foot of the Wynd, the Town Wall
was pierced on the right by the Cowgate Port ; a lane,
now the South Back of Canongate, straggled in from
the direction of the King's Park; and in front access
was had, through the guarded gateway of St Mary's
Port, to the faubourg of the Pleasance, a happy
corruption of the name of the Convent, bestowed on a
suburb which in old deeds is sometimes called " Dear-
enough."

Close by, St John's Hill occupies the crest of a ridge
overlooking the Canongate closes and breweries and
the green hollow under " St Leonard's Crags " ; Thomas

132

St John's Hill

Campbell, while still in early manhood, is said to have
written his " Pleasures of Hope " there, before removing
to Alison Square, and other notable people have found
a quiet retreat in St John's Hill, in the heart of noise
and squalor. Nearer to the fringe of the Park lies the
district of Dumbiedykes — so named, according to Sir
Walter, because a teacher of the deaf and dumb once
had a residence in the locality ; its streets and terraces
run down slopes that are in places so steep that no
wheeled vehicle can venture to descend them, and the
windows look across the valley to the great glacis and
frowning cliffs of the Salisbury Crags.

The Pleasance, too, has its memories, although it
has been brought to low social estate. It led to the
Gibbet Loan and to St Leonard's Chapel, to which the
Douglases repaired to plot the death of James V. — a
site that afterwards became the terminus of the
" Innocent Railway," and is now occupied by mineral
sidings. The Quakers had their refuge in the Pleasance,
where still are a little meeting-house and burial-ground
of the " Friends." It was the centre of the excursions
and adventures of Mr Crockett's "Cleg Kelly." But
this poor and crowded district of St Leonard's, crouch-
ing at the foot of green hill and naked rock, is
associated in our thoughts chiefly with the scenes and
characters of the " Heart of Midlothian." On a
" kaim," or ridge, on the margin of the Park is a humble
thatched dwelling, the " Herd's House " of former days>
on which the popular fancy has bestowed the name of
" Davie Deans's Cottage." Scott, as we have seen, has
often looked down upon the spot, in his rambles round
the " Radical Road," and his eye caught the merits of
£t Leonard's braes as the scene of a romance, as his

Flodden Wall — The Cowgate

ear seized on " Dumbiedykes " as the soubriquet of the
Silent Laird.

Through the Cowgate Port, Butler escaped after
having been an unwilling witness of the lynching of
Jock Porteous in the Grassmarket. Once on a time
the cattle of the burgesses were driven afield by the
rural lane that led, through this narrow natural defile,
from Holyrood to St Cuthbert's Kirk. In the days of
the early Stewarts the Cowgate opened upon the
country. As late as the middle of the seventeenth
century, and later, gardens and cultivated land began
where the Town Walls ended. Even in the age of Dr
Robertson, the historian, and of Adam Smith, eminent
citizens who flitted so far from the centre of society as
St Leonard's and the Sciennes were regarded as having
gone into Siberian exile. But, down in the hollow of
the u Coogait " and in its wynds and closes, " patricians,
senators, and princes of the land " were for centuries
content to take up their abode ; and foreign visitors
descanted on its " magnificence."

Some of the Cowgate alleys we have already
explored from the High Street and the Canongate.
The stumps of a few ancient lanes — such as Forrester's
Wynd — continue to hold their place, after their very
names have been lost in the thoroughfares above.
But the hand of improvement has been busy on the
Cowgate frontages, especially at the eastern or " Port "
end. Light has been let down into it by the demolition
of some of the most striking of the antique houses.
We have seen that the Palace of the Beatons, at the
foot of the Blackfriars Wynd, has utterly disappeared ;
the like fate has befallen the house of Gavin Douglas,
the poet-bishop of Dunkeld, in the neighbouring

J34

The Cowgate Port

Robertson's Close ; and one may look in vain for any
trace of the Scottish Mint or "Cunzie" House, whose
sombre and massive turret of polished ashlar-work
protruded into the narrow thoroughfare.

In compensation, some of the handsomest of the
modern public buildings of the Scottish Capital have
their roots in the Cowgate — among them the Sheriff
Court-House, the Library of the Solicitors before the
Supreme Courts, and the New Free Library, this last
on a site once occupied by the residence of Sir Thomas
Hope, King's Advocate to Charles I., and nearly opposite
that of the masterful and turbulent Earl of Haddington,
who is still remembered in the locality as " Tarn o' the
Coogait." Other shadows are thrown by the South and
George IV. Bridges, whose traffic roars overhead, two
or three storeys above the level of the squalid Cowgate
pavement. Yet, with all these changes, in the dim
perspective of the tall imposing lands ; in what little
has been left of gabled end, and timber front, and
turnpike stair ; in its " dives," and low moulded doorways,
and narrow close-heads, and projecting poles, bearing
the dingy washing of the inmates of the degraded
thoroughfare, the Cowgate still preserves more of the
ancient air of an Edinburgh street than can perhaps
elsewhere be found.

The chief of the few remaining antiquities of the
street is the Magdalene Chapel, which lies far to the
westward near the Cowgatehead, where its modest spire
is almost buried from sight among the tall buildings
that crowd around. It was founded nine years before
Flodden, on the site of an earlier Maison Dieu, chiefly
by a pious burgher, Michael Macqueen, and by his
spouse, Janet Rynd, whose tomb, with black-letter

Flodden Wall- -The Cowgate

inscription still legible, is to be found within. The
chapel and charity, for the support of a chaplain and
seven bedesmen, were placed under the trust of the
Incorporation of Hammermen, and after the Reformation
the chapel became the meeting hall of that body, and
held the " Blue Blanket," the palladium of the privileges
and liberties of the Edinburgh Crafts. In the principal
window is one of the few examples of pre-Reformation
stained glass left in Scotland, and in the spire is hung
an ancient bell. John Craig, Knox's assistant, preached
Latin discourses in Magdalene Chapel; in it the
National Covenant was prepared for signature in the
adjoining Greyfriars Churchyard ; and the table is
still shown whereon the body of the Earl of Argyle,
shortened by the head, was laid after execution. The
building is now occupied as a Protestant Medical
Mission.

Three famous accesses from the Cowgate to the
south were the Horse Wynd, the College Wynd, and
the High School Wynd. The first led past the west
side of the old College enclosure, once the grounds of
the Church of St Mary-in-the-Fields, to the gateway in
the wall that opened on the suburb of Potterrow.
Horse Wynd, strange as it may seem, was once
celebrated for it spaciousness and salubrity as a place
of residence. Near the Cowgate corner stood a quaint
building in which Andro Symson, successor of Chepman,
had his printing-press ; further up were dwellings, one
or two of them still standing, in which quite a knot of
law lords and blue-blooded Jacobite families lived in
the period of knee-breeches and sedan-chairs. It is
now a steep ascent, partly by steps, to the level of the
modern Chambers Street, and forms, in its lower

136

Famous Wynds

half, a portion of Guthrie Street. College Wynd
was also a fashionable locality. Like its neighbour, it
gave direct access to the College from the High Street,
in days before the South Bridge had been made.
Oliver Goldsmith lived in it, and ran up tailors' bills,
while attending medical classes in the neighbouring
place of learning. But a greater title to fame belongs
to it, for in a house at the wynd-head, close to North
College Street, opposite the dwelling of Dr Joseph
Black, the great chemist, and under the same roof as
Lord Henderland, Walter Scott was born. Up this
narrow way, as James Grant notes, Boswell and
Principal Robertson conducted Dr Johnson to view
the " Town's College," when the author of " Waverley "
was a baby.

Some distance further east was the High School
Wynd. It was not many years after the Black Friary,
which had occupied the site, had been wrecked and
its stones used "in the bigging of dykes," that the
Grammar School of the burgh was finally settled in the
" High School Yards." For two centuries it was housed
in a narrow turreted building, over the porch of which
was a carved stone with the date 1578, and the words
" Musis Respublica Floret." The wishes of the founders
were not belied. The original High School, and its
more spacious successor erected in 1777, became a home
of many illustrious memories. Some of its teachers
and of its scholars have prominent places in the history
of Scottish learning and literature. Drummond of
Hawthornden was taught his letters, no doubt with
the aid of the birch, in the High School; Thomas
Ruddiman, the grammarian, was a prop of the
institution ; Allan Masterton — - Burns's Allan, who

Flodden Wall — The Cowgate

composed " Willie brewed a peck o' maut "—was one
of its lesser lights as writing-master ; David Mallet,
or Malloch as he was then content to be called, was at
one time its janitor. Three Lord Chancellors of
England, it has been noted — Erskine, Loughborough,
and Brougham — received their schooling in this famous
place of learning, and other " old boys " who were
taught under the benignant sway of Adam or of Pillans,
were Walter Scott, Francis Jeffrey, and Francis Horner.
Of an earlier generation, when the pupils were expected
to turn up for their Latin exercises at 7 A.M., was
Henry Mackenzie, who recalls with pride his invitations
to drink tea with the Rector in a house " at the country
end of the suburb called Pleasance," named, in
remembrance of the ambition of an aspiring tailor,
the "Castle of Clouts." Still more cherished and
inspiring than the recollections of the class-room and
the tea-table were those that clung to the games and
battles in the " Yards," which perpetuated the traditions
of the more tumultuous and often bloody "barrings-
out " of earlier times ; the " alarms and excursions "
between the High School boys and the "gamins" of
the adjoining Cowgate and Pleasance, and the visits
to the "Jib House "at the wynd-head. Scott himself,
notwithstanding his genius and his lameness, "made
a brighter figure in the Yards than in the class."

In 1829 the Royal High School flitted to the slopes
of the Calton, and the disused edifice was appropriated
for the purposes of a Surgical Hospital in connection
with the neighbouring Royal Infirmary. This is
another institution of which Edinburgh has just reason
to be proud. Its nucleus had been formed exactly a
hundred years before the High School removal. Ten

138

High School and Infirmary

years after it had taken imposing and beneficent shape,
in a building, in Infirmary Street, which did honour to
the charity and public spirit of " Edinburgh before the
'45." Whigs and Tories exerted themselves nobly in
the rearing of a structure surpassed at the time by none
in Europe as a place of healing and tendance. The
zealous Whig Lord Provost, George Drummond, was its
chief promoter ; the Jacobite Lord Cromarty, attainted
later for his share in the Rebellion, laid its foundation-
stone ; the first of the great surgical dynasty of the
Monros was active in its organisation ; and the institu-
tion was not long in working order when it was turned
into a military hospital for the wounded, both High-
landers and Hanoverians, from Prestonpans. The fame
and success of Edinburgh as a medical school has
depended on the growth and efficiency of the Infirmary ;
and after the institution had moved to a roomier and
more convenient site between Lauriston and* the
Meadows, the old building continued for long to serve
a great and blessed purpose as the City Fever Hospital,
which has now taken up new and airy ground on the
southern side of Wester Craiglockhart Hill. Part of
the former Infirmary buildings has been turned to the
purposes of laboratories and class-rooms of the Engineer-
ing Faculty; the neighbouring Old Surgeon's Hall —
home of many memories since it was first built in
1697 — still stands within the south-eastern angle of
the Blackfriars ground, but is marked for early
destruction.

In close proximity to these temples of healing
stands Lady Yester's, one of the oldest of the city
churches. It was founded in 1644 by a pious ancestress
of the Marquis of Tweeddale, and has had among its

Flodden Wall— The Cowgate

distinguished ministers Principals Robertson, Lee, and
Caird. Here, too, are Corporation Baths and other
public buildings, while bounding the Old Infirmary
ground and the site of Old Surgeon Square to the
south, there may still be seen the massive remains of
the Town Wall extending from the Pleasance along the
northern side of Drummond Street.

All this intra-mural space once formed part of the
gardens of the Dominican Monastery. In these
grounds, secluded yet airy, placed between the city and
the fields without, Cardinal Bagimont, John of Gaunt,
Archbishop Beaton, and John Knox had walked and
meditated. They originally embraced the site of the
Church of the " Blessed Mary-in-the-Fields," lying to
the westward. By 1567, the church, like the neigh-
bouring monastery, had fallen into ruins. Queen Mary
had just before granted a charter for the foundation of
a University, in fulfilment of a purpose for which a
public-spirited citizen, Robert Reid, Bishop of Orkney,
had left a sum of 8000 merks. Not until several years
later, however, in the time of Mary's son, James, did
these good intentions begin to bear fruit, and academic
buildings of a humble kind to rise on the mouldered
and shattered religious foundation. The times were
too troubled for the peaceful pursuits of learning. In
particular, in the year after the drafting of the charter
of the " Oure Townis College," there happened, on this
very spot, a tragic event that shook the whole land,
and ultimately drove the Queen from her throne and
kingdom — the " mystery of Kirk o' Field."

The scene of this dark and epoch-making crime lay
between the line of the older defences and the later
Flodden Wall. It partook of the character both of

140

Kirk of Field

town and country, and has been represented as a place
suitable for an invalid, such as Darnley was, recovering
from grievous sickness — salubrious and retired, and yet
convenient of access from Holyrood. Buchanan, a
prejudiced witness — but who is not? — describes it as
" a house not commodious for a sick man, nor comely for
a King, for it was both riven and ruinous, and had stood
empty without any dweller for divers years before, in
a place of small resort, between old falling walls of two
kirks, near a few almshouses for poor beggars."

The building — " Robert Balfour's ludging " — prob-
ably stood on or near the corner of the present
Drummond Street and South Bridge, the fabric of the
Kirk of Field occupying, it is supposed, part of what is
now the College Quadrangle. A postern gate entered
through the Town Wall, and while Darnley lay in an
upper chamber, a room below was reserved for the
Queen ; and in this Mary slept on the two nights
preceding the murder. No sooner had she left it late
on the night of the Qth February 1567, to be present
at the bridal banquet and masque of her servant
Sebastian, than the gunpowder was stored in this
apartment by the minions of Bothwell, who himself
kept hovering near the scene, clad in " the loose cloak
of a Black Reiter " ; and at " two hours after midnight,"
when dancing had barely ceased at Holyrood, came
the shock for which, according to the Queen's enemies,
she had been listening as impatiently as her lover.
Not the least mysterious part of this black business is
the fact that, while the house was blown to fragments
— " not one stone left upon another " — the bodies of
Darnley and his page Taylor were found, in their
nightgear, some distance off in the orchard, with scarce
a mark of violence on them.

141

CHAPTER XIII

ROUND THE FLODDEN WALL— THE UNIVERSITY

NOT until 1582 did the Town's College — the latest but
not the least illustrious of the Scottish Universities —
begin to rise on its appointed site. King James
bestowed upon it his name and his " special approba-
tion." But it does not appear that the College was
indebted to him for more substantial favours ; the gift
promised by the Modern Solomon to his " God-bairn "
came to naught. The University owes, indeed, little
to royal favour ; and an endowment of £200 annually,
granted by Cromwell, was rescinded at the Restoration.
It managed to grow and thrive for centuries under the
auspices and control of the City Fathers ; and although
there were quarrels between Town and Gown influences,
and blunders were committed on both sides, the
University has, on the whole, reason to feel grateful for
the fostering care bestowed on it by the Council and
Magistrates, with whom its connection is by no means
entirely severed.

For long, the Faculties had to be content to house
meanly in scattered and incommodious buildings, which
served both as class-rooms for the students and dwell-
ings for the professors. The College Library may
almost be said to have had a separate beginning^ in

142

THE UNIVERSITY.

[To face page 142.

" Oure Tounis College "

the bequest made by Clement Little of his collection
of 300 books ; it received, among other reinforcements,
the volumes that had been gathered by Drummond
of Hawthornden, and has gradually developed into
the magnificent collection of over 150,000 volumes,
including many precious MSS., accommodated in the
spacious and beautiful Library Hall of the University,
after having long been cribbed, cabined, and confined
in an antique building which continued to hold its
place — the last relic of the Old College — for some
years after it had been enclosed within the present
Quadrangle. One of the most recent benefactors of
the Library has been the late Sir William Fraser.

As it stands to-day, the University building was
begun in 1789, and was not completed until forty-five
years later. Indeed, the copestone was not put upon the
original design of Robert Adam until fully a century
after the laying of the foundation-stone, by the addition
of the dome and cupola, crowned by a golden figure of
" Youth " bearing aloft the lighted torch of knowledge,
which contribute materially to the dignity of the
structure. Wanting this feature, even the front eleva-
tion, towards South Bridge had an air of massiveness
that approached heaviness; while the face presented
towards South College Street, and also that towards
Chambers Street — the latter now opened freely to the
light by the removal of the old buildings that screened
the College flank— had, and still have, in their monoto-
nous lines and dull grey tones, a decidedly sombre
and oppressive effect, suggestive rather of the burdens
and toils of learning than of the inspiring influences of
knowledge.

But if a somewhat lowering and repellent front be

Flodden Wall — The University

presented to the outer world, compensation will be
found by those who enter boldly, through the lofty
gateway of three arches, supported by six monolithic
Doric columns of Craigleith stone, into the heart of
this great mass of academic buildings — the Quadrangle.
Certainly there is nothing to encourage the frivolous
tastes and rash aspirations of the youthful student, in
the stairways and balustrades, the arcades and galleries,
the columns and pediments, all of massive grey stone,
that surround this spacious central court. They teach
rather the useful truth that solid and sustained effort is
a condition of high attainment. The style is Graeco-
Italian, and bears evidence of the improving touches
made by Playfair on Adam's design ; and these interior
facades possess a severe beauty and noble serenity that
well accord with the spirit of the place. Yet the Quad-
rangle is reminiscent of the sport and high spirits at
least, as much as of the labours and meditations, of the
neophytes of this temple of Scottish learning. It has
witnessed College rows and rejoicings ; it has been the
scene of furious and well-sustained snowball fights ; it
has been the starting-place or the goal of torchlight
processions. The students have here given demonstra-
tive welcome to a long succession of illustrious Lord
Rectors of their own choosing, Thomas Carlyle among
the number ; John Stuart Blackie has stalked through
its piazzas, humming a lilt, and swinging his " kail
runt"; R. L. Stevenson, an idle student of law, but
already a keen observer of human nature, has dangled
his legs from the balustrade, while taking malicious
delight in the tumult beneath him.

A thousand memories, grave and gay, start up in the
hearts and minds of Edinburgh alumni at the mention of

144

The Old College Quadrangle

the Old College Quadrangle. How many more inhabit
the corridors and class-rooms, reading-room and library !
The statue of Sir David Brewster, in white marble,
facing the entrance gateway, is a reminder not only of
the man, but of the services which Edinburgh University
has rendered to Science. Busts, and portraits, and
medallions, in the Library Hall and elsewhere, seem by
preserving the features to perpetuate the influence of
the " mighty dead," in Literature, in Divinity, in Law,
in Classical Learning, who once taught or studied within
these walls. But chiefly, perhaps, Medicine has here
received and bestowed distinction, under a long line of
eminent and famous men. Latterly, the old University
buildings became too straitened to contain, along with
the other Faculties, the Edinburgh Medical School,
and it moved to new and well-appointed quarters on
the margin of the Meadows, and in contiguity to the
new Royal Infirmary.

The Healing Art has not wholly deserted the
precincts of the Old College. In Nicolson Street,
not many paces from the line of the Flodden Wall and
the site of Kirk o' Field, and opposite to the Empire
Theatre, is the graceful classic front, supported on Ionic
columns, of Surgeons' Hall — the Museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons — successor to the old building in
Surgeon Square which was associated in the popular
mind with " Burke and Hare " and the resurrectionists.
Large additions have recently been made to meet the
growing wants in the matter of class-room and labora-
tory accommodation of the School of Medicine of the
Royal College. Other institutions, including the Heriot-
Watt College and School of Art, ministering to the
mental or bodily wants of the public have arisen

145 K

Flodden Wall — The University

in the broad thoroughfare that has taken the place of
the narrow and darkened alley of North College Street,
now bearing the name and adorned with the statue of
William Chambers, who was a chief agent in the
improvement. An edifice that, in all senses, bulks more
largely in the eye of the public is the Royal Scottish
Museum. This spacious and handsome building, in
Venetian Renaissance style, forms an effective contrast
in tone and architectural effect to the sombre University
block, lying immediately to the east, and connected with
it by a bridge thrown across West College Street.

The Museum is on a site once partly occupied by the
Trades Maidens Hospital, now removed to the southern
side of the Meadows. Begun in 1861, when the
foundation-stone was laid by the Prince Consort, it was
not completed until 1888. For the purpose of enlarge-
ment and security against fire, ground formerly occupied
by spirit stores and other buildings lying south of the
Museum and of the remains of the Town Wall, which
runs immediately behind it, has recently been acquired.
Originally a branch of South Kensington, whence it
has drawn large part of its treasures illustrative of art,
science, industry, and natural history, the Museum maybe
described as containing an epitome of human knowledge
and progress. In the Great Hall, 200 feet in length and
80 feet in height, and in the wings and adjuncts of the
building, there may be studied the annals of the earth
from the earliest geological epoch down to the newest
discovery in science, and the advance of man in the arts
of war and peace as illustrated by the rude weapons of
palaeolithic times and by models of the latest type of
ironclad or lighthouse. The processes of manufacture,
of all kinds and in all stages from the raw material to

146

The Royal Scottish Museum

the finished product, are exhibited to the inquiring eye
and mind ; examples, or models, of the most renowned
works of art of our own and of foreign countries have
the place and prominence due to them ; and in the
Natural History Department are stuffed or prepared
specimens of nearly all the tribes of birds and beasts
and creeping things that inhabit the planet.

For such as take an interest in the dust and
shadows of local traditions, as well as in the achieve-
ments of modern industry and science, the western end
of Chambers Street will have its attractions. For here,
in close proximity to the entrance to Greyfriars Church-
yard, on ground long known as " The Society," there
still linger some traces of Brown Square, which, with
the adjacent Argyle Square, represented one of the first
attempts of Old Edinburgh fashion to " break bounds "
and enjoy more freedom and elbow-room in its domestic
life than were possible in the pends and closes. The
North Bridge was hardly in contemplation when the
building of Brown Square was begun in 1763, and
" diminutive and obscure " as it appeared to later eyes,
it was at the time hailed, as the author of " Redgauntlet "
tells us, "as an extremely elegant improvement upon
the style of designing and erecting Edinburgh
residences." The families which flitted thither felt, for
the first time, the comfort and convenience of living " self-
contained," or as the phrase then ran, " entire within
themselves." One remembers how Saunders Fairford —
father of Allan Fairford and the prototype of the father
of Walter Scott — was persuaded, after a wrench like that
of "divorcing soul from body," to abandon his old
quarters in the Luckenbooths, on the plea that " the
better air of this new district was more favourable to the

147

Flodden Wall — -The University

health" of his growing and weakly son ; and the parallel
is irresistibly suggested of the other stern old Edinburgh
lawyer who, for a similar reason, left the purlieus of the
Old College to go yet further afield to George Square.

Out of the house in Brown Square (usually identified
with Lord Glenlee's handsome dwelling, afterwards a
Dental Hospital, which continues to make some outward
show on the south side of Chambers Street) issued the fair
apparition of " Lady Green Mantle," and " walking along
the pavement turned down the close at the north-west
end of Brown Square, leading to the Cowgate " — by the
line, that is, of the modern George IV. Bridge — and, to
the eyes of her lover, " put the sun in her pocket when
she disappeared." But we cannot halt to call up the
ghosts that haunt a nook in which, a century ago, the
" literary muses " found congenial refuge and company.
Jean Elliot, the writer of " The Flowers of the Forest,"
is one of them ; the " Man of Feeling " also, whose lively
shade seems to flit before us all over Old Edinburgh.
He was an occupant of the house next to the Fair-
fords, before it became associated with Robert Burns's
acquaintance and neighbour on the banks of the
Ayr, Lord Glenlee, a gentleman of the old school, who
is described as " walking daily to Court, hat in hand,
with a powdered wig, through Brown Square, down
Crombie's Close, across the Cowgate, and up the Back
Stairs to the Parliament House, attended by his valet,
and always scrupulously dressed in black," until age
compelled him to take to a sedan-chair.

Other lawyers and " law lords " herded on this new
" South Side " ; among them Henry Dundas, first Lord
Melville, Lord Cullen, and three Lord Presidents of the
Court— Sir Hay Campbell, Robert Blair of Avontoun,

148

GOSFORD'S CLOSE, OX SITE OF GEORGE IV. BRIDGE.
(From a water-colour by W. Geikie.)

[ To face page 148.

Brown Square

and Miller, father of Lord Glenlee. Not a few of them
afterwards moved, with fashion, to the extra-mural
George Square. The locality was convenient for the
College as well as for the Courts. That ponderous
authority on port and mathematics, Sir John Leslie,
lived in Brown Square ; and a house in Argyle Square,
which had belonged to Dr Hugh Blair, was possessed
later by another great magnate of letters and divinity
whose fame is also, it may be feared, beginning to fade
— Dr Thomas Chalmers. Nor should it be forgotten
that, among the many South-Country visitors who put
up at the George Inn — the " Hole in the Wall " — just
within the Bristo Port and close to the western end of
Chambers Street, were Colonel Mannering and Dandie
Dinmont.

Near Bristo Port, at the back of the Museum, as has
been noted, there may still be discovered a portion of
the Town Wall. It is part of the section which extended
between the Potterrow and the Bristo Ports — the two
city exits to the south. They led into the suburb of
Easter Portsburgh, of which the main thoroughfare was
the Potterrow, spoken of by Hugo Arnot, 130 years ago,
as a " mean street," and although its northern entrance
has lately been widened, the description applies to it to-
day. Before and after Arnot's time, however, it housed
persons of note. If the Regent Morton's tale is to be
trusted — a bold supposition — it was in a lodging in the
Potterrow that the notorious " Casket Letters " were
discovered, having been smuggled thither from the
Castle by BothwelFs henchman, Dalgleish. The Duke
of Douglas and the Earls of Moray and Stair had town
residences in it. The Stair house, near the southern
extremity, was known as the "General's Entry," and

149

Floddcn Wall — The University

tradition has assigned it as the residence of General
Monk while he was Governor of Scotland. A more
authentic and more romantic association is that
connected with Burns and Mrs Maclehose ; up the turn-
pike of the General's Entry, now removed," Sylvander "
mounted to visit his " Clarinda." " Chloris," another of
the fair ones who caught the wayward fancy of the poet
and inspired some of his sweetest songs, was a dweller
in Potterrow. Lothian Street, which crosses it under
the shadow of the University, has had among its student
lodgers Thomas de Quincey, Charles Darwin, and
Robert Louis Stevenson ; and Thomas Campbell lived
several years in Alison Square, a tributary of this lower-
ing lane, one of the last places where one would dream
of searching for traces of the Lyric Muse.

Strolling back towards the Bristo Port, from the
junction of Potterrow and Bristo Street, one is still on
classic ground. Not many yards off is the Buccleuch
Parish Church, formerly known as the St Cuthbert's
Chapel of Ease ; in it the Marquis of Bute has placed a
fine memorial window to his ancestress, Miss Macleod
of Raasay ; while in the little God's acre beside it rest
the blind poet, Dr Blacklock, who encouraged Burns to
print his first volume of poetry ; Mrs Cockburn, another
acquantance of the ploughman bard, and author of the
more modernised version of "The Flowers of the
Forest " ; David Herd, the ballad collector ; Dr Adam
of the High School, and Deacon Brodie. The space in
front of the Chapel was the field of fray in the " bickers,"
in which Walter Scott took active part, between the
Potterrow callants, led by "Green Breeks," and the
more aristocratic youth of George Square.

The whole neighbourhood, indeed, is redolent of the

George Square

early years of Scott. Is not George Square within
a stone-throw ? In No. 25 lived for many years the
practical, sober-minded Writer to the Signet, who saw
with dismay his son steeping himself in worthless
balladry and romance, and following " gangrel " courses,
in place of taking kindly to the law ; yet had in himself
such an indignant soul of honour that when the
Secretary Murray of Broughton came on one occasion
to George Square to transact some necessary law
business, and had obtained the entertainment which
politeness demanded, Walter Scott, the elder, flung out
of the window the teacup from which the traitor to his
Prince had drunk. It was equally characteristic of
the son that he should have preserved " Broughton's
Saucer " among his " auld nicknackets." From George
Square young Walter trudged to his first school — in
Hamilton's Entry, Bristo Street — and afterwards to
the High School and the College ; and went volunteer-
ing, rambling, and sweethearting in those years — not
unhappy ones, he acknowledges, in spite of some pangs
of disappointed love and ambition — which he spent
under his father's roof.

It would take a volume to exhaust the historical
and literary memories that cling to George Square, of
which we may still say, with Lord Cockburn, that " with
its pleasant trim-kept gardens it has an air of antiquated
grandeur about it, and retains not a few traces of its
former dignity and seclusion." Every other house has
been the home of an Edinburgh celebrity. Admiral Lord
Duncan, the hero of Camperdown, came to anchor in
No. 5 ; Sir Ralph Abercrombie, the victor of Alexandria,
rested on his laurels in No. 27 ; " Timothy Tickler," of
the " Noctes " — otherwise Robert Sym, W.S., and uncle

Flodden Wall — The University

of Christopher North — dwelt in No. 20; Sir Francis
Grant, the Academician, was born in No. 32 ; and in
No. 39, the gentle Rector of the High School, Dr
Adam, parted from life with the murmured words, " It
grows dark, boys ; you can go ; the rest to-morrow."
Nor must one forget among the many legal lights
of the Square the brilliant Henry Erskine and Lord
Braxfield, "the Hanging Judge."

In a flat at No. 7 Charles Street, leading out of
the Square into Bristo Street, Francis Jeffrey was
born in 1773 ; and twenty-nine years later, in 18
Buccleuch Place, opening off the other side of the
Square, was founded the Edinburgh Review ', of which
Jeffrey was a leading spirit. Sydney Smith, describing
the circumstances with perhaps more humour than
accuracy, informs us that "Brougham, Jeffrey, and
himself happened to meet on the eighth or ninth flat
in Buccleuch Place" — Brougham reduces the height
to three storeys — "the then elevated residence of
Jeffrey"; Smith proposed and it was "carried by
acclamation " that the three literary adventurers should
set up a review, the suggested motto of which was,
"We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal" — a free
translation of Virgil's " Tenui musam meditaris avena,"

The Bristo Street associations are of an older and
more sombre cast. Up an entry in the neighbourhood
of Charles Street and Marshall Street is the church
which is the successor to that ministered to last century
by those uncompromising champions of Secession,
Ralph Erskine and "Pope" Adam Gib. Nearer
to the "Port," bordering, in fact, on "Society"
and the Town Wall, stood the old Darien House,
for generations a sad memorial to Scottish eyes of

152

Bristo

a national misfortune and a national injury, the last,
or nearly the last, wrong done by "the auld enemy,"
England. Later it became a "bridewell" or pauper
asylum, and in one of the rooms died poor Robert
Fergusson, a raving maniac, at the early age of
twenty-four.

With the Darien House, the City Poor House and
the Merchant Maidens Hospital have disappeared from
Bristo, and new academic buildings lend their more
inspiriting and ornamental presence to the locality.
Many old houses, among them the Jewish Synagogue,
have been cleared away to make room for the Students'
Union and the School of Music, and to remove
obstructions of view and access to the M'Ewan Hall,
itself part and complement of the New University
Buildings, or Medical School. The group now occupies
nearly the whole space between Charles Street, Bristo,
Teviot Place, and the Middle Meadow Walk. The
class-rooms and laboratories of the Medical Faculty
are accommodated on a scale and in a manner worthy
of their purpose, in the fine edifice of the Early Italian
style of architecture, designed by Sir Rowand Anderson,
which has already, although the lofty campanile tower
has not yet risen to complete the work, cost a sum of
over ^"300,000. Fully a third of this amount has been
laid out, by the munificence of Mr William M'Ewan,
M.P., upon the University Hall, which is a grand domed
room, magnificent in its proportions and rich and
elaborate in its mural decorations, set apart for
academic functions and other great occasions when the
interest of the public touches closely the life of the
" Town's College."

Separated from the New Medical School only by

Floddcn Wall — The University

the tree-shaded and unicorn-guarded Meadow Walk,
is another noble institution in which the city takes
just pride — the New Royal Infirmary. The central
block and the group of connected pavilions cover many
acres of ground between Lauriston and the site of
the old " Burgh Loch," long since turned into a park
and playfield ; and the sheaf of spires and baronial
turrets rising above the trees is a feature in the
prospects of Edinburgh from the south. But it is not
so much on account of its external appearance as of
the objects it fulfils and the spirit that sustains it
that the Royal Infirmary bulks largely in the eyes
of the citizens. It has been built by voluntary con-
tributions ; it is maintained by public benevolence ;
it ministers to the needs of some 8000 in-patients
annually, not to mention a much larger host of out-
patients; here, if anywhere, Science has joined hands
with Mercy and Charity.

The broad Meadows to the south, which now form
the chief southern lung of the city, were once covered
by a marshy lake, which extended from Lochrin on the
west to the grounds of the Convent of St Catherine of
Sienna, or the "Sciennes." Elk and urus had once
disported themselves in the fields now dedicated to
cricket, archery, and other forms of recreation, and have
left their bones as evidence. The " Burgh Loch " and
the "Goose Dub" were dried up by aid of the
windmill which waved its arms near the street that
bears its name, and which raised the water for the
Brewers' Society, an incorporation commemorated by
the " Society Port." Drainage and improvement on
more systematic lines were undertaken by a Fife laird,
Hope of Rankeillor, in the period before the '45, and

The Meadows

the title of Hope Park is witness that the services of
the chief reclaimer of the marsh are not forgotten.

About the middle of last century Hope Park became
a place of "fashionable promenade" for beaux and belles.
Was not David Balfour taking the air here, with bucks
of greater skill and experience,' when he sustained the
affront from Lieutenant Hector Duncansby which led
to the famous duel ? "A poor thing, but mine own,"
Old Edinburgh might have said of its damp and rheu-
matic "Rotten Row." "There has never, in my life,"
says Lord Cockburn, " been any single place in or near
Edinburgh which has so distinctly been the resort at
once of our philosophy and our fashion. Under these
poor trees walked and talked and meditated all our
literary, and many of our legal, worthies of the
eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century."

55

CHAPTER XIV

ROUND THE FLODDEN WALL — THE GREYFRIARS AND
GRASSMARKET

OVER against the chief entrance to the New Infirmary
in Lauriston, and alongside the grounds of George
Heriot's Hospital, reaches a narrow arm of the Grey-
friars Churchyard, that "infelix campus" wherein has
been raked the dust of so many generations of the great
and the gifted who strolled in the Meadows and walked
the streets of Old Edinburgh. The "Yairds of the
Gray Freiris " — the grounds of the Franciscan Convent
founded by James I. of Scots — lay just within the
embrace of the Flodden Wall, but " sumquhat distant
fra our toune," when Queen Mary, in 1562, gifted the
pleasant, open spot, on the supplication of the
magistrates, to be a place of burial in lieu of the
overcrowded St Giles Kirkyard — " Sua that the air
within oure said toune may be the maire puire and
clene." Since then, the Greyfriars has grown into a
very mound of mortality, so that the access from the
foot of the Candlemaker Row, once the main entrance,
is by a flight of upward steps, instead of by the descent
represented on old plans ; and that ancient thoroughfare
to the Grassmarket has recently had to be protected by
a strong retaining wall and battlement, to keep the
dead from breaking bounds upon the living.

156

OLD GREY FRIARS.

HERIOT'S HOSPITAL.

[To face page 156.

A "Theatre of Mortality"

The Greyfriars is one of the most doleful, as it is
undoubtedly the most interesting, of Scottish church-
yards. Many pens have described its "quaint and
smoke-encrusted tombs, its many headstones sunk deep
in the long rank grass" — which, by the way, is now
more trimly kept — and its strange medley of associa-
tions, grim, and sad, and heroic. R. L. Stevenson has,
once for all, condensed the spirit of this historic
graveyard, into the pages of his " Picturesque Notes."
Nowhere are "the quick and the dead" brought into
such intimate juxtaposition and dramatic contrast.

" Here a window is partly blocked up by the pedi-
ment of a tomb ; there, where the street falls far below
the level of the graves, a chimney has been trained up
the back of a monument, and a red pot looks vulgarly
over from behind. A damp smell of the graveyard
finds its way into houses where workmen sit at meat.
Domestic life on a small scale goes on visibly at the
windows. The very solitude and stillness of the
enclosure, which lies apart from the town's traffic,
serves to accentuate the contrast. As you walk upon
the graves, you see children scattering crumbs to feed
the sparrows ; you hear people singing or washing
dishes, or the sounds of tears or castigation ; the linen
on a clothes-pole flaps against funereal sculpture ; or a
cat slips over the lintel and descends on a memorial
urn."

It is a Theatre of Mortality, whose walls are
" appallingly adorned " with the insignia and mottoes
of death, peculiarly rich in those "traditional ingenuities
in which it pleased our fathers to set forth their sorrow
and their sense of earthly mutability." One such grim
and grotesque emblem faces you on entering through

The Grey friars and Grassmarket

the gateway opposite Bristo Port — a skeleton Death,
life-sized (if one may employ a paradox), capering
against the eastern gable of Old Greyfriars Church.

That singularly plain fabric has no history behind
the year 1612, when the magistrates ordered a church
to be built on the spot ; it is divided only by a common
wall from New Greyfriars — a structure equally frugal of
outward adornment — which came into existence more
than a century later. But Old Greyfriars, especially,
has reason to be proud of its associations with eminent
men who have preached or worshipped in it, of whom a
multitude sleep their last sleep under the shadow of its
walls. Of its eighteenth-century ministers, perhaps the
most distinguished was Principal Robertson, whose
mausoleum, next to that of William Adam, the architect,
is a prominent object on the western side of the church-
yard. He had as his colleague Dr John Erskine, a
shining light of Evangelicism, while the historian was a
staunch pillar of Moderatism ; and, as Colonel Manner-
ing had opportunity of discovering on his visit to Old
Greyfriars, the afternoon service was sometimes devoted
to destroying the impression made by the prelection of
the morning.

Scott's own early impressions of the solemnity of
spirit and baldness of form of the Scottish Presbyterian
service were obtained here ; " every Sabbath, when well
and at home," Sir Walter's father and mother, " attended
by their fine young family of children and their domestic
servants," filed through the gate on their way from the
adjoining George Square to their pew in Old Greyfriars ;
and no doubt visits were paid to the family burying-plot,
where Scott the elder is now laid, near the entrance to
the Heriot grounds. It was here too, on a rainy Sunday,

158

Old Greyfriars

that the author of " Guy Mannering " made his first
plunge into love, by offering his umbrella and his escort
home to the beautiful young lady, Miss Belches Stuart,
who nearly broke his heart when she married Sir William
Forbes, the banker — by no means the only idyll begun
under the frowning and grinning effigies of Death and
Time in Greyfriars Churchyard.

The most memorable historical incident connected
with the scene was the signing, on the flat gravestones
around, of the National Covenant of 1638, renewed
later as the Solemn League and Covenant. The flock
of the Greyfriars took the lead in entering upon this
compact between the people and their God, which cost
afterwards so much "blood and tears"; and Montrose,
who was to become the fiercest foe of the Covenanters,
was one of the first to sign the bond. A bitter sequel
to the signing — a later act in the national tragedy — was
witnessed on the same spot forty years later, after
Montrose's and many a noble head besides had fallen in
the struggle between " Kirk and King." In 1679, tne
prisoners, some 1200 in number, captured after Bothwell
Brig, were cooped up in the long and narrow branch of
the churchyard which stretches to Lauriston, herded
together under the open sky, in inclement winter
weather, and watched over night and day by guards
who had to render, by lot, " life for life " if any of their
charges escaped. Death, who had so many memorials
around, must have seemed a kind releaser to these
wretched people ; comparatively few survived the terrible
five months' ordeal of camping in the Greyfriars ; and
the ship, chartered to carry the residue to the
Barbados plantations, perished in a storm off the
Orkneys.

The Greyfriars and Grassmarket

A gloomy tale, well according with the furniture and
surroundings of the scene ! The grief and anger and
bitterness worked into the soul of the nation during
the " Killing Time" break out in the inscription,
uncouth as poetry, but expressive of the spirit of an
age and people, upon the " Martyrs' Monument," one of
the pedimented tablets that overlook the Candlemaker
Row. The passenger is asked to " halt and take heed,"
for

Here lies interred the dust of those who stood
'Gainst perjury, resisting unto blood ;
Adhering to the covenants and laws
Establishing the same ; which was the cause
Their lives were sacrificed unto the lust
Of Prelatists abjured.

From Argyle to Renwick, according to this grim record
— the original tablet now stands over against the frame
containing the National Covenant in the Municipal
Museum — there perished of the excellent of the earth,
" one way or another, murdered and destroyed for the
same cause, about eighteen thousand, of whom were
executed at Edinburgh about a hundred noblemen and
gentlemen, ministers and others." " The most of them
lie here."

Greyfriars, indeed, is a very battlefield of old creeds
and factions, strewn and heaped with the corpses of
those, who, while in life, hated each other " to the death."
Over against the " Martyrs' Monument " is the once
splendid, but now tarnished and smoke - grimed,
mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie, an accomplished
gentleman and " author of some pleasing sentiments on
toleration," but King's Advocate in the persecuting
times, and abhorred by the Covenanters only next after

1 60

Martyrs and Persecutors

Claverhouse. Heriot boys used to snatch a shuddering
pleasure by crying defiance through the grating behind
which, in a vault with others of his kin, lies " Bluidy
Mackenzie " much chapfallen —

Bluidy Mackenzie, come out if ye daur,
Lift the sneck and draw the bar.

Under a tall monument against the west wall rests
Principal Carstares, friend and chaplain of William of
Orange and minister of St Giles and of Greyfriars, a
moving spirit in the Revolution of 1688 ; and in front of
it is the tomb of Alexander Henderson, the leader of the
National Covenant Movement, who had a chief hand in
the drafting of the " Shorter Catechism." The headless
body of the Regent Morton was huddled underground in
Greyfriars, and a bust of George Buchanan commemorates
the fact that this eminent scholar found here a nameless
grave. "Jock Porteous," captain of the Town Guard,
had his " lair " near " Pope Gib " ; Allan Ramsay and
Dr Hugh Blair are buried against the wall of New
Greyfriars ; not far away lies Duncan Ban Macintyre,
the sweet singer of " Ben Dorein " ; Duncan Forbes of
Culloden, Dr Archibald Pitcairn, and Creech the pub-
lisher, have graves within the same hallowed ground ;
and we have our last glimpse of the " Man of Feeling,"
whose tomb on the terraced eastern slope of the church-
yard faces his birthplace in Candlemaker Row. A
number of the old urban and suburban families notable
in Edinburgh annals — the Littles of Craigmillar, the
Byreses of Coates, the Trotters of Mortonhall, the
Chiesleys of Dairy, the Foulises of Ravelston — have
imposing tombs and vaults in the Greyfriars. And
tally has been taken of thirty-seven chief magistrates

161 L

The Greyfriars and Grassmarket

of the city ; twenty-three principals and professors of
the University, many of them of more than European
fame ; thirty-three of the most distinguished lawyers
of their day, including a Vice-Chancellor of England,
six Lords President of the Court of Session, and twenty-
two senators of the College of Justice, who have been
gathered into this dust-bin of celebrities.

Nor are the humbler and mechanical arts less well
represented than poetry and piety and learning. Beside
the entrance gate, and near the spot traditionally
associated with the signing of the Covenant, is the
quaintly inscribed tomb of the Mylnes, for generations
" Master Masons " to the Scottish Kings, as the epitaph
of the sixth of the line records —

Reader, John Mylne, who maketh the fourth John,

And, by descent, from father unto son,

Sixth Master Mason to a royal race

Of seven successive Kings, lies in this place.

Pride of pedigree has never been set forth with more
terseness and circumstance. Behind the old Candle-
makers' Hall, which in this age of gas and electric light
has declined into a public-house, are epitaphs to other
men prominent in their time in the affairs of the town
and of the State — among them a " King's Ambassador,
for thirty years Conservator of the Scottish Priviledges
in Holland," who " behaved with glory among the
English and Spaniards " ; a " Chief Chirurgeon to His
Most Serene Majesty, and to the King of France's troop
of Guards from Scotland " ; and a worthy magistrate of
the same early Jacobean age, who proclaims from the
grave his forgotten honours —

Twice Treasurer, twice Dean of Gild I was,
To Edinburgh's fair town and publick cause.
162

A Dust-bin of Celebrities

The fame of all has " fallen dumb," but the muni-
ficence of his greater son and successor has kept alive
something of the memory of the elder George Heriot —
goldsmith to James V., as was the younger Heriot to
James VI. — whose half-effaced inscription, one of the
oldest in Greyfriars, is not far from the Martyrs'
Monument. The son's own memorial is the great
Hospital hard by.

George Heriot, the younger — "Jingling Geordie" of
the "Fortunes of Nigel" — died in 1624, predeceasing
by a year his royal master and kindly gossip, James,
whom he had followed from Edinburgh to London.
Fortune smiled still more constantly upon the prudent
merchant and jeweller and worthy citizen in Cornhill
than in his booth under the shadow of St Giles Kirk ;
and he bequeathed all his wealth, save some legacies to
friends and relatives, for the foundation of a hospital
" for the education, nursing, and upbringing of youth,
being puir orphans and fatherless children of decayit
burgesses and freemen " of his native town, " destitute
and left without means," in testimony of the honour and
regard he bore to his " native soil and mother City."

Nobly has the trust been fulfilled ; and ever since
the death of the pious founder, Heriot's great Charity
has been gratefully recognised as a blessing and orna-
ment to Edinburgh. It has grown and prospered with
the progress of the city. Its landed property alone,
chiefly in the form of "superiorities," extends over
something approaching a moiety of the whole area of
the burgh, and its annual income now amounts to about
half as much again as the capital value of Heriot's
original bequest, which, after deduction of many charges
and leakages, was found to come short of £24,000.

163

The Greyfriars and Grassmarket

Time and changed conditions have made it not only
desirable but necessary to widen the interpretation of
Heriot's will, while adhering to its spirit. A consider-
able part of the large revenues are now devoted to
the encouragement of higher education by means of
University bursaries, to the maintenance of the Heriot-
Watt College and School of Art in Chambers Street,
and to other educational and charitable purposes.

The chief centre of the beneficent activities of the
Heriot Trust continues, however, to be the noble and
now venerable Hospital, which began to rise in the fourth
decade of the seventeenth century, on the open ridge
above the Grassmarket, then known as the " High
Riggs." The great quadrangular building, enclosing a
central court, has a grave and stately dignity of its own,
according with its date and origin. It was the wonder
of the age in which it was built ; and holds its own, as
an example of the architecture of the period, with any
Scottish edifice that has come down to us from Jacobean
times. Curiously enough, although tradition has named
Inigo Jones as the architect, it is not known with any
certainty who planned this elaborate and symmetrical
structure, with its wealth of ornament, in the form of
corbelled turrets and cupolas and pedimented windows
with architraves rich in scrolls and devices. The front
is towards the north and the Grassmarket, where under
the tower there is a quaintly pillared entrance door to
the inner court ; but the most familiar facade is that
which is turned towards the thoroughfare of Lauriston
and has in its centre the Gothic windows of the Hospital
Chapel, originally decorated with the material taken
from the Kirk of the Citadel at Leith.

The building now accommodates a highly-equipped
164

Heriot's Hospital

Technical School ; in its time it has sheltered the
wounded from the " Dunbar Drove," and has been
turned to other and more incongruous purposes. It
still stands well aloof from neighbours on a clear space
surrounded by stone terraces and green lawns, that look
across to the Castle; and on "Heriot's Green" the
Herioters of all ages still assemble on the " Founder's
Day " — the first Monday in June — to decorate the statue
of George Heriot with flowers, and to engage in sports
on ground which has witnessed Lunardi's balloon
ascents, and the parades of the Edinburgh Volunteers,
of the time of the Great War, in which Walter Scott was
one of the most zealous officers.

Bounding Heriot's grounds towards the west are
some remains of the Town Wall, the lines of which we
have been loosely following in our survey of the Old
Town. This fragment of the fortified enceinte is of
considerably later date than the Flodden Wall — the
foundations of which, however, are traceable under the
line of new buildings to the north of the Hospital — and is
still in a fair state of preservation. It contains one of the
quadrangular battlemented towers with which the outer
line of the Wall was broken ; and outside of it runs a
narrow and ancient k thoroughfare, named the Vennel, de-
scending by a steep flight of steps into the Grassmarket.

Grim and many are the associations of this great
open Place, lying under the shadow of the Castle Rock.
It is a quadrangle, 230 yards in length and of goodly
breadth ; and from each of its corners issue one or more
streets of old and somewhat sinister renown in Edin-
burgh annals. At the south-east angle the Cowgate
and the Candlemaker Row join at the Cowgatehead,
where up many steps in a high and dingy building over-

165

The Greyfriars and Grassmarkct

looking the Grassmarket, latterly a nest of the poorest
of poor tenements and now marked for demolition,
Henry Brougham's parents first set up house. Down a
steep and winding descent on the north-east comes in
Victoria Street, occupying in part the "sanctified
bends " of the Old West Bow. It was the Via Dolorosa
of Edinburgh — the way, steep and crooked, to the
"gallows tree," which rose, from the seventeenth till
nearly the close of the eighteenth century, at the eastern
end of the Grassmarket. Here, where handsome
piazzaed terraces look down upon the street, and flights
of stairs descend to it from the level of the Lawnmarket,
stood " Major Weir's Land," once the haunt of a brood
of gruesome memories and superstitions. Here was the
house wherein Prince Charlie was feasted by the Lord
Provost of the day, and, according to unfounded
tradition, escaped through a trap-door into the Grass-
market from a sally of the Hanoverian garrison of the
Castle.

Moving back to the neighbourhood of the Vennel
and the Town Wall, the West Port will be seen leading
out of the western end of the market-place — a somewhat
darkling and ill-savoured way still, although there have
been widening and improving at the expense of the older
buildings. The West Port was the chief entrance to the
walled city from the west. Its gateway had to be
guarded as assiduously against surprise and assault as
the Netherbow itself; it witnessed nearly as many
sallies, brawls, and State pageants, and its spikes never
wanted the same ghastly garniture of the heads and
limbs of traitors, malefactors, and martyrs. Mary of
Guise made her first entry through the West Port on St
Margaret's Day, 1538; Anne of Denmark was received

1 66

CROMBIE'S LAND, WESTER PORTSBURGH.

From a u-ater -colour by James Drummond.

The West Port

here with long Latin orations and with volleys and
waving flags from the Castle ; Charles I. was symboli-
cally welcomed by the " Nymph Edina," who read to
him loyal and laudatory lines composed by Drummond
of Hawthornden ; and through the gate the recalcitrant
General Assembly of the Kirk were "drummed" by
Cromwell's troops in 1653.

Outside the "Port" lay Wester Portsburgh, a com-
munity whose organisation and whose interests were
in many respects distinct from those of the dwellers
within the walls. It was " pre-eminently the Trades'
suburb of Old Edinburgh, as the burgh of Canongate,
outside the Netherbow Port, was its Court suburb.'1
In conjunction with the "Easter" Portsburgh, lying
outside of the Potterrow and Bristo Gates, it had its
distinct municipality, its own courts and mills, and its
own incorporated trades. Traces of the insignia of these
extra-mural crafts may still be seen on house-fronts
between the Grassmarket and the Main Point — the
meeting-place, in Portsburgh, of the highways from
north, south, and west. But they and their privileges
have long since departed the scene — merged in the
larger institutions and industrial interests of the city.
Wester Portsburgh, never an aristocratic quarter,
suffered social deterioration from incursions of the
" Irishry," and became a camping-ground for the hosts
of unskilled labour. It had always had a dubious reputa-
tion as a refuge and rallying ground of schism and
faction. Its public " green " on the unoccupied part of the
" High Riggs," was a great meeting and preaching place
of the sects of religious and political dissent who were
refused or who could not afford a covered temple. But
Portsburgh's recreation ground was latterly appropriated

167

The Greyfriars and Grassmarket

for the purposes of a Cattle Market. The Market is
now shifted to the city outskirts at Gorgie, and its place
is in part occupied by the handsome and spacious new
Municipal School of Arts ; while on the margin of the
old Portsburgh green — near the junction of Lauriston
and Lady Lawson's Wynd — a Fire Station, sur-
mounted by a lofty campanile of red stone, has arisen
near the site of the venerable crow-stepped mansion of
the Lawsons of High Riggs.

The last and heaviest stroke was dealt to the reputa-
tion of the West Port when discovery was made of the
hideous series of crimes perpetrated in 1827 and 1828,
in Log's Lodgings, Tanner's Close, by those " Irish
Thugs," William Burke and William Hare. The death
trap, baited and sprung by these miscreants on the
wretched victims whose bodies were afterwards sold for
dissection in Surgeon Square, was a low tramp lodging-
house in an alley on the north side of the thoroughfare,
which had convenient access behind into the King's
Stables Road. The den of infamy has long ago been
swept away ; not so the extraordinary impression which
the "West Port Murders" made upon the popular
imagination.

The King's Stables Road is the last of the main
highways tributary to the Grassmarket, which it leaves
at the point where the Town Wall met the foot of the
Castle Rock, whose battlements frown down from a
height of 300 feet on the " plainstanes " below. By
the road winding at the lowest level round the base
of the acclivity, you can make your way to the West
Princes Street Gardens, to the West Kirk, and to the
New Town. It is not a cheerful way, and the airs wafted
from the carts of the Cleansing Department, which has

1 68

PLAINSTANES CLOSE, GKASSMARKET,

From a water colour by R. A'oble.

The Burke and Hare Murders

here its headquarters, are not as the spices of Araby.
But there was a time when " all the King's horses and
all the King's men" found accommodation in this
convenient spot outside the walls, especially when there
were jousts or trials by combat in the " Barras " — the
green meadow beyond — and when that "vain knight-
errant," James the Fourth, viewing the sports from the
windows of the Banqueting Hall in the Castle overhead,
would " cast his hat over the wall," in sign that it was
time for the tilting to cease.

The Grassmarket houses have lost much of the air
of individuality and the picturesqueness of grouping
which they possessed earlier in the century, more
especially those on the south side of the Place. Gone
are the Temple Lands, which Scott describes as bearing
on their fronts and gables the iron cross of the Orders
of the Templar and Hospitaller Knights who owned
them. They stood not far from the " Bow-foot Well "
and the site of the scaffold, marked by a St Andrew's
Cross in the causey. From an adjoining dyer's pole,
Captain Porteous was hanged by the mob of 1736, what
time the Grassmarket presented a wild scene, " crimson
with torchlight, spectators filling every window of the
tall houses, the Castle standing high above the tumult,
amid the blue midnight and the stars." Close by, but
swept away in the earlier storm of the Reformation,
once rose the monastery of the Greyfriars, wherein
Mary of Gueldres was lodged before her marriage with
James II. of Scots; it gave hospitable entertainment, a
dozen years later, to Henry VI. of England, his Queen,
Margaret of Anjou, and their son, Prince Edward, who
had fled hither from the victorious Yorkists, after
Towton fight.

169

The Greyfriars and Grassmarket

It is a long stride from those times and scenes to
the modern political events associated with the Corn
Exchange in the Grassmarket, within which, to mention
but one personage and incident, Disraeli spoke his
famous phrase about " educating his party." The north
side of the Grassmarket has preserved more of its antique
features than the south, and there are doorways with
dates and inscriptions going back to the decades
immediately following the Union of the Crowns, in
the tall and irregular tenements ranged in line under
the great ridge of the Castle Esplanade. One of these
dwellings is the Old White Hart Inn, the rendezvous,
in its day, of the West-Country gentry and of Highland
lairds and drovers whom business or pleasure brought
to town, and who found in the Grassmarket their
nearest and most convenient landfall. It was the
goal and starting-place also of a number of the
carriers' carts and lumbering coaches, by means of
which the traffic and intercourse between the country
and the capital were conducted in the age before
steam. William and Dorothy Wordsworth put up
at the White Hart on their tour in 1803, an(^ found it
cheap and noisy.

Coaches and carriages now make only fleeting and
accidental appearances in the Grassmarket. But it is
still a resort of the country carter and carrier, the drover
and the shepherd, the farmer and the horse-couper.
So long ago as 1477, it was ordained that a weekly
market should be held here for wood and timber;
while on Fridays "old graith and gear" were to be
sold in it, opposite the Greyfriars, " like as is usit in
uthir cuntries." In 1560 the Cornmarket was shifted
from the old site at the Tron to ground where there

170

Grassmarket Memories

was more room for meeting and bargaining ; and from
that time until of recent years agriculture may be said
to have centred its movements and interests in the
Grassmarket.

In ordinary times only a moderate current of life
flows through the great square. The central space is
often deserted ; and about the corners of the Cowgate
and of the West Port there hang melancholy little
groups of the " submerged " of the city population,
gathered out of the neighbouring stairs and closes.
If the stones could speak they might tell of strange
things and sad — strangest and saddest of all, of those
scenes of the " Killing Times," when the martyrs of
the Covenant, the Men of the Moss Hags, mounted
the scaffold opposite the Bow-foot, and " glorified God
in the Grassmarket."

CHAPTER XV

NEWINGTON AND GRANGE

SCARCELY less important in the evolution of Modern
Edinburgh than the making of the North Bridge was
the formation of the street which, by continuing the
line of that thoroughfare across the Cowgate valley,
opened the way to the sunny fields lying south of the
Flodden Wall. Until the South Bridge was built,
Auld Reekie society was hemmed in almost as much
in this direction as towards the north. It had trenches
and walls to pass and narrow alleys to thread before
it could breathe country air. True, as has been seen,
there had been some earlier colonising of the trans-
Cowgate region in the neighbourhood of " Society " and
Brown Square ; and by and by fashion and letters
began to find congenial settlement in George Square
and to perambulate the margin of the Burgh Loch.
But to reach these mild and remote regions from the
centre of the city, a plunge had to be made down into
the depths of the guarding valley, and a corresponding
ascent through some strait and steep wynd or close
to meet again the light of day. A troublesome passage
this, on foot or by sedan-chair ; and the Old Edinburgh
aristocracy of birth and learning were gregarious and
avoided trouble in locomotion. They waited for a broad

172

The South Bridge

and level path to be [laid out for them sunwards ; and
this came with the building of the South Bridge.

That work, completed in 1788, largely under the
stimulus of the Lord Provost, Sir James Hunter Blair,
made a curious change in the ideas of distance and
propinquity entertained by the citizens of the age.
When Adam Smith returned from London to Edin-
burgh in 1776, and took up his quarters in the house in
Panmure Close, which William Wyndham noted in his
diary as " magnificent," taste and philosophy, as Mr
Rae, the biographer of the author of the " Wealth of
Nations," reminds us, "still found their sanctuary in
the smoke and leisure of the Canongate." Robertson,
the historian, had indeed flitted out to Grange House,
in the far-away territory beyond the Burgh Muir.
Joseph Black, the chemist, Smith's special crony at this
period, had taken up his abode at a country villa, on the
site, in Nicolson Street, of the Royal Blind Asylum,
which has planted a branch for the housing of the
female blind a mile and a half further out. Adam
Ferguson had gone to " a house in the Sciennes, which,
though scarce two miles from the Cross, was thought so
outrageously remote by the compact little Edinburgh
of those days, that his friends always called it Kamt-
.schatka, as if it lay in the ends of the earth." It may
be remembered that it was at this house of Sciennes
Hill, standing near the modern Braid Place, that Walter
Scott, a boy of fifteen, met, for the first and only time,
Robert Burns, then moving as a bright, new, particular
light among the literati of Edinburgh.

The South Bridge was then approaching completion.
Henry Cockburn remembered crossing it on planks in
1787; and a year later the carriage-way was finished,

Newington and Grange

and so traffic and population moved smoothly over it,
until streets and rows of villa houses have flooded all
the southern slopes, and are now climbing and annexing
the hill of Liberton, three miles in a straight line from
the Post Office. The Bridge was carried across the
hollow to the College and the Town Wall by nineteen
arches, of which the principal spanned the Cowgate,
into whose murky abysses the pedestrian or the outsider
on the street car — an excellent means of surveying
Edinburgh's South Side — gets a brief but impressive
glimpse in passing.

The old Poultry Market and other obscure localities
behind the line of the High Street were invaded and
occupied by the new street, which at once became,
and still remains, an important centre of business and
avenue of traffic. Here was built the Goldsmiths' Hall,
as also the Merchants' House, since flitted elsewhere.
In the recess of Adam Square, now obliterated, the
Watt School of Arts, founded by Leonard Homer, first
stood ; it has been removed to Chambers Street, along
with the seated statue of the great engineer, which was
placed in front of the earlier building, originally erected
by Robert Adam, the architect of its neighbour, the
University. At No. 49 South Bridge was the
antiquarian bookshop of David Laing, celebrated in
" Peter's Letters," where Scott and Lockhart and other
lovers of old authors and rare editions were wont to
drop in, and where the owner gathered the vast and
curious store of literary and bibliographic knowledge
which served him in such good stead when he became
Secretary of the Bannatyne Club and Librarian of the
Signet Library.

Booksellers still flourish on the South Bridge, but
174

Nicolson Street

the Royal Riding School, the resort of another class of
Edinburgh citizens of the period, has its place taken by
the School of Medicine and Surgeons' Hall already
mentioned. Here, just without the former city bounds,
Nicolson Street begins to " draw its slow length along "
towards the south. It was thought a handsome and
spacious thoroughfare a hundred years ago. Now its
aspect grows almost antique and a little shabby. Its
architecture, otherwise void of distinction, preserves a
typical feature of the street frontage of the date in the
gabled ends that break the monotonous lines of roof
and chimney. This " New Road " was originally drawn
through the park and pleasure - grounds of Lady
Nicolson, a well-endowed widow, who named it after
her husband, and raised a fluted column to his memory
in the neighbourhood of Nicolson Square, a locality
that became, until fashion changed again, a favourite
residence of persons of rank and gentility. The
Wesleyan Methodists built their chapel in the Square
in the year before Waterloo ; in the eyes of many
visitors the building may derive interest from the fact
that President Grant repeatedly worshipped in it ; while
the Nicolson Street United Presbyterian Church will
seem more venerable, when they know that the learned
and genial Dr John Jamieson, of Scottish Dictionary
fame, was its pastor.

A somewhat squalid labouring quarter now bounds
Nicolson Street, especially towards the east. From
Ecclefechan to the depressing shades of Simon Square,
reached through Gibb's Entry, came Thomas Carlyle,
a poor and friendless student, who looked in vain
for an encouraging word from his teachers to cheer
him on his way. The adjoining alley of Paul Street

Newington and Grange

had a tenant as lonely as the gaunt Annandale scholar,
and still more scant of coin, in David Willde, the great
genre painter, who settled in this humble quarter in
1799, removing later to a room in Palmer's Lane,
West Nicolson Street, where Robert Fergusson, the
poet, had sat for Alexander Runciman as the model
for the picture of the " Prodigal Son." Genius and
Poverty have kept close company in the purlieus of
Nicolson Street. So have high birth and ill fortune.
In a garret in East Crosscauseway lodged the once
beautiful and courted Lady Jane Douglas, sister of
the last Duke of Douglas, wife of Sir John Stewart
of Grandtully, and the mother of the successful claimant
in the celebrated " Douglas Cause," a litigation which
gave rise to unexampled expense and excitement,
and to popular riots almost rivalling those of the
Porteous Mob.

As one moves southward, the vistas that open on
the left hand out of West Newington and Clerk Streets
are seen ending in the beetling cliffs above the Radical
Road, and the crest of Arthur Seat rears itself over the
roofs and chimney-pots of St Leonard's. On the right,
beyond the Newington Parish Church, there is a peep of
the trees and greensward of the Meadows at Hope Park
End ; and then, a little way past the church in which
preached for many a day the Rev. Dr Begg, type and pillar
of the Free Church " Stalwarts," begins the long, smooth
declivity of Newington, falling away to the hidden and
buried Pow burn and the Suburban line, and to the still
lower level of the burn of Braid and Liberton Toll.
Straight ahead rises the square tower of Liberton Kirk,
crowning a hill where suburban residences already
mingle with the village houses and trees ; there come

176

The City's Sunny Side

in sight also the green knolls and folds of the Blackford
and Braid Hills, bearing upon their shoulders embodi-
ments of the mediaeval and the modern spirits in the
shape of the square, grey Keep of Liberton and the
New Royal Observatory; while to the east, where
the country opens towards the sea, Craigmillar Castle
stands high and aloof, "a very stronghold of Old
Romance."

From Craigmillar to Craiglockhart, the city has
spread in one continuous suburb bearing different
names — Newington, Grange, Morningside, Merchiston
— and files and videttes of villadom keep pushing out
and annexing new ground on this milder flank of
Edinburgh. That has happened which Sir Walter
Scott wondered had not, by natural law, come to pass
in his day, as he watched a growth which then set
mainly to the north ; a " New Town has occupied the
extensive plain on the south side of the College," and
has long overpassed the wide bounds of the Burgh
Muir. In the Grange district especially, town and
country intermingle, and the region is one of parks,
and gardens, and villa residences.

When the century began, the ground thus appropri-
ated was country, almost unadulterated ; a few scattered
mansions, a few groups of poor cottages at tolls and
crossways, represented nearly all of the city that had
" burst its steiks " in this direction. As yet the broad
thoroughfare that descends southward, in the line of
South Bridge, under the names of Clerk Street, Minto
Street, Mayfield, and Craigmillar Park, was not. The
old country ways of a hundred years ago followed what
then, as now, were known as Causewayside and the Old
Dalkeith Road. The former, after passing the eastern

177 M

Newington and Grange

end of the Burgh Loch and the breweries of Summer-
hall, traversed the " Sciennes," called after the Convent
of St Catherine of Sienna, built by a pious dame, Janet,
Lady Seton, after the " dowie day " of Flodden had left
her a widow, and attached to an older chaplainry
dedicated to St John the Baptist. The nuns of the
Sciennes escaped the tongue of scandal, and won the
praise even of the satirists of their day. But neither
their good works nor their annual processions to the
"Balm Well" of their patron saint at Liberton, the
virtues of which had been gratefully acknowledged by
the crowned of the earth, availed to save their convent
from Hertford's invasion and the tempest of the
Reformation. A fragment of it exists, built into a
garden wall in the neighbourhood ; and the modern
Convent of St Catherine, in Lauriston, is erected upon
an outlying part of its former lands on the South
Side.

The Old Dalkeith Road still keeps close to the
eastern fringe of the city, and under the lee of Arthur
Seat. Upon it stand the Parkside works of Messrs
Nelson & Sons ; and in Salisbury Road was an early
residence of the head of another great publishing
house, William Blackwood, which witnessed social
gatherings of the contributors of " Maga " in the
palmiest days of that Nestor of monthly magazines.
Newington House — long the home of the late Duncan
M'Laren, M.P. — and many other residences in this
pleasant neighbourhood have also their literary and
political memories. More than one cemetery, with
names of note on the tombstones, open into Dalkeith
Road. Close at hand, too, is a lodge, leading to the old
house of the Dicks of Prestonfield, by a way known to

The Old Dalkeith Road

Johnson and Boswell and other celebrities. Peffermill,
a neighbouring old baronial mansion, gabled and
escutcheoned, but abandoned, like many of its kind, to
the "waistrie" of small tenants, stands lonely and
neglected near ;the highway which branches off from
the Dalkeith Road by the Duddingston distilleries and
breweries, past the gate of Niddrie Marischal towards
Musselburgh and the sea.

Niddrie has belonged to the Wauchopes, lately
represented by General Wauchope of the Black Watch,
for more than five hundred years. Hugh Miller, while
a stone mason, helped to build the modern addition to
the house, and in his walks in the neighbourhood " often
saw the sun sink over the picturesque ruins of Craig-
millar Castle." Neither Niddrie, nor any of the other
old family seats in the vicinity, can compare for a
moment in historical interest or in dominating position
with Craigmillar, whose towers and battlements,
" bosomed high on tufted trees," look down upon them
and the surrounding fields.

The story of this impressive and well-preserved ruin
is worthy of its site and aspect ; but it cannot be told
here in full. Its owners have been the Prestons, and
the Little-Gilmours who still possess it along with the
adjoining lands of the Inch and Liberton. These
families have been closely connected with the annals of
Edinburgh, and have mingled prominently at times in
national affairs. But Craigmillar is chiefly remembered
as the scene of the sudden and mysterious death of
John, Earl of Mar, the high-spirited brother of James
III., while confined in the castle under a charge of
treason ; as the occasional residence of James V. and
of his daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, when in quest of

179

Newington and Grange

country air and retirement, and as the place first
appointed for the lodging of Darnley, when he was
brought sick from Glasgow to die of violence at Kirk of
Field. At Craigmillar, too, the Sixth James, " without
the aid of his council," came to the resolution to
espouse Anne of Denmark. It may almost be said to
have been a country residence of royalty during these
reigns. Nor does its appearance belie its reputation.
Its massive walls and gateways ; its vaulted hall,
mullioned windows, and sculptured arms ; its crumbling
turrets and battlements ; the grass-grown courts, where
protrudes the living rock, and the venerable trees that
surround the place, make it easy for the imagination to
repeople it with the warriors and courtiers of the time
of Mary and Bothwell.

Memories and traditions of the Queen of Scots are
rife in and around Craigmillar. " Little France," on the
neighbouring Old Dalkeith Road, is supposed to have
derived its name from having sheltered her retinue ;
the great old sycamore, known as " Queen Mary's tree,"
still stands sturdily by the wayside. At Craigmillar
Walter Scott caught part of his love of the "old
unhappy far-off times." His Reuben Butler was school-
master at Liberton ; Peffermill looks the part of the
" House of Dumbiedykes." All the low ground
between Liberton and Arthur Seat was once occupied
by dense wood and marsh — part of the ancient " Forest
of Drumselch" — in which lurked beasts of the chase
and occasionally outlaws, among whom legend has
placed the " Wight Wallace " himself. Near Bridgend
was a royal hunting-seat, to which James V. occasionally
resorted. A stone bearing the Royal arms, removed
from Bridgend, is one of the antiquities of the Inch,

1 80

Craigmillar Castle

which, as the name helps us to know, was a moated
grange, reached by its possessors, the Monks of Holy-
rood, by a drawbridge. They had mill and colum-
barium rights at Liberton Dam reaching back to the
beginning of the twelfth century, and still visible to the
eye in the form of dovecot and millwheel. The
property and the whole barony of Liberton, which is
thought to have taken its name from a leper foundation,
came into possession of the family of the Littles, so
honourably associated with the beginnings of Edinburgh
University, and passed, by marriage, to the Gilmours.

The Littles it was who built Over Liberton House,
which has been so restored, internally as well as
externally, as to be an almost perfect example of a
seventeenth-century Scottish mansion, of a period when
the necessity for defence could not be left out of
consideration even by those who lived within a three-
mile radius of Edinburgh Cross. The neighbouring
Tower, a keep of the grimmest and simplest type,
belongs to a far earlier date, when defence was all in all.
Its original builders and occupants — the Dalmahoys of
that Ilk — must have reached the living-rooms of their
"craw's nest" by a ladder which they could draw in
after them.

We have here wandered as far as the lower slopes
of the Braid Hills. These charming southern environs
of Edinburgh we have loosely surveyed rather than
investigated, and the guide through them is fain to
adopt the words in " Marmion " —

Hill, brook, nor dell, nor rock, nor stone,
Lies on the path to me unknown.
Much might it boast of storied lore ;
But, passing such digression o'er,
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Newington and Grange

Suffice it that the route was laid
Across the furzy hills of Braid.
They passed the glen and scanty rill,
They climbed the opposing bank, until
They gained the top of Blackford Hill.

The "scanty rill" is the Braid burn, cutting its way
from the Pentlands towards Duddingston Loch and the
sea; and the steep "glen" is partly choked with the
trees of the Hermitage of Braid, the residence for
many years of John Skelton — " Shirley " — the bio-
grapher of Mary Stewart and of Maitland of Lething-
ton. The " opposing bank " of the Blackford Hill is
now also, like the Braids, public property, and the red
sandstone gateway on the east makes grateful
acknowledgment of the services of Sir George
Harrison, the Lord Provost of the day, in obtaining the
boon of this noble park for the citizens. In the well-
appointed Observatory, stationed high and aloof from
the town and its smoke on a site over 400 feet above
sea-level, the great Dunecht Telescope, bequeathed to
the Government by the late Earl of Crawford and
Balcarres, has been housed.

From the crest of the hill, a hundred feet higher,
Marmion looked down upon the Flodden host
encamped on the Burgh Muir and on " mine own
romantic town." That brave and warlike show — the
white pavilions pitched on "the bent so brown," and
the gay banners streaming above the clumps of old oak
wood, and over all, set in the Bore Stone, the lion
standard of Scotland, which was so soon to go down in
the dust with its defenders — came like a ghost and
went like a ghost. Sir Walter himself had seen
changes from the time when, a truant boy, he had

182

Blackford Hill

bird-nested "among the broom, the thorn, and whin"
of Blackford, and listened to the bells of St Giles.
Rude nature had given way before husbandry; the
hill waved with yellow grain —

And o'er the landscape, as I look,
Nought do I see unchanged remain,
Save the rude cliffs and chiming brook.

Now, as by another wave of an enchanter's wand, the
scene is changed once more. The advancing lines of
villas and tenements climb the lower flanks of Blackford
Hill. The Pow burn, or Jordan, has disappeared, and
its place has been taken by the trailing smoke of the
Surburban line which occupies its former bed. Black-
ford House, the secluded old mansion girt about with
noble trees and shaven turf and flower-plots, has had a
railway station thrust upon it ; barely possible is it to
imagine the time when the venerable old lady who
occupied it — Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's friend — " every
morning bathed in the Jordan, which then ran, pure and
sparkling, through her garden." The once wide and
empty space of the Burgh Muir is filled with houses,
rising from among trees and lawns. But there still
remain the chief glories of the prospect — the " dusky
grandeur " of the height " where the huge Castle holds
its state " ; the " ridgy back heaved to the sky " of the
Old Town ; the distant Ochils and Grampians ; and
the " gallant Firth " with its islands, spread between
the shores of Fife and Lothian, as drawn for us in
the word-picture which is in the memory of every
schoolboy.

The Circular Route of the tramway, which traverses
the Grange, Morningside, and Bruntsfield districts,

183

Newington and Grange

carries one past, or within easy reach of, most of the
spots in that locality that are of any historic or other
note. The round is also made pleasant, especially in
fine summer weather, by the glimpses of the handsome
houses and of the gardens, flowers, and greenery of this
the more sunny and smiling side of Edinburgh, and by
the frequent peeps of the hills and the country beyond.
The way leaves the main thoroughfare of Newington by
Salisbury Place and the Longmore Hospital for Incurables
and follows the broad avenue of Grange Road. This
passes through and takes its name from the lands of the
Grange of St Giles — "Sanct Geilis Grange" as it
appears in the old documents — bestowed as far back as
the days of David I. on the monks of Holm Cultram, in
Cumberland, but held and cultivated, on an oasis in the
waste of the Burgh Muir, by the vicars of St Giles Kirk.
Early in the sixteenth century the lands came into
the possession of the merchant family of Cant — the
owners of Cant's Close in the High Street — and from
inscribed stones, arms, and dates, it appears that the
oldest part of the existing baronial manor-house
of Grange was built by them before that century was
out. Part of the Grange was assigned, along with a
grant from Sir John Crawford, for founding the House
of the Sisters of the Sciennes, the site of which has
already been indicated. The « Ladies' Well," and the
" Penny Well " in Grange Loan, once held to be a
sovereign cure for sore eyes, are supposed to have,
like the Liberton "Balm Well," associations with St
Catherine's Convent, and, of course, with Mary, Queen
of Scots.

At the western end of the Grange property was
another famous mediaeval foundation — St Roque's

184

The Grange of St Giles

Chapel. Did not the clamour of war notes, heard on
the neighbouring Blackford Hill, portend that

The King to mass his way had ta'en,
Or to St ^Catherine's of Sienne,
Or Chapel of St Roque ?

The Chapel has entirely disappeared, although a few
carved fragments of it have been built into walls in a
neighbouring laundry. Seven years after Flodden the
victims of the Black Death were gathered upon the
Common around St Roque ; the bodies of the dead were
buried in its consecrated ground, and the clothes of the
plague-stricken were washed in the Burgh Loch.

The story of Grange House is more cheerful and not
less romantic ; it is told in detail by Mrs Stewart Smith,
in " The Grange of St Giles." House and lands passed
out of the hands of the Cants into those of the Dicks of
Braid, in 1631, the bargain being struck, according to
tradition, during a game of golf on the Braid Hills.
The new owner was that too loyal and generous " Sir
William Dick of Braid, Knight " — David Deans's
"worthy, faithfu' Provost Dick" — who was accounted
the wealthiest man of his day. He had dealt out his
money like " sclate stanes," in the cause, first of the
Covenant and then of the Stewarts. " Douce Davie's "
father had seen men " toom the sacks o' dollars out o'
Provost Dick's window" into the carts that carried them
to the army at Duns Law ; and there was " the window
itsel' still standing in the Luckenbooths, at the aim
stanchells, five doors abune Advocates' Close," in witness
of the fact. He had his reward by dying in a debtor's
prison in Westminster, after the Restoration.

The Grange was saved from the wreck by Dick's
185

Ncwington and Grange

daughter-in-law Janet M'Math, whose mural tomb
may be found in the Greyfriars ; and, as the Dicks
married into the Loyalist families of the Setons and the
Lauders, the associations of Grange House continued
strongly Jacobite during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. There is shown among its precious relics a
thistle taken from the bonnet of Prince Charlie when
" he honoured the House of Grange by visiting William
Dick, its third baron, and Anne Seton, his lady, and her
sisters, Jane and Isabel " ; it was given in exchange for
a white rose, offered to him by these loyal ladies, and to
" mark the regard of his family, from Queen Mary
downward, for that of Seton," as further evidenced by
another Grange heirloom — the watch presented by
her mistress to Mary Seton, of the Queen's Maries.
One of its last-century occupants was the venerable
Principal Robertson. Young Henry Brougham, the
historian's grand-nephew, had the run of the place, along
with Henry Cockburn, who draws for us a pleasing
picture of the Doctor in his declining years pottering
about the old garden and orchard, in his powdered wig,
brown corduroy knee-breeches, and resplendent coat
and waistcoat of bright blue and scarlet, with his ear
trumpet dangling from a button-hole, as he encouraged
the boys to climb the cherry trees, or made plans with
them for keeping the tame rabbits within bounds.

Another and later literary character, who not only
lived in Grange House, but was its owner and renovator,
was Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, seventh baronet of
Fountainhall, the author of the " Wolf of Badenoch "
and other works, famous in their day, some of them
written in the library of the old manor-house, which he
turned from "a tall grey keep" into a baronial

186

Grange House and its Occupants

residence. The place has its " haunted chamber " and
its "monk's walk," but of more genuine interest than
either is the " Griffin Gateway," which a little lame
urchin, Walter Scott by name, climbed in order to
discover whether the tongues of the heraldic monsters
were " veritable paint or veritable flame."

The "Lovers' Loan," the scene of many a tryst,
skirts the Grange House grounds on the west; its
hedgerows are replaced in part by high walls, including
that of the Grange Cemetery, a necropolis within which
rest from their labours many of the " Disruption
worthies," among them Dr Cunningham and Dr
Guthrie, Hugh Miller, and, foremost of all, Dr Chalmers.
A Chalmers Memorial Church rises on one side of the
cemetery, and a Robertson Memorial Church on the
other, erected by rival Presbyterian bodies in memory
of men mighty in works and in faith.

Still following the tramway line westward, we cross
the shady Whitehouse Loan, which preserves the name
of an old country residence where, it is said, Dr
Robertson wrote his " Charles V.," John Home his
" Douglas," and Dr Blair his " Lectures." St Margaret's
Convent, " the first religious house built in Scotland
after the Reformation," also opens into the Loan, which
gives access besides to the house and grounds of
Bruntsfield or Bruntisfield. Miss Warrender, in her
" Walks near Edinburgh," speaks of Bruntsfield as " the
last of the old houses in the immediate vicinity of
Edinburgh which is still inhabited by its owners."
" In spite of recent additions and alterations " — in spite
also of the feuing plan, which is annexing its parks and
hemming it in with new streets and terraces — " it still
preserves much of the character of the semi-fortified

187

Ncwington and Grange

mansion, with protecting outworks which, centuries
ago, frowned over the Burgh Muir " ; and " its antiquity
is even more apparent inside than outside, from the
thickness of the walls, the diversity of the levels, and
the steep little turret stairs." The oldest date it bears
is 1605, when it belonged to the Fairlies of Braid, but
there is evidence that a mansion stood here as early as
1457. It came into the hands of George Warrender
of Lochend, a merchant burgess, and afterwards a Lord
Provost and a baronet, in 1695, and has remained in
the family since. It has a "secret room," discovered
in the present century, and known as the Ghost Room,
" although nothing has been seen, at any rate for many
years."

Building and street-making operations have caused
the removal of the mound on which James IV. is reputed
to have stood to review the Scottish host. A mysterious
gravestone in the park at Bruntsfield, bearing the date
1645, is supposed by Wilson to be that of some gentle-
man and scholar wrho had fallen a victim to " the last
and most fatal visitation of the plague." Within a
walled enclosure in Chamberlain Road is another stone,
bearing the same date and a curious rhymed inscrip-
tion, and probably recording a similar tragedy in the
family of the Livingstones of Greenhill.

1 88

CHAPTER XVI

FROM MORNINGSIDE TO THE WEST KIRK

NEAR where the Circular Route meets, at Churchhill,
the long slope of Morningside Road and the tramway
line ascending from the furthest outskirts of the city,
is another memorial of the early history of the Burgh
Muir, and of King James's fatal enterprise. This is
the "Bore Stone," a rough slab of red sandstone,
built into a wall beside the Morningside Parish Church,
and bearing an inscription and quotation from
" Marmion " to indicate that it was here, on the crest
of the ridge, that the royal standard was raised at the
muster of 1513. Recent building operations, on the
spacious grounds of Falcon Hall, have obliterated the
last relics of the row of lowly one-storey cottages which,
along with the neighbouring village of Tipperlinn, also
swept away, represented nearly all of Morningside that
was inhabited at the beginning of last century. A
generation ago the town ended at the bottom of the
slope, and through Morningside toll-bar you entered
the country. Across the Jordan burn you passed into
Egypt farm ; for in this quarter the Bible divides with
Scott romance the local nomenclature, and Goshen,
and Eden, and Canaan border upon Marmion Terraces
and Abbotsford Parks.

189

From Morningside to the West Kirk

The toll-bar has, of course, disappeared. New
houses, shops, and churches have sprung up like
mushrooms in the land beyond Jordan. The growing
town has spread southward to the skirts of the Braids,
eastward to the base of Blackford, and westward to
the slopes of the Craiglockhart Hills. The tramway
line extends for a mile along the road leading to the
Garlops, and to Penicuik and Roslin. There is an
older road, also now bordered by houses for the greater
part of the way, which dips down to the Braid burn,
before rising to join the other on the hither side of
Fairmilehead. By this route Stevenson's "pleasant
gauger " fluted his way towards the Bowbridge, in the
next hollow, playing " Over the Hills and Far Away "
to warn his smuggling friends of his coming. "R. L.
S." himself often followed the same route, when bound
to his father's summer home at Swanston, which can be
seen nestling snugly among its trees in a pastoral and
secluded nook — the old grange of the monks of White-
kirk — at the base of the steep scaurs of Cairketton.

The Pentlands stretch away westward, fold after
fold, and height beyond height; every glen has its
story, and every hill its magnificent prospect of the
Lothians and of the Firth. You can descry the trees
round Bonally Tower, where Henry Cockburn spent
the quiet autumn of his days, and rising from the woods
of Dreghorn and Redford, the "glen of Howden," up
which St Ives escaped with the drovers ; and you can
trace part of the route pursued in the snow by the
" Westland Whigs " of the Pentland rising, on their
way to ruin at Rullion Green.

Looking nearer at hand, from the shoulder of the
" furzy hills of Braid," the lover of nature and of old

190

SWANSTON.

ROSLIN CHAPEL.

[To face page 190.

Swanston and the Pentlands

romance will find many spots worth noting. Screened
by the trees of Comiston, once the domain of the old
merchant family of Forrest, is Hunters' Tryst, the
"howf" of the athletic Six-Foot Club, of which Scott
and the Ettrick Shepherd were active members ; and
the tall monolith of the Kay Stone, marking the site
of a forgotten battle or the grave of some forgotten
hero, stands on the margin of a supposed Roman Camp.
Another camp, that of the Gallachlaw, where Cromwell
lay entrenched for weeks, waiting in vain for David
Leslie to make a mistake of generalship, lies on the
eastern side of the road, with the shale-mounds of
Straiton and the graveyard of Old Pentland crouching
below them, for background. Close behind the Braid Hills
is Mortonhall, which for many generations has belonged
to the Trotters. They were successors of the St Clairs
of Roslin, who, according to tradition, received these
lands and the neighbouring " Forest of Pentland " as
the reward for their ancestor saving the life of The
Bruce when assailed during the hunt by a savage and
giant buck, and who held them on condition of winding
three blasts of a horn from the " Buck Stane " when the
King visited the neighbourhood.

The game of golf has now taken possession of both
slopes of the Braids. The northern side is one of the
breeziest of public parks, and most hazardous of courses.
From the teeing-grounds and putting-greens glorious
views are had of the city and its fair surroundings ;
peeps may be had, when skies are favourable, of Ben
Lomond in the west, and of the Bass and the May in the
east. The southern declivities and hollows are similarly
occupied as a private course by the Mortonhall Club ;
rubber balls are now lost where the fairies danced around

191

From Morningside to the West Kirk

the Elf Loch, and long drives are made from beside the
Buck Stane.

Returning townwards by the tramway line, after this
brief country excursion, one passes the entrance to the
City Poorhouse, which obscures the mouldering old keep
of the Lockharts of the Craig, now a mere ivy-clad shell,
set in the hollow or saddle between the Craiglockhart
Hills. The abrupt green Wester Hill has been annexed
by golf, and carries a Hydropathic Establishment on
one of the flanks ; on the other flank, not far from the
Poorhouse, the new City Fever Hospital has risen. The
Easter Hill has skating ponds sheltering under the wood
and coppice of its western side. Near its crest, con-
spicuous in situation and architecture, are the new
buildings of the Royal Lunatic Asylum, which has out-
grown the space and accommodation of the original site
in Morningside ; and lower down there is a cemetery.
Truly the ills and the recreations of life are well repre-
sented on Craiglockhart.

The new Asylum has appropriated and transformed
old Craig House, and has destroyed the air of mystery
and antiquity which used to hang around this once
solitary mansion. The glimpses caught of its grey
gables and narrow windows through its avenue of great
lime and beech trees did not belie the reputation of the
old mansion of being haunted by a " Phantom Lady,"
who, while in life, had been so stricken by grief for
the loss of her husband — slaughtered, says Robert
Chambers, by Moubray of Barnbougle, on Bruntsfield
Links — that she shut herself up for the remainder of her
days "in a room all hung with black, into which the
light of heaven was never permitted to enter," and
studied deadly revenge.

192

CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE.

> i . >

MERCHISTON CASTLE.

[To face page 192.

Craig House

Sorrow and distress of mind still inhabit Craig
House. But it has had its cheerful and stirring days.
Three hundred years ago it was the scene of a charac-
teristic feat of rescue, achieved by the sapient King
Jamie. Discovering, while riding in the neighbourhood,
that the owner of the house, John Kincaid, held in
durance a buxom and well-dowered widow, whom he had
abducted from Water of Leith, James sent two of his
retinue with a threat that Craig House would be burned
if the lady were not delivered up. Kincaid was tried for
the offence, and it seemed accordant with the ideas of
justice prevailing at the time that he should be ordered
to hand over to the King his "brown horse." Craig
House became at a later date the possession of the ill-
starred " Knight of Braid " ; and the learned Dr John
Hill Burton was long a tenant of the mansion. It
appears from a carved date and initials to have been
built about the middle of the sixteenth century by a
laird named Symson ; but the historian of Scotland
was disposed to believe that its " secret subterranean
passage " uncovered anew, together with some interest-
ing wall-paintings, during recent changes, was " as old
as the Romans."

Returning to the " Boroughmuirhead " by way of
Myreside and Colinton Road, one passes another historic
house. This is Merchiston Castle, which remained for
four and a half centuries a possession of the name and
race of Alexander Napier, Provost of the city, who
acquired it in 1438. To the square battlemented tower,
surmounted by gables, turrets, and chimneys, modern
additions have been made ; and the building has been
long occupied and well known as Merchiston Castle
School. Formerly it was moated, and, like Craig

193 N

From Morningside to the West Kirk

House, it had an underground avenue of escape. It
was garrisoned and besieged during the civil war that
followed the flight of Mary Stewart ; and Merchiston
and the Burgh Muir became a centre of the struggle
between the " Queen's men " and the " King's men." A
pear tree, said to have been planted by the ubiquitous
Queen of Scots, used to be shown in the Castle garden,
and a bedroom in the tower bears her name. At the date
of those quarrels, young John Napier of Merchiston, the
inventor of logarithms, who was born in 1550 in the
Castle, was pursuing his mathematical studies. Like
other men whose knowledge was in advance of his age,
he obtained the popular reputation of being a warlock,
who, in his little study in the tower, consulted as his
familiar a black cock. His son married a sister of the
" Great Marquis " ; and it was the wife of his grandson,
Sir Archibald, the first Lord Napier, who, as told in
Mark Napier's Life of Montrose, had Graham's heart
secretly abstracted from the body, which had been
buried in the criminals' place of interment, and enclosed
it in a casket, made of the hero's sword-blade, that
passed through many adventures and is still a treasured
possession of the Lords Napier and Ettrick. The castle
contains a room with a fine ceiling of Charles II.'s time,
bearing medallions of early Scottish kings.

A separate branch of the Napiers lived at Wrychtis-
housis, or Wright's Houses, the strangely named and
picturesque old edifice, with "peel tower, turrets, and
crowstepped gables and gablets, encrusted with legends,
dates, and coats of arms," which was cleared away in the
first year of the nineteenth century to make room for
Gillespie's Hospital, a charitable institution — founded
by a celebrated High Street snuff merchant — since con-

194

Homes of the Napiers

verted into one of the Merchant Company's Schools.
Of the original Wright's Houses, a strange and appar-
ently well-authenticated ghost story is told of how a
black servant, brought home after the American war by
a tenant of the house, General Robertson of Lawers,
was disturbed nightly by the apparition of a headless
woman carrying a child in her arms ; and how long
afterwards there was discovered, buried in a closet off
the room, a box containing the skeletons of a mother
and infant, the former with the head separated from the
trunk, along with papers which pointed to a secret
family crime and tragedy of early date. Some of the
old Napier sculptured and heraldic stones are built into
the enclosing walk of the school grounds; others,
including the fine lectern sundial, are at Woodhouselee ;
still others at North Queensferry.

The group of buildings, terminating in the scaly and
amorphous body and lofty spire of the Barclay Free
Church, that now bears the name of Wright's Houses,
has lost nearly every trace of the rusticity and quaintness
it possessed, when golf flourished on the adjoining
Bruntsfield Links, and when some of the oldest of the
Edinburgh golfing clubs — the Honourable Company,
the Burgess, and the Bruntsfield among them — held
convivial meetings in the Golfer's Rest. The royal and
ancient game, played for centuries on this part of
the Burgh Muir, has been banished the spot, and its
exponents have migrated to the Braids, Musselburgh,
Barnton, or Gullane. The old wars have left deeper
dints on the Links than have cleek and brassy. On
this piece of undulating ground, lying high and dry
above the South or Burgh Loch, was fought the battle
of the Burgh Muir, where Guy of Namur and his Flem-

From Morningside to the West Kirk

ings were put to the rout ; from its vantage Cromwell
trained his guns on the Castle ; and in its hollows the
troops watching the attempt of the Covenanters of the
Pentland Raid to enter the city were bivouacked.
Peaceful, and even a little prosaic, is now the scene,
surrounded as it is by terraces of many-storeyed tene-
ments ; and Bruntsfield — no longer disturbed even by
the cry of " Fore ! " — has become a safe promenade for
the nursery maid.

The streets converging from Bruntsfield and other
quarters on the Toll Cross retain, in their names, but
almost in these alone, a reminiscence of the time when
this locality, outside of the Portsburgh, was open ground,
intersected by rural roads, with here and there a family
mansion. Valleyfield Street preserves the memory of
an ancient house in which legend affirms that the Regent
Morton once lay ill ; Leven Street contained — until its
place was appropriated by the King's Theatre — Leven
Lodge — a country seat, in the eighteenth century, of the
Earls of Leven ; Drumdryan Street is on the site of
another old mansion ; Lochrin House — a handsome
square building in its own grounds, at the corner of
Gilmour Place — has vanished before the modern
builder; Thorneybauk, ,once a footpath and hedgerow,
has been appropriated by the new Power Station
of the Cable Tramways. The High Riggs — a gloomy
continuation of the West Port — bears the name
that in former times was applied to the bare ridge
which extended from Greyfriars to the Toll Cross, or
" Two-penny Custom," where the dues on goods enter-
ing the town were taken.

Fountainbridge — the long thoroughfare into which
Thorneybauk once led — only recalls by its narrowness,

196

The Union Canal

and by an occasional begrimed and old-fashioned
cottage still awaiting removal, the fact that, two or
three generations ago, it belonged to the country rather
than the city, and had, adjoining it, fields and pleasure
grounds, and a " Grove," the site of which is still fixed
by the local nomenclature. It is now a crowded
workmen's quarter, and has a theatre, a working-man's
institute, and a circus among its institutions. It crosses
the Union Canal by a double-leaved drawbridge a little
above the Canal Basin of Port Hopetoun.

The Canal, now an almost deserted channel of traffic,
was finished in 1822, and completed a line of inland
water communication between Edinburgh and Glasgow
by forming a connection with the Forth and Clyde
Canal above Grangemouth. Passenger boats made
their slow journey, by the aid of towing-horses, from
the capital to the metropolis of the West ; travellers
had their choice of the " canal express " and the stage
coach. A few coal and manure barges now represent the
trafrlc on the Union Canal; and channel and towing-
path are deserted, except when frost binds the waters
and troops of skaters skim its surface, making their way
past the single gate-pillar and the sundial which mark,
on the right hand and on the left, the site of the old
house of Meggetland, and across the Slateford viaduct,
towards Linlithgow. Rubber and vulcanite works are
ranged on its banks, and empty their waste into it, and
the waters are fouled with many impurities. It has
witnessed many tragedies, best remembered of which is
the sad death of George Meikle Kemp, the gifted
designer of the Scott Monument, who, one dark night
before he had an opportunity of seeing his completed
work, accidentally fell into the canal. Ritchie Moni-

197

From Morningside to the West Kirk

plies's Castle Collop is supposed to have stood near the
Canal banks ; the Public Slaughter-houses, which may
be supposed to contain the traditions of that " old and
honourable house weel kenned at the West Port of
Edinburgh," have removed to a site near the canal bank
a couple of miles to the westward.

Past the Canal Basin of Port Hopetoun, once a
pretty park sprinkled with trees, now a muddy and
deserted pool, surrounded by coal stores, in which
decaying water-craft are laid up, runs the broad
thoroughfare of Lothian Road. In " Kay's Portraits " it
is told that the street was made in a single day, towards
the end of the eighteenth century, in fulfilment of a
bet made by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, who wagered
that he would drive his carriage before sunset over
ground then covered by " barns, sheds, and cowhouses."
He duly fulfilled his promise, to the astonishment and
dismay of one aged cowfeeder, who had gone out to
milk her kine in the morning, and, on her return at
nightfall, found that her cottage had disappeared and
the whole neighbourhood changed, as by the rubbing of
Aladdin's lamp.

In its gentle dip and rise to the west end of Princes
Street, Lothian Road skirts, on the left hand, the Goods
and Passenger Stations of the Caledonian Railway,
which, in the year 1848, formed its terminus here — on
the site of the Castle Barns or grange — alongside the
Canal landing-place, and at once struck the slow water-
way out of the running for the passenger traffic to the
West. The lofty new West Princes Street Station and
Hotel has risen on ground through which St Cuthbert's
Loan meandered through fields to meet, at the Kirk-
braehead the Kirk Loan climbing the northern slope

198

Lothian Road

from Stockbridge and the Dean. Both of them were
country lanes, bordered by hedgerows, before Lothian
Road was built, and their point of junction has become
one of the two great confluences of traffic of the New
Town. Their destination was St Cuthbert's, the old
West Kirk, still sheltering, as it is believed to have done
for eleven centuries past, under the west front of the
Castle Rock.

Street improvements and railway alterations have
made, and continue to make, great changes in the
locality of the old Castle Barns and around the West
Kirk. The " tall narrow, three-storey country villa "
called Kirkbraehead House, where resided the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Castle, Lord Elphinstone,
in the last decade of the eighteenth century ; the church
in which that doughty champion of Free Church
principles, Dr Candlish, preached after the Disruption ;
and the St Cuthbert Poorhouse, have successively had to
make place, and rails and platforms and booking-offices
cover their sites. The church has been transported to
Stockbridge, and there set up again, stone for stone ;
the Poorhouse has removed well out into the country to
the north, where, in spite of the growth of St Cuthbert's
Parish, it has been found too spacious for the shrunken
number of its inmates. The ridge above the King's
Stables Road and the West Churchyard, facing the
Castle, is occupied by a handsome terrace, which
numbers among its edifices the School Board and
Parochial Board Offices and a building which before the
Church Union was the Synod Hall of the United
Presbyterian Church and earlier still the New Edinburgh
Theatre, but now a possesion of the Town and let as a
hall for public entertainment, studios and offices, includ-

199

From Morningside to the West Kirk

ing those of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society ;
while in Grindlay Street, adjoining Castle Terrace, is the
Lyceum Theatre, where already have gathered a goodly
number of those traditions and memories of the drama
in which we have found the town to be so rife. The
block of buildings between these sites, including what
has been a public school, is the spot finally fixed upon
as the site of the Usher Hall, for the erection of which
the late Mr Andrew Usher, so long ago as 1896, left
the sum of £100,000. Operations have at length begun
for giving form and substance to this long-delayed boon
to the musical public of Edinburgh.

"St Cuthbert's-under-castle " itself has suffered
change. But, in spite of the fact that one railway rears
a stony front almost threateningly over it, while another,
the North British, mines under its territory in a double
tunnel, it has managed to retain its consecrated space
and to grow in bulk. At no date, from the period of
the first erection on this spot of a cell or house of prayer
of the Columban Church dedicated to the great Apostle
of Northumberland, does the architecture of the West
Kirk appear to have been of a type worthy of the age
of the foundation and the spacious extent of its charge
of souls. Its date, as a sacred site, conjectured to be of
the eighth century, is, perhaps, older than can be
assigned to any other parish church in Scotland. The
original area of the parish was the largest in Midlothian,
and well-nigh enclosed the city, stretching almost to
Leith on the east side of Edinburgh as well as on the
west Out of it a whole group of subsidiary parishes
have since been cut.

In the early centuries, before gunpowder, the Castle,
near though it was, does not appear to have been so ill

300

The West Kirk

a neighbour to St Cuthbert's. Afterwards, however, the
Church received many hard dunts from the Rock — and
occasionally returned them. In David I.'s time, the
West Kirk and its emoluments were made over to the
monks of Holyrood ; and we have seen that these holy
men were wont to visit their possessions be-west the
Castle by following the route of the " Cowgait " and the
West Port. On the northern side of the Rock, the
marsh or loch came up to the borders of the West Kirk-
yard ; although there was a " kittle " track, of which
mention has been made, creeping under the brow of the
cliffs and defended by the Wellhouse Tower. Beyond
the hollow and its bogs, the " Lang Gait," so frequently
spoken off, ran along the bare ridge, among furze and
broom, towards the Kirkbraehead.

Of the period of the erection of the Church which
stood on the spot at the date of the Reformation, and
which was pulled down in 1775, nothing definite can be
said. Old prints and descriptions show that it was a
long and narrow building, with a southern aisle or
transept, a nave which latterly fell into ruins, and a
square tower. Barnlike additions were made to it ; and
the interior is spoken of as " formed after no plan, and
presenting a multitude of petty galleries stuck one
above another to the very rafters, like so many pigeons'
nests." It had been badly battered in the wars,
especially during the visits of Cromwell. The General
Assembly met in it while David Leslie was following
the Protector to Dunbar, and passed the West Kirk
Act, which " lifted up a testimony against the sin and
guilt of the King and his house"; and when Noll
returned and made the building into barracks, what
with the Ironsides within and the play upon it of the

201

From Morningside to the West Kirk

Castle guns from without, the walls alone were soon all
that was left standing. Another .shower of shot and
shell fell upon St Cuthbert's from the Rock after the
Revolution, when the Castle held out for James although
Kirk and Country had declared for William. Yet the
Old West Kirk held together for nearly a century
longer, and then, at the nadir of taste, made way for a
structure, big enough in all conscience, but looking, as
Professor Blackie or some other wag described it, " like
the packing-case out of which the neighbouring
beautiful, toy-like structure of St John's Episcopal
Church had been lifted." If it had a redeeming feature,
it was the steeple, 170 feet in height, which has been
preserved and forms part of the fabric of the existing St
Cuthbert's planned by Mr Hippolyte Blanc.

The West Church has had some noteworthy pastors.
One of the earliest, after the Reformation, was Mr
Robert Pont, of a family of eminent Presbyterian
ecclesiastics. An inscribed stone, bearing his initials
and taken from his " manse," is built into St Cuthbert's
Church Hall, and his tomb is in the Churchyard. The
Rev. David Williamson, the "Dainty Davie" of the
ribald song-writers, was minister at the time of the
Revolution Settlement, and is perhaps best remembered
on account of his large allowance of seven wives, the
last of whom survived him. Another occupant of St
Cuthbert's Manse was the intrepid Rev. Neil M'Vicar,
who, with Prince Charlie's Highlanders as auditors,
prayed for "that young man" at Holyrood, who had
come seeking an earthly throne — "We beseech Thee
take him to Thyself and give him a crown of glory."
A later minister of the collegiate charge, Dr David
Dickson, is commemorated by a fine piece of sculpture,

202

West Kirk Worthies

built into the steeple, the work of Handyside Ritchie.
The Rev. Sir Henry Wellwood MoncriefT, Dr Paul,
and Dr Veitch were all of them divines of antique
mould in a past generation ; and the late senior minister,
Dr James MacGregor, was a preacher of note.

In the churchyard may be read, among other distin-
guished names, those of Thomas De Quincy, the
" Opium-eater," and of Sir Henry Raeburn, the painter.
The old family of the Nisbets of Dean had their vault
adjacent to the Church, and it is still easily discoverable.
Divided only by a wall from St Cuthbert's burial-ground
is the cemetery around St John's Church ; and here
also rests the dust of many well-known Edinburgh
citizens. One of them was the genial Dean Ramsay,
the preserver from oblivion of a fund of Scottish
anecdote and humour, who was long the incumbent of
St John's, and whose memory is kept alive by a monu-
ment, in the form of a Celtic cross, on the line and level
of Princes Street.

203

CHAPTER XVII

THE NEW TOWN — PRINCES STREET

FROM circumambulation of the Older Edinburgh, from
exploration of the southerly latitudes of its suburbs, we
return to the parallel whence we set out. The " short
mile" of Princes Street, from the North Bridge to
Lothian Road, from the Register House to St John's
Church, is the ground-line of Modern Athens ; it is the
score from which the New Town started on its race
down the declivities to the north, and westward towards
the roots of the Corstorphine Hills. To hosts of Edin-
burgh's visitors, it is the base they lay down in
measuring and regulating their excursions and in taking
their bearings. To not a few, it is not only the first and
the last picture of the city that strikes the eye — it is the
sole one that is left engraved in the memory. Peeps of
its palace fronts and monuments, rising above the turf
and trees of the gardens, are revealed to them as they
emerge from the tunnels that form the dark prelude of
the railway approach ; and it stretches before them, in
all its shining length, when they ascend from the depths
of the Waverley platforms, or pass out of the portals of
the West Princes Street Station.

Nor has Edinburgh, or its "New Town," much
204

[To face page 204.

The Fair Mile

reason to complain if the impression of its beauty be
drawn from the aspect and situation of the street which
is at once its favourite promenade and the centre of its
business life. " Her face is her fortune," someone had
said of the Scottish capital ; and if High Street be the
deep heart, Princes Street is the fair face of Edinburgh.
"The most magnificent esplanade in Europe," the
citizens are fond of thinking it ; and many widely-
travelled strangers have promptly granted the claim.
It may be that the architecture is not quite worthy of
the site. Certainly, since the dull, flat monotony of the
original Princes Street elevation, of three plain storeys
and a sunk area protected by railings, has almost dis-
appeared, there is no longer any pretence of regularity
of features or harmony of style. But uniformity is not
an element of picturesque beauty ; and there are times
when Princes Street, the mere frontage of it, with the
broken lights and varied outlines of its long perspective,
looks sparklingly beautiful. There are many handsome
buildings among its hotels, clubs, insurance offices, and
other business or public edifices ; and nothing could be
finer in themselves, or more in harmony with their
situation, than the Scott Monument and the temples of
classic art on The Mound. Closing the vista eastward
are the white columns and monuments of the Calton
Hill, while in the opposite direction rise the group of
West End spires and towers.

But the glory of Princes Street, that which gives it
charm and distinction above other thoroughfares, is its
prospect towards the south, its outlook over the valley
which once held the Nor' Loch, to the Old Town and
the Castle. It was happy in being saved from the fate,
destined for it by the vandals of a century ago, of being

205

The New Town — Princes Street

"built on both sides." A mere beginning was made
with this obstruction, now represented by the new
Railway Hotel which is erected at the east end.
By doubling its front Princes Street would not merely
have spoiled, it would have completely destroyed its
character. As it is, the guests at its hotel windows and
the passengers on its crowded foot pavements and on
the broad stream of its cars and carriages look across,
as from a platform built to yield them the prospect, to
the huge and shadowy bulk of the Rock, the long
verdant sweep of the Castle Braes, and the sky-climbing
broken masses of the High Street houses crowned by
spire and dome and pinnacle, and separated from them
only by a quarter of a mile of air and a light screen of
foliage.

Every one has his own favourite Princes Street view.
Some prefer the great confluence of traffic at the Register
House ; others the green spaces and wider vistas of the
West End ; still others the head of Waverley Bridge,
the foot of the Mound, or the junction of Castle Street,
where the grey citadel towers almost threateningly
overhead. Alexander Smith preferred " the corner of
St Andrew Street looking west," to gaze upon "the
poem of Princes Street." "The puppets of the busy,
many-coloured hour move about on its pavement, while
across the ravine, time has piled the Old Town ridge on
ridge, grey as a rocky coast, washed and worn by the
foam of centuries; peaked and jagged by gable and
roof; windowed from basement to cope; the whole
surmounted by St Giles's airy crown. The New is
there looking to the Old. Two times are brought face
to face, and are yet separted by a thousand years."
Could only a river be rolled down the ravine, or a lake

206

The Old and the New

lie in the lap between Old and New ! Instead, there is
a smear of engine-smoke.

Princes Street "beiks in the sun," and catches all
the light and warmth that visit the chilly, grey metro-
polis of the North. " Seen in its glory," says R. L.
Stevenson — " with soft air coming from the inland hills,
military music sounding bravely from the hollow of the
Gardens, the flags all waving on its palaces" — it is
"what Paris ought to be." But a shift of wind or a
slight drop in the weather-glass, and all is changed —
the mists choke the valley, " the rain is splashing on the
window, and the passengers flee along Princes Street
before the galloping squalls." It may be that in this
inconstancy of mood, in the evanescence of its smiles,
resides one of the chief charms of this famous thorough-
fare. After all, gay and garish sunshine is neither its
most characteristic nor its most becoming dress. When
the rosy morning light, stealing past the shoulder of
Arthur Seat, strikes upon the Old Town projections and
the buttresses of the Castle, and slowly gilds the sleep-
ing front and deserted pavement of Princes Street, the
effect is magical. The scene is not less lovely when
flooded with mellow evening radiance. But most
entrancing of all, perhaps, is the spectacle on a clear star-
lit night, when the moon has just gone down behind the
Castle battlements, and Old Edinburgh's "ridged and
chimneyed bulk of blackness " is silhouetted against the
midnight sky like the ragged edge of a thunder-cloud.

The New Town, and Princes Street in particular, are
gathering to themselves a considerable stock of years
and of venerable associations. Yet there are those still
alive who have spoken to men who could remember
when the ground was chiefly pasture and waste; and

207

The New Town — Princes Street

highway robberies were committed among the whins of
the Lang Dykes after George the Third became king.
Along this high ground beyond the Nor' Loch, David
Leslie had deployed his army in the direction of
Corstorphine, when he made his masterly defence of the
capital against Cromwell in 1650; and the English and
Scottish hosts exchanged iron salutes — the " Gogar
Flashes " — across the marshes to the westward. We
have seen Dundee and his horsemen galloping along this
Lang Gait in the Revolution year to rouse the High-
lands to the help of King James. Another scene in the
drama of the Stewart dynasty was witnessed on the spot
in the '45 ; for it was by the same ridge, running along
the line of the present George Street, that the citizens
saw Gardiner's Dragoons fleeing before the advancing
Highlanders towards Leith Links and Musselburgh
after the " Canter of Coltbrig."

For many years after the last Jacobite Rebellion,
hares and partridges were shot, and crops were grown
on the site of the New Town. The reputation of the
place was none of the best. Readers of " David
Balfour" will remember how suspiciously he looked
about him for spy or footpad, as he made his way by
furze and broom and standing grain down to the
hollow of the Dean. Two farmhouses stood on the
ground — the one, Bearford Parks, near where stands St
George's Church; and the other in the dip that now
forms the Queen Street and Heriot Row gardens. One
or two country lanes meandered down towards the
Water of Leith. The Kirk Loan has been mentioned.
It was a country road, screened in summer-time by
flowering hawthorn, and gave the good folks living on
the north side of the parish access to the West Kirk

208

The New Town Site

after they had crossed the wooden bridge at Stockbridge.
It is lamely translated in Church Lane.

A more frequented way was the Old Queensferry
Road, followed by the " Antiquary," which dipped down
to the stream in that steep part of the glen where the
grain mills and houses of Water of Leith were
congregated, and climbed the opposing bank making for
the Ferry and the Hawes Inn. Gabriel's Road was
another rural pathway that slanted down the slope leaving
the Lang Gait at the hamlet of Moultrie Hill, long dis-
placed by the Register House and St James's Square, and
crossing the little river by a ford beyond the Silvermills
lades. At the head of it, in what is now West Register
Street, afterwards stood Ambrose's Tavern, the scene of
the " Noctes Ambrosianae," which rang so often to the
mirth of Christopher North and the sallies of the
"Shepherd" and "Tickler." Further down was a
cottage in which " ambulative citizens regaled themselves
with curds and cream " when making long country
excursions to Broughton or to St Bernard's Well. So
bare was the ground of houses or other obstructions in
the early part of the eighteenth century, that spectators
on the Castle Hill were witnesses in part to a terrible
murder which was committed in Gabriel's Road in 1717,
when a young tutor named Irvine — a Scottish Eugene
Aram, who had unhinged his mind by brooding on pre-
destination— cut the throats of two boys, who were his
pupils, with a penknife.

The Broughton Loan was a more direct road to the
little barony burgh of Broughton, which stood beside the
loch and mills of the Holyrood Canons — the Canonmills
— and boasted of its own courts and tolbooth and
burned its own witches. The way led past the village

209 o

The New Town — Princes Street

of Picardy, colonised by Picard silk-weavers, to whom
the Governors of Heriot's Hospital granted five acres
of land to settle upon, after the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. The line of Leslie's old entrenchments,
which became Leith Walk and the favourite path by
which the citizens strolled when bent on an oyster feast
and taking the air on Leith Pier, bounded the New
Town site towards the east; it passed the Gallowlee
— an eerie spot in a failing light ; under the shadow of
the u fatal tree " a spaewife sat and croaked as David
Balfour tramped by on his way to Pilrig. Further
afield, on the western side of the great open space, were
a few old manor-houses ; among them Easter Coates,
which, little changed in externals, survives to this day,
almost the only relic left of the period when the New
Town was country ; and Wester Coates, built upon by
the houses of Grosvenor Street. The trees of Randolph
Crescent represent the rookery of the departed
Drumsheugh House, where the Jacobite Chevalier
Johnstone found shelter in the guise of a packman ; and
on the other bank of the Water was the mansion
of the Dean, the ancestral home of the old family of
Nisbet.

The aspect of the scene was rural, and not a little
lonesome and desolate when James Craig, sister's son
to Thomson of the " Seasons," drew his plan of the New
Town, which received the compliments and approval of
the magistrates, in 1767. On the plan were inscribed
his uncle's lines —

August, around, what public works I see !

Lo, stately streets ! lo, squares that court the breeze !

See long canals and deepened rivers join,

Each part with each and with the circling main,

The whole entwined isle.

210

Princes Street Prospects

For, as has been mentioned, it was part of the
original design, first conceived by Earl Mar of the '15,
that a branch stream should be drawn from the Water
of Leith and made to flow into the Nor' Loch, which,
thus kept fresh and clean, should discharge its waters
into the sea round the eastern base of the Calton Hill.
Alas that the ambitious and happy idea of the " entwined
isle " never got beyond the stage of project ! And
residents and visitors have sometimes lamented that the
New Town streets and squares " court the breeze " only
too successfully. Its wind-swept terraces and " draughty
parallelograms " must have been a trying change to those
who flitted out hither from the sheltered crannies and
havens of the Old Town closes ; air they got in plenty,
but no " bield." It was complained also that the familiar
neighbourliness and cosiness of home life fled when
Edinburgh fashion camped out in the northern fields ;
formality came into manners as well as into street
architecture ; the " good old times " were at an end.

Yet this Modern Athens, as the first dwellers in it
were fond of calling it, has both prospects and memories.
It is the later Edinburgh of Walter Scott and Lockhart,
of the " Blackwood Group" and the Edinburgh Reviewers.
David Hume came to live at the north-west corner of
St Andrew Square — was not St David Street named
after him in jest ? Robert Burns lodged in St James's
Square and penned epistles to Clarinda in a high upper
room looking down upon the green space behind the
Register House. The bulk of the " Waverley Novels "
were written at No. 39 North Castle Street, neighbours
across the way marvelling at the daily vision of the
hand that travelled ceaselessly across the paper. The
" Chaldee Manuscript " was concocted in John Wilson's

211

The New Town — Princes Street

house in Queen Street. William Ewart Gladstone,
a little boy of five, looked out wonderingly from the
window of a Princess Street hotel, and listened while
the Castle guns fired salutes for the victory of Waterloo.
From St Andrew's Church, after severing themselves
from the Establishment, the Fathers of the " Disruption,"
with Dr Chalmers at their head, marched down Hanover
Street to the Tanfield Hall at Canonmills, there to form
the Free Church and begin a new era in Scottish
ecclesiasticism. In the Heriot Row gardens, and by
the banks of the Water of Leith, Robert Louis
Stevenson played and dreamed and gathered memories
that were to be background to the stories of
Catriona, and Alan Breck Stewart, and St Ives, and
Weir of Hermiston. Princes Street was long familiar
with the breezy figure, with plaid and "kail runt," of
Professor Blackie; and with the portly form and
leonine look — "the head of Jove on the body of
Bacchus " — of Sir James Young Simpson, the discoverer
of chloroform.

A long procession, of eminent judges and advocates,
of weighty and eloquent divines, of men learned and
illustrious in science, medicine, and philosophy, have
streamed down the Mound and spread through the
New Town streets and places when work was over in
the Law Courts, the Assemblies, and the University.
It is needless to go back to the time of Cockburn and
Jeffrey, of Chalmers, or of Gregory, and to go over
the long list. Enough has been said to show how
varied as well as brilliant are the New Town memories
of the past. As to its prospects, it may be that more
might have been made of the site, but at least it
succeeds, as few cities drawn and built by plan and

212

03 ~
W ?
O s

Vistas and Memories

rule have done, in combining the stately and the
picturesque. Handsome in itself, it is more magnificent
in its outlook. Of the Princes Street view we have
spoken ; it embraces the Salisbury Crags, and from
upper windows takes in glimpses of the Pentlands and
the shores of East Lothian. From the platform of
Queen Street, or from the crossings on the swelling
ridge of George Street, one gazes down upon peeps
of the Firth, and across these to the hills of Fife. It
is curious, says the author of " Picturesque Notes," how
much description would apply commonly to the Old
and New Town —

"The same sudden accidents of ground, a similar
domineering site above the plain, and the same super-
position of one rank of society over another, are to be
observed in both. Thus, the broad and comely
approach to Princes Street from the east, lined with
hotels and public offices, makes a leap over the gorge
at Low Calton ; if you cast a glance over the parapet,
you look direct into that sunless and disreputable
confluent of Leith Street, and the same tall houses
open upon both thoroughfares. This is only the New
Town passing overhead above its own cellars ; walking,
so to speak, over its own children, as is the way of
cities and the human race."

Every city, too, swallows country hamlets in its
growth ; and fragments of them will lie undigested for
generations. It is so, at least, with the New Town of
Edinburgh. For not only does it look down, from the
Regent's Bridge, on what was once the extra-mural
burgh of Calton, and from the parapet of the Dean
Bridge, survey the mills and foaming weir and huddled
crowd of old houses of the village of Water of Leith :

213

The New Town — Princes Street

but the explorer may still, as in Stevenson's boyhood,
come upon relics of an earlier age — fossils, as it were,
of the period before the ground was given over to the
architect and builder to work their will upon — in
corners like Silvermills, or Canonmills, or Water Lane,
or "the nugget of cottages at Broughton market,"
which represents all that is left of Broughton burgh.
" Antiques " these forlorn old houses may be, " with a
quaint air of having wandered far from their own
place," like Robert Fergusson's butterfly ; abashed and
homely enough with "their gables and their creeping
plants and their outside stairs." But it can no longer
be said of any of them, as a couple of generations ago,
that they are "more rural than the open country";
that there are corners that "smell like the end of a
country garden in April"; or that the inhabitants
stand and gossip at the doors, after the manner of the
village folks of Colinton or Cramond — from which also,
in turn, the idyllic air, the "haunting flavour of the
country," is being chased. They are closely sealed and
prisoned in stone. The mill stream runs no longer
past the door. "Since "the last elm died in Elm Row,"
a score of country mansions that then stood well out
of town, in their own grounds, have been pulled down
or portioned off among small tenants, and their groves
and avenues cut down to make way for streets and
crescents ; " the villas and the workmen's quarters
spread apace " on this as on other borders of the city.

The New Town was slow in making a start. A
premium of £20, it is said, was offered to the first
builder on the site ; and it went to the bold speculator
who laid his foundation in " Rose Court, George Street."
The first of the Princes Street houses to rise was the

214

New Town Beginnings

most easterly of the line — that which bears the number
" 10," and is occupied by the Crown Hotel. It was
built by John Neale, a silk-mercer, who obtained the
ground at a nominal feu, with exemption from burghal
taxes. Of another early house of the row, erected in
1769 by a person bearing the Hebraic name of
Shadrach Moyes, it is recorded that the owner made
a condition that someone must build to westward of him,
to shield him from the winds from that quarter which
blew shrewdly along the bare hillside. Archibald
Constable, Mr Neale's son-in-law, came from High
Street to No. 10 in 1822, and there for a time he played
the part of a "publisher-Maecenas," and embarked in
the grand and rash schemes that brought himself and
Scott to ruin. " If I should break my magic wand in
the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with
my fortune ! " was the thought that wrung the heart of
the great master of Romance, as he set himself
" doggedly " to retrieve the disaster.

Constable's shop, as Mr Giles points out in his
Princes Street Notes, was "situated at a point visible
from the lower end of North Bridge to anyone strolling
down from the High Street and Old Town," as the
Edinburgh Reviewers and the other literati of the day
would likely do. At an earlier date, William Blackwood
had established himself at No. 17, and this spot (still
dedicated to literature) became "the great lounging
bookshop of the New Town," whence issued, in 1817,
the first pages of" Maga." From the corner of Hanover
Street, facing the Mound, began to appear, in 1833,
Taifs Magazine ; and at the same time the House of
Chambers — its magazine a weakly plant in its second
year — moved to 19 Waterloo Place, at the east end of

2I5

The New Town — Princes Street

the thoroughfare. By this date more than half of the
booksellers and publishers of the city had flitted to or
started business in the New Town ; Princes Street had
established its claim to be the birthplace of magazine
literature — the Paternoster Row as well as the Oxford
Street of Edinburgh.

With the dealers in literary wares came the mercers,
the jewellers, and other caterers to fashion, and took up
position on the front line. Princes Street grew and
changed apace ; but for long Hanover Street, and after-
wards Frederick Street and Castle Street, were bounds
beyond which the world of shops did not extend. The
stately George Street set up as a rival early in last
century, when, too, an extended New Town was planned,
and moving down the slope, began to obtain footholds
on the further bank of the Water of Leith. The great
affluents of Lothian Road and Leith Street had already
been formed, and Waterloo Place was planned in the
Waterloo Year. Through these and other channels an
ever greater flood of traffic poured into Princes Street ;
and gradually it took its present shape — an almost
continuous line of hotels, clubs, cafe's, bank and insur-
ance offices, and great drapery establishments, rising
above a glittering array of shop fronts.

The Princes Street edifices are in many styles, and
among them are fine buildings — the New Club, on the
site of the Old Stamp Office; the Liberal and Con-
servative Clubs ; the Life Association Office ; the new
buildings of the North British and Mercantile Insurance
Company, set up at the close of a century of business
life, the earlier years of which had been spent in the
Royal Exchange, in the Old Parliament Close, at the
corner of Bank Street and High Street, and in Hanover

216

Princes Street Edifices

Street; "Jenner's," opposite the Scott Monument;
several of the hotels. Last, not least, and first in date,
there is the Old Register House, begun on Adam's plans
as early as 1774, but not completed until many years
afterwards, and reinforced in 1860 by the New Register
House, as a repository of the National Records of
Scotland. On the opposite side of the way are the
General Post Office, which with the growth of business
has undergone successive extension and heightening,
and, occupying the whole block between the Waverley
Market and the North Bridge, the towering mass of the
North British Station Hotel.

Of West and East Princes Street Gardens something
has been said already. They are green and beautiful
spots in the heart of the city that derive even greater
charm from their bold and striking natural features —
the Castle cliffs and the steep dip of the Old Town
ridge — than from their groves of trees, their stretches of
greensward, their fountains, their monuments. The
West Gardens — once filled by a Slough of Despond —
have become, but for the trail of the railway, an ideal
Town Park. They are seen at the best on a bright
summer day, when military music rises from the depths
of the hollow or floats down from the Esplanade, and
gay groups stroll or rest on the turf. The ground
became public property in 1876, when a slice was taken
from it to increase the width of the Princes Street
roadway.

Greater and more grievous are the parings to which
the East Gardens have been subjected, in order to
provide more space for railway sidings and platforms.
But, as consolation, there is always the Scott Monument,
a work of art that by its grace and beauty and harmony

217

The New Town — Princes Street

of proportion has stood, and is likely to stand, the test
of time and criticism, and to give delight to generations
to come. It was designed by an almost self-taught
hand — that of George Meikle Kemp, son of a Moorfoot
shepherd, whose genius had been kindled by personal
study of Melrose Abbey and other examples of Gothic
architecture, and by love of the works and character of
Sir Walter. In niches of the monument are placed
figures, from the chisels of different sculptors, of char-
acters in the Waverley Novels ; under the groined and
open canopy is a seated statue of Scott with his dog
Maida, by Sir John Steell ; and overhead is a small
Scott Museum. To many not the least wonderful thing
about this "pride and ornament of Princes Street" is
its cost — less than £16,000.

To one or two of the other Princes Street monuments
and statues, Lord Rosebery's prayer — that the spirits
that possessed the Gadarene swine might enter into
them, so that they might " run down a steep place into
the sea " — may seem not uncalled for ; but others,
again, are worthy of their subjects and their honourable
position. The list includes Steell's equestrian statue of
the Duke of Wellington, in front of the Register House,
and monuments to David Livingstone, Adam Black,
M.P., Christopher North, Allan Ramsay, Thomas Guthrie,
and Sir James Young Simpson, marshalled in line parallel
to Princes Street. A colossal seated statue of Her
Majesty the Queen also surmounts the Princes Street
fagade of the Royal Institution, a building which, with
the National Picture Gallery, crowns the conspicuous site
of the Mound with classic Grecian pillar and architrave,
and gives to the scene, whether viewed from near at
hand or from a distance, one of its strongest architectural

218

THE SCOTT MONUMENT.

[To face page 218.

Princes Street Monuments

notes. The Institution, the older of these companion
structures by a quarter of a century, is in " the Doric
style of Pericles." The School of Art, the Board of
Manufactures, and a sculpture gallery were formerly
accommodated here ; they have flitted elsewhere, and
the whole building is now set aside for the Royal
Scottish Academy, which has given up its share in the
tenancy of the neighbouring edifice, the National Picture
Gallery. This, a beautiful copy of an Ionic temple, con-
tains two ranges of picture galleries, holding the fine
national collection, which includes, in addition to many
rare and precious examples of English and foreign, and
notably old French, masters, a full and admirable repre-
sentation of works of the Scottish school in landscape
and portraiture — from Jameson to Raeburn, and from
Raeburn to Sir George Reid and Sir James Guthrie.

219

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CALTON

THE Calton Hill and its monuments might be claimed
as among the ornaments of Princes Street. They close
its vista eastwards with the group of columns that have
been said to give to Edinburgh "the false air of a
Modern Athens." They " enfilade " the whole length of
the street, which, whether glittering in the sunshine or
showing its long perspective of gleaming lamps under a
canopy of darkness, is one of the most striking features
in that "Calton Hill prospect," which has been truly
called one of the finest in Europe. The Calton Hill
bears Edinburgh's uncompleted sketch of its Parthenon.
It would, doubtless, have been its Acropolis had there
not happened to be a still more commanding site for a
citadel. Indeed, the country visitor and the tourist
from the South, emerging from the darkness of the
Calton tunnel, are wont to " joyously hail " the much-
turreted and battlemented Calton Jail, perched upon the
Dow or Dhu Craig — the precipitous side of the Hill —
as the veritable Castle on its Rock.

Until Waterloo Place and Regent's Bridge were
opened, the Calton Hill was reached by descending
into the depths of Low Calton and climbing up the
steep and narrow path of Craigend. Princes Street,

220

Calton Views

says Lord Cockburn, was closed in this direction by " a
mean line of houses running north and south," beyond
which was a burying-ground ; and through the heart of
this the new and wide access to the Hill and round its
southern flanks to the country lying east and south had
to be cut. The route, to the base of the rocky hill, is
lined on both sides by stately buildings — which George
IV., on his entrance, condescended to admire — save
where it is bounded by the retaining walls of the
divided graveyard. Here the monuments of the dead
lean over and look down on the pavements and the
tram-cars. The burial-ground of Calton was granted to
their vassals of the Calton burgh by its superiors, the
Lords Balmerino, the last of whom lost his head in the
'45 Rebellion. A peep down upon the site of the
ancient extra-mural barony burgh from the Regent's
Bridge is still impressive, although the features of the
scene have been so completely changed. St Ninian's,
or Beggars', Row, leading past St Ninian's Chapel to
the country and to Leith, was its main street, and, like
the neighbouring Canongate, it had its Baron Bailie, its
Trade Incorporation, and its High Constables, whose
staves of office dropped from their grasp only with the
municipal reform of 1856, when the Calton insignia
were deposited with the Society of Antiquaries. St
Ninian's Row, under another name, now serves in part
as a side access to the Waverley Station.

It is worth while turning aside for a little into the
" City of the Dead " built aloft on the Calton Craigs,
from which, in the days of civil war, ordnance has
repeatedly been planted to "ding and siege" the
quarrelsome town of Edinburgh. Young Stevenson was
among those who loved to haunt this commanding yet

221

The Calton

secluded spot, when he was " in an unhappy mood " ; the
dust of his own people lay near by in the New Calton,
which overlooks Fergusson's grave in the Canongate,
and Holyrood, the " House of Kings." May he not be
regarded as successor of the " Fairy Boy," the old genius
loci of the Calton Hill ? In a circular mausoleum,
reminding one, by its shape, of an ancient " broch,"
reposes David Hume ; near it is a monument, crowned
by a life-sized figure of Abraham Lincoln in bronze, to
the memory of the Scottish soldiers who fell in the
American Civil War. William Blackwood and
Archibald Constable are placed not far apart and close
to the brink below which runs the stream of the Waterloo
Place traffic, as if they would still listen, as they did so
eagerly when they were old neighbours and rivals in
business in Princes Street, to the hum and whisper of
the world. The gentle Dr John Brown, author of
" Rab and his Friends," and Robert Burns's great crony,
William Nichol, of the High School, sleep peacefully in
this haven of rest, which, like Greyfriars, has its Martyrs'
Monument, in the shape of a tall white obelisk,
commemorative of Muir, Palmer, and their companions,
banished for their early efforts in the cause of Reform.
In the corner of Old Calton Churchyard which has been
cut off from the rest by the thoroughfare of Waterloo
Place, rest, as the stones record, members of the
Cordwainers' Craft of the burgh, under the windows of
the new offices of the Gas Commissioners.

Escaping from the shadow of Graveyard and Prison,
one who chooses to reconnoitre the shoulders of the
Calton before climbing to its crown finds himself on a
broad sweep of terraced road, with the Hill and its trees
and monuments rising on his left, the dingy, smoke-

222

Old Calton

canopied Canongate huddled at his feet, and over
against him the forms of Arthur Seat and the Salisbury
Crags. This would be a famous " view-point " were
there not other and still better vantage-ground above.
On the right side of the way, where " Jacob's Ladder "
climbs up out of the abysses of the North Back of
Canongate, there is a monument to Robert Burns — " a
Corinthian cyclostyle of twelve columns and a cupola," a
copy of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates. The col-
lection of Burns's relics, it has been seen, has been removed
to the Municipal Museum. The eye is even better
satisfied with the beautiful lines and proportions of the
classic edifice on the terrace opposite — the Royal High
School of many memories — a gem of modern Edinburgh
architecture. It was designed by Thomas Hamilton, an
old High School boy, and rose on this airy and
commanding site when the time came, towards the end
of the third decade of the century, for removing the
Burgh School from its shady and unhealthy environ-
ment of the Cowgate and the " Yards."

By Regent, Carlton, and Royal Terraces, which
enclose, with a noble range of houses and a screen of
trees and gardens, the eastern front of the Hill, and
afford, along their whole length, fine prospects of the
Abbey quarter, the Queen's Park, Leith, and the sea,
one is brought back again to the neighbourhood of
Leith Street and High Calton, at Greenside. Once, on
this north-western spur of the Hill, there stood a
Carmelite Monastery, converted at the Reformation into
a Lepers' Hospital. The savage rules of the time,
dictated by fear, ordained that any of the wretched
inmates who escaped out of bounds, or who even opened
the door between sunset and sunrise, should be hanged

223

The Calton

on the gallows beside the gate. The " Rood of Green-
side," set apart for burnings for heresy and sorcery,
stood under the Hill in this quarter; and in curious
juxtaposition was the " Playfield," the scene of tourna-
ments, sports, and out-of-doors dramatic performances,
described in a grant by James II. of Scots as in "the
valley or low ground lying betwixt the rock called
Craigingalt on the east and the common way, or
passage, on the west." Sir David Lyndsay's " Pleasant
Satyre of the Three Estaits " was played on this spot,
until its free handling of the vices of the clergy provoked
the prelates of the Ancient Church to interdict it ; and
tradition asserts that Bothwell succeeded in first taking
the eye of Mary by his bold horsemanship in riding
down the steep bank and leaping his steed into the
tilting-yard.

It is time to leave the skirts of the Hill and ascend
to its summit. This can be done by the flight of steps
cut through the brown basalt rock at the end of
Waterloo Place; by the carriage-way that rises from
Regent Road behind the High School playground ; or
by the footpath that climbs the steep from Greenside
Church. On the green crown of Calton, high above the
city houses, and clear even of their smoke, we find
monuments — and monuments. On the highest platform
is a column, erected to the memory of the great sailor
Nelson. In shape it has been likened to a Dutch
skipper's telescope, and it has been described, perhaps
with a touch of extravagance, as " among the vilest of
man's handiworks." A time-ball drops on the head of
Nelson's Monument, to give warning, through the
signal-gun at the Castle, that it is one hour after noon
on the Greenwich meridian, and to this top-gallant level

224

'•••••» ••»*'••• ',

[To face page 224.

The Calton Monuments

the visitor can painfully ascend if he wishes to get more
of a bird's-eye view than can be had from the turf and
rocks at its base.

Twelve great fluted columns of white Craigleith
stone, founded on a temple base and crowned by Doric
capitals and frieze, rise hard by, and front, from the
centre of the Hill, the line of Princes Street. The
original idea was to raise a Modern Parthenon on the
spot, " as a memorial of the past and an incentive to the
future heroism of the men of Scotland," and in particular
as " the tribute of a grateful country to her gallant and
illustrious sons " who fell in the battles, by sea and land,
of the great war with France. The foundation-stone
was laid, with much state and ceremony in 1822, by
George the Magnificent in person. But money and
enthusiasm gave out when this fragment of the work
had been erected, at a cost of some £12,000; and the
" National Monument " has been made the subject of
many mocks and girds as the " National Disgrace " or
" Folly." In point of picturesque effect, the part is
perhaps better than the whole. These graceful, far-
shining Calton columns come finely into the picture of
the Hill and of the city, from whatever side they are
viewed ; the Scottish Valhalla is a " splendid failure."

Classic memorials of Dugald Stewart, the philo-
sopher, and of John Playfair, the astronomer, both of
them designed by the nephew of the latter, W. H.
Playfair, adorn the hill ; and here, too, are the quaint
irregular form of the Old Observatory — an early home
of Scottish astronomy — and the white domes of the New
or City Observatory, containing the Cox and Crawford
telescopes. It is not, however, for the sake of its

monuments but for its prospects — not for what is to be

225 p

The Calton

seen on it, but for what can be seen from it — that the
Calton is chiefly famed and frequented. R. L. Stevenson
— a good authority on a point of the kind — gave it the
praise of being perhaps the best of all places for viewing
Edinburgh — " since you can see the Castle, which you
lose from the Castle, and Arthur Seat, which you
cannot see from Arthur Seat." To be sure, you lose the
Calton Hill, which is no small loss. Certainly the
spectacle of Edinburgh from the Calton Hill rivals, if it
does not surpass, that from Mons Meg, from the Radical
Road, or from the Blackford Hill.

It is not one, but many. For the old city and the
new encircle the Calton braes and cliffs, and present
towards them their most romantic aspects. Some may
prefer the wide and glorious prospect from the northern
slopes over the New Town, the Port of Leith, and the
Firth of Forth, to the hills of Fife. It is true, it is to
some extent a repetition, as to background, of the view
from the Bomb Battery of the Castle ; but all the details
are altered. For foreground there is the steep plunge into
the valley of Greenside ; and out of it spring gaunt and
grim ranges of tenements that, for height and dinginess,
will endure comparison with any of the Old Town lands
— buildings that, starting from " three storeys below the
street pavement," rise six or seven storeys above it.
Other admirers there are who will take most delight in
the lovely vista, best seen from the base of Nelson's
Monument, of Princes Street with its traffic, overhung
by the mass of the Castle, and made still more enchant-
ing after nightfall, when interminable lines of light
twinkle away into the distance. But the majority will
give the chief praise to the magical scene — whether
viewed by day or night — from the southern crest or

226

Calton Views

flank of the hill, where you look upon the high-piled
houses of Old Edinburgh, rearing themselves in weird
shapes against the sky, or hiding in the murky shadows
of the narrowing gulf between you and Arthur Seat.

An infinite variety of charm comes to the Calton
Hill prospects with changes of the season, of weather
and of light. Stevenson gave his voice for " one of those
days of sunshine and east wind which are so common in
our more than temperate summer " — when, along with
the coolness and freshness drawn in from the North
Sea, there is a faint floating haze, enough to obscure
but not to hide Aberlady Sands, and Berwick Law, and
the hump of the Bass — as a choice time for a stroll on
the Calton Hill. Among a hundred other objects you
can pick out Leith and its forest of masts, the ships at
anchor in the Roads, the white pharos on Inchkeith,
the Fife towns, sitting "each in its bank of blowing-
smoke" on the coast opposite, and the sea-way to
" Norrowa over the faem." " You turn to the city, and
see children dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play
about suburban doorsteps ; you have a glimpse upon a
thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you
note ridge after ridge of chimney-stalks running down-
hill, one behind another, and church spires rising bravely
from the sea of roofs. And here you are on this pastoral
hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked down upon
by monumental buildings."

Return again, " on some clear, dark, moonless night,
with a ring of frost in the air," and you will find "a
sight as stimulating as the hoariest summit of the Alps."
For though the town "lies blue and darkling on her
hills, innumerable spots of light shine far and near along
the pavements and upon the high fagades. Moving

227

The Calton

lights of the railway pass and repass below the stationary
lights upon the bridge. Lights burn in the jail.
Lights burn high up in the tall lands and on the Castle
turrets ; they burn low in Greenside along the Park.
They run out one beyond another into the dark country.
They walk in procession down to Leith, and shine
singly far along Leith pier. Thus the plan of the city
and its suburbs is mapped out upon the ground of black-
ness, as when a child pricks a drawing full of pin-holes
and exposes it before a candle ; not the darkest night
of winter can conceal her high station and fanciful
design." Such are a few of the city enchantments to
be seen from the Calton Hill.

228

CHAPTER XIX

GEORGE STREET AND ITS ENVIRONS

" THE great enemy of the good is the better." George
Street would be the pride and centre of life of Edinburgh
New Town if there were no Princes Street. Even as it
is, George Street may challenge comparison with its
more famous rival on many points of situation, architec-
ture, and history. It can look down from its higher
site upon the Princes Street throng, and out and away
to the green country, the sea, and the hills. It has its
monuments and architectural ornaments ; its vistas
closed by the two magnificent open spaces, each in its
own way almost unrivalled, of St Andrew and Charlotte
Squares — on the one hand the lofty pillar of the
Melville column and the needle-like spire of St Andrew's
Church ; on the other the fine dome of St George's. In
age, even, it can compete with the other ; the founda-
tion-stone of the New Town, as we have seen, was
practically laid in Rose Court, behind the church of St
Andrew. Of the memories, literary, artistic, and even
romantic, that cling to the " city of a thousand associa-
tions," George Street and its environs have more than
their share.

Like these associations, the stately beauty of which
George Street and its Squares can now boast has come
to them gradually. In the early decades of last century

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George Street and its Environs

George Street was described as " comparatively mean "
in aspect; nay, "as the most melancholy and gloomy
street that can well be imagined." It was originally
designed for residence rather than business. Even yet,
commerce has only begun to intrude its foot or display
its wares in the serene atmosphere and under the gaze
of the watching sphinxes of Charlotte Square — one of
the most dignified " places " in Europe.

It is quite otherwise with its " marrow " to the east
— St Andrew Square — and with the thoroughfare
between. The headquarters of Scottish banking are in
and near St Andrew Square. Here also is the Stock
Exchange ; and several of the principal insurance offices
— the Edinburgh, the Standard, the Royal, the Prudential
among them — have raised, of late, imposing structures,
within gunshot of the great fluted column (a copy of that
of Trajan at Rome), from the summit of which a colossal
statue of Henry Dundas, first Lord Melville, the friend
of Pitt and in his time the " King of Scotland," looks
down upon the city whose political liberties he erstwhile
ruled with a rod of iron. The mansion-house of another
Dundas of mark — Sir Laurence, a merchant prince and
a Lord Provost, who was ancestor of the Earls of
Zetland — stands somewhat back from the Square, and
is now occupied by the Royal Bank, once obscurely
housed in the Old Bank Close. Next neighbours are
the British Linen Company Bank — an ornate building
with projecting Corinthian columns, and symbolic figures
crowning its entablature — and the National Bank ; the
head office of the Commercial Bank rears a classic front
a few doors along George Street, where likewise the
Union Bank, long located beside the Courts of Law in
Parliament Square, has latterly taken up its station. The

230

MOXS MEG.

GEORGE STREET, LOOKING EAST.

[To face page 230.

Banks and Monuments

Music Hall and the new headquarters of the Grand Lodge
—successors of St Cecilia's Hall and Mary's Chapel, in
Niddry Wynd, as centres of Edinburgh Music and
Scottish Masonry ; the offices of the Royal Society and
of the United Free Church, do not exhaust the list of
public buildings which range themselves on the line of
George Street.

The statues and monumental groups that preside
over its squares and guard its crossways number
seven, reckoning that which surmounts the Melville
column. John, Earl of Hopetoun, the Peninsular hero,
stands leaning on his war-steed in front of the Royal
Bank ; and on the other side of the Melville column is
the group of Alexander and Bucephalus, designed and
cast in bronze at dates fifty years apart, and so repre-
senting the life-work of Sir John Steell. George IV.,
sceptred and robed, at the intersection of Hanover
Street, bears eloquent testimony to Scotland's loyalty
under difficulties. The great statesman, William Pitt,
from the chisel of Chantrey, also looks towards Princes
Street, from where the ridge is traversed by Frederick
Street. In a similar position, with regard to Castle
Street, stands a figure of the great Chalmers, a latter-day
Knox, clad in his doctor's gown, his massive face turned
towards the Castle Rock and his finger upon Holy
Writ. Last, not least, in the centre of Charlotte
Square, surrounded by its greenery, and with the
pillared fagade, the dome, and the gilded cupola of St
George's Church — the St Paul's of Edinburgh— as back-
ground, is an equestrian statue of the Prince Consort,
the granite pedestal surrounded by emblematic groups
in bronze offering " Albert the Good " the tribute of all
ranks and conditions of men.

231

George Street and its Environs

George Street and its approaches, and the streets that
lie below it to the north, echo faintly to the lost foot-
steps of the men who, after the building of the New
Town, made Edinburgh a shrine for the pilgrim of
letters, philosophy, and science. Literary lions paced
its pavements in groups in the period of the Great War
and of the rule of the Dundases. Every other door
has its association with some name or event of note in
the social life or literature of the time.

We can only glance here and there, and take cog-
nisance of an outstanding figure, or incident, or site of
" Modern Athens." Henry Brougham was born in No.
21 St Andrew Square, two years after the death of
Hume, whose last years in Edinburgh were spent in
the house, on the corner of which a wag of the day
chalked the name " St David Street." " Many a better
man has been called a saint," was the philosopher's
placid comment ; " many a worse man also," posterity
may add. Lord Buchan, a literary bore of the first
calibre, who sought to patronise Burns and Scott, and
played at reviving classic tastes and costumes, was
afterwards a dweller in No. 21 ; and next door lived
" Cocked-hat Hamilton," who carried down to his death
in 1835, the practice of wearing the three-cornered
head-covering and the other articles of fashionable
attire of the vanished generation who figure in " Kay's
Portraits."

But it is easy to find closer local links with Burns —
and especially with Scott. It has been noted that, from
an airy "poet's lodging" behind the Royal Bank, in
St James's Square (where St Ives and his Rowley some
time quartered with Mrs M'Rankine), Sylvander spied
his Clarinda. Creech, the bookseller, had his residence

232

Lost Footsteps

in No. 5 George Street, where now is the Standard
Insurance Office; at 25, the home of the Ferriers —
parents of Susan, the novelist, and grand-parents of
James Frederick, " the last of the philosophers " — Burns
and Mrs Piozzi have been guests ; and from the
company that were wont to assemble for whist and
supper the author of "Marriage" and "Inheritance"
drew the materials of her pictures of the Edinburgh
society and characters of the day.

As for Sir Walter, did not his widowed mother live
and die in 75 George Street? Was it not in No. 108
that he took lodgings and brought home his newly-
wedded wife, not so many doors apart from No. 86,
where dwelt his friend, Sir William Forbes, the banker,
whose marriage to Scott's "first love," Miss Stuart,
went near to break his heart? Above all, did he
not times innumerable limp up the steps of No. 39
Castle Street — a few yards below the corner of George
Street — the home in town where he lived and worked
for eight-and-twenty years ; the magician's cave whence
issued mysteriously the bright array of the Waverley
Novels, to astonish and delight the world ? However
hard might be the strain on the busy hand and brain,
Scott's stock of time, patience, and good-humour never
seemed to fail ; and the Ettrick Shepherd naively tells
us — " Many a time have I been sorry for him, for I
have remained in his study in Castle Street, in hopes
to get a quiet word out of him, and witnessed the
admission of ten intruders forbye myself." A number
of his familiar friends lived or lodged near by — Skene
of Rubislaw in Castle Street ; Lord Chief-Commissioner
Adam in Charlotte Square ; Captain Basil Hall in St
Colme St. His own brave heart was his support when,

233

George Street and its Environs

after his financial collapse, he moved to " Mrs Brown's
lodgings, 6 St David Street," opposite to where Sir
David Brewster began the writing of his " Encyclo-
paedia"— and wrote in his Journal, " Here I am in
Arden ; when I was at home I was in a better place."
Saddest passage of all, it was to the Douglas Hotel in
St Andrew Square — long the chief hostelry of the New
Town — that he was brought home, utterly broken in
health and unconscious of what was happening around
him, to spend his last night in Edinburgh. There is
no scene more sacred to the memory of Scott than
George Street.

It can lay claim also, if not to the birth, to the
fostering and the growth of the rival literary forces that
inspired and guided Blackwood and the Edinburgh
Review. We have seen how early Brougham's connec-
tion with the locality began. Sydney Smith preached
in Charlotte Chapel, Rose Street, and edited the first
number of the famous Review in No. 46 George Street.
Francis Jeffrey flitted in 1810 to No. 92 from "third-
rate apartments " in Queen Street ; and there abode for
seventeen years, during which he did some of his best
work as critic and reviewer, before removing his house-
hold gods to more palatial quarters in Moray Place.
Carlyle found him seated at his "big baize-covered
table loaded with bookrows and paper-bundles, and
cheerfully lighted by five pairs of candles," and was
received by the "famous little gentleman" in a
"perfectly human manner." Jeffrey's friend and
biographer, Lord Cockburn, was a contemporary
dweller in 14 Charlotte Square, when not sheltering at
Bonally, his green retreat in the Pentlands. The men
and manners of the time — a time when "society and

234

Literary Landmarks

literature adorned each other ; the war sparkled us
with military gaiety and parade ; and London had not
absorbed the whole of our aristocracy either of wealth
or rank " — live again in the genial pages of his
" Memorials." Carlyle found in him a wholesome
contrast to Wilson ; " a bright, cheery, large-eyed man,
a Scotch dialect with plenty of good logic in it, and
plenty of practical sagacity ; veracious, too ; a gentle-
man, I should say, perfectly in the Scotch type, perhaps
the very last of that peculiar species."

It must not be imagined that the opposites of all these
qualities and endowments were to be found in " Great
Christopher," whom the crusty philosopher of Cheyne
Row has himself described as " a broad, sincere man of
six feet, with long, dishevelled hair, and two blue eyes,
keen as an eagle's." Wilson was the giant of the
"Blackwood group," and laid about him lustily, and
with a fine boyish impetuosity, although Lockhart's
spear may have been keener and thrust more sure. It
was in his mother's house, 53 Queen Street — next
door to that in which Sir James Young Simpson, at a
later date, lived and pondered the secret of anaesthetics
— that these Tory free-lances prepared their first
audacious sally on the Whig camp. But the saloon of
the celebrated "No. 45," in George Street, was the
centre of counsel and operations of the band of writers
— Aytoun, Hogg, De Quincey, " Delta," and a host
beside — who gathered round the House of Blackwood,
and made of " Maga " a power, and somewhat of a
terror, in the realm of letters.

The literary and other reminiscences connected with
George Street and its precincts are far from exhausted.
A number of them gather about the shop of Stillie, the

235

George Street and its Environs

bookseller, who was fond of telling to Mr Gladstone
and other visitors that as a printer's boy he had carried
proofs to Sir Walter Scott. The publishing house of
Mr David Douglas, in South Castle Street, was itself
for a time the residence of the great novelist. Audubon,
the naturalist, prepared, in 26 George Street, a number
of the marvellous drawings of his " Birds of America,"
which were engraved for him by Lizars, and plunged,
with the ardour of a wild man of the woods, who was
also a genius and a gentleman, into the delights of
Edinburgh society. In Charlotte Square dwelt the
witty Lord Neaves ; and two doors off, Syme, the great
surgeon. Sir William Fettes, a successful merchant
and public-minded citizen, whose fortune, accumulated
to a quarter of a million sterling, was devoted to the
raising of the College bearing his name, standing on
the northern outskirts of the city, was another inhabi-
tant of the Square. So, too, was Sir John Sinclair of
Ulbster, patriot and economist, among whose family of
thirteen gigantic sons and daughters was Catherine
Sinclair, whose novels, now forgotten, were almost more
popular in their day than those of Scott himself. A
monument to this philanthropic lady stands at the
corner of North Charlotte Street, and she is worthy of
being remembered, if not for her literary work, as
being the introducer to Edinburgh of cooking depots,
cabmen's shelters, and public seats and fountains.

Sir Archibald Alison began his " History of Europe "
in St Colme Street. But this, like the Sinclair monu-
ment, is on the line of Queen Street, which, as we have
already seen, possesses almost as many memories of the
" Augustan age " of the New Town as George Street
itself. Standing on its airy terrace, with its fine gardens

236

The Augustan Age

filling the hollow between it and Heriot Row and
Abercromby Place, the tall, plain, substantial line of
the Queen Street houses must present much of the
aspect which Princes Street did early in the century.
But it faces the north, and has its back usually turned
to the sun ; the east wind rakes it along its whole
length, and except where York Place overlaps it there
is no protection against the direct assault of the Borean
blasts of winter. In compensation, its upper windows
provide magnificent prospects of the Firth and of its
bounding hills from Largo Law to the Ochils. The
Ladies' College ; the official headquarters of the Church
of Scotland; the Hall of the Royal College of
Physicians, removed hither from the site now occupied
by the Commercial Bank in George Street ; the
Philosophical Institution, associated with a long and
brilliant list of literary men and events ; the Queen
Street Hall — these are among its buildings.

But the structure that chiefly arrests attention is the
Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It is a monument
of the liberality and public spirit of the late Mr J. R.
Findlay of Aberlour, who built it at a cost of over
£60,000, on a site provided by the Government at the
east end of Queen Street, and presented it to the nation.
The architecture is fourteenth-century Gothic, designed
by Sir Rowand Anderson ; the warm red sandstone of
which it is built gives it a distinctive note of colour of its
own among the prevailing greys and whites of the New
Town houses ; and in niches in its front and eastern gable,
under crocketed Gothic canopies, with heraldic adorn-
ments, there are sculptured figures and groups from
Scottish history. Spacious accommodation is found for
the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, a collection

237

George Street and its Environs

rich in the " material documents " of Scotland's past, from
the Stone Age downward, and including among its
relics of later historic times Knox's Pulpit, Morton's
" Maiden," and Jenny Geddes's Stool. Here also are
the new quarters of the Board of Manufactures recon-
stituted as the National Gallery Board. But the prime
purpose of the donor may be regarded as fulfilled in
the collection of national portraits, handsomely housed
in the rooms upstairs. In no small measure the collec-
tion, with its setting, bodies forth the wish expressed
by Thomas Carlyle in a letter written in 1854 to David
Laing, that by help from among "the wealthier and
wiser classes of Scotchmen," there might be provided in
the capital a Gallery of Portraits containing " what the
best-informed and most ingenuous Scottish soul would
like most to see for illuminating and verifying Scottish
history to himself."

Several of the portraits in this National Collection
are from the brush of Sir Henry Raeburn, the " Scottish
Reynolds." They remind us that the studio where
Raeburn painted — where he is said to have met and
courted his wife in the course of two sittings — was in
the adjoining York Place, No. 32. Law and conviviality
share with painting and the tender sentiment in the
associations of this locality; for Charles Hay, Lord
Newton, the hero of many drinking bouts in the
Crochallan Club and of sharp encounters of wit in the
Courts, had his house in York Place, and John Clerk,
Lord Eldin, was a dweller in its continuation, Picardy
Place. But art has the upper hand. Alexander
Nasmyth, who is regarded as the originator of the
Scottish School of landscape painting, lived in the
same street as Raeburn; George Watson, the first

238

Portraits and Antiquities

President of the Royal Scottish Academy, had his
house in Forth Street ; William Douglas, the miniature
painter, was a resident in the neighbouring Hart Street ;
and David Martin and Alexander Geddes in St James's
Square.

For a time the New Town of Edinburgh halted at
Queen Street. Its Terrace, Lord Cockburn tells us,
was the favourite Mall of the residents, and here they
walked to and fro under the trees and enjoyed "the
open prospect over the Firth and the north-western
mountains." Immediately below were undulating
woods and lawns — Lord Moray's seat, Drumsheugh, to
the west, and Bellevue, the villa of General Scott of
Balcomie, to the east. Bellevue embraced nearly all the
land between York Place and Canonmills, and Bellevue
House became for a time the headquarters of the King's
Customs and Excise, before these were removed to
what has become the Royal Bank in St Andrew Square.
" The mansion-house stood near the eastern side of the
central enclosure of what is now Drummond Place ; a
luxurious house it was. The whole place waved with
wood, and was diversified by undulations of surface, and
adorned by seats and bowers and summer-houses.
Nothing within a town could be more delightful than
the sea of the Bellevue foliage gilded by the evening
sun, or the tumult of blackbirds and thrushes sending
their notes into all the adjoining houses in the blue of
a summer morning."

It was hoped that the city would grow round these
open spaces. But the century had not long begun
when Bellevue was sold and the axe was busy in its
woods. About 1822 came the turn of Drumsheugh.
Again let us quote the author of the " Memorials." " It

239

George Street and its Environs

was an open field of as green turf as Scotland could
boast, with a few respectable trees on the flat, and
thickly wooded on the bank along the Water of Leith.
Moray Place and Ainslie Place stand there now." It
has been told that the trees in Randolph Crescent
preserve the rookery of old Drumsheugh House. The
ground was " the most beautiful in immediate connec-
tion with the town, and led the'eye agreeably over to
our distant northern scenery."

" How glorious," says Cockburn, " the prospect on a
summer evening from Queen Street ! We had got
into the habit of believing that the mere charm of the
ground would keep it sacred, and were inclined to cling
to our conviction even after we saw the foundations
digging. We then thought with despair of our lost
verdure, our banished peacefulness, our gorgeous sunsets.
But how can I forget the glory of that scene ! on the
still nights in which, with Rutherford, and Richardson,
and Jeffrey, I have stood in Queen Street, or the open-
ing at the north-west corner of Charlotte Square, and
listened to the ceaseless rural corncraiks nestling
happily in the dewy grass."

The houses that now cover this enchanted ground
are stately enough ; but " they are turned the wrong
way " — with their backs to the valley of the Water of
Leith — "everything sacrificed to the multiplication of
feu ing feet."

Milestones in the downhill progress of this newer
Edinburgh, ruefully regarded by Cockburn, are its
prominent parish churches, St Mary's and St Stephen's,
built within a few years of each other, while George the
Fourth was King. St Mary's, crowned by a spire and
fronted with a classic portico, stands in Bellevue

240

New Town Prospects and Churches

Crescent, at the foot of Broughton Street. It is one of
the many churches ranged in line along this thorough-
fare. Several of them have either architectural features
of note or some place in ecclesiastical history. Near
neighbour to St Mary's is the massive Norman pile of
the Catholic Apostolic Church, decorated inside with a
fine series of mural paintings by Mrs Traquair. The
church is a memento of the abiding influence of Edward
Irving, who delivered his Apocalyptic messages to
crowded audiences while living in Great King Street —
" in one of those doleful lines of handsome houses,"
writes Mrs Oliphant (speaking, doubtless, from the
biographer's own impressions, gathered while a tenant
in the adjoining Fettes Row), " which weigh down the
cheerful hillside under tons of monotonous stone."
Higher up are the rich Gothic spire of Free St Mary's
and the pinnacles of St Paul's Episcopal Church ; while
joined to the fabric of the New Theatre Royal — the
latest of many — is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St
Mary's. Nor in this list of Broughton denominations
and denominational buildings can mention be omitted
of the Secession House of Prayer, long in the charge of
the learned Rev. Dr John Brown, father of the author
of " Horae Subsecivae."

The lofty, square, white tower of St Stephen's
Church commands, even from its inferior level, the
downward sweep of the broad thoroughfare of Frederick
Street and Howe Street, descending towards Stock-
bridge and the Water of Leith. It was designed by
Playfair, whose handiwork is writ large over the New
Town. Thomas Stevenson, of the engineering " dynasty
of the Northern Lights," and father of " R. L. S.," was a
devout and regular attender of St Stephen's. His

241 Q

George Street and its Environs

house, just round the corner of Howe Street, in 17
Heriot Row, held most of the early home memories of
his son. " * Leerie' will always light his lamps in Heriot
Row ; many of the fancies of * a Child's Garden of
Verses ' first grew in Queen Street Gardens."

Behind the Church, where a maze of workshops have
displaced the ancient village of Silvermills, were born
the brother painters, the two Lauders ; in Howe Street,
and also in Great King Street, where De Quincey for a
time occupied furnished lodgings, and where Sir William
Allan, the painter, had his house, lived Sir William
Hamilton, of metaphysical prowess ; John Gibson
Lockhart, son-in-law of Scott, before he went to London
to edit the Quarterly, dwelt in Northumberland Street,
which was also the place of residence of Mr Hogarth,
the father-in-law of Dickens.

Thus could we move northward and westward from
street to street and from terrace to terrace of this
" cheerful hillside," and in each find some door familiar
to the feet of the great ones of the period when
Edinburgh was beyond all challenge " a city of Goshen,"
the second in the Empire for literature, learning,
and science — some window behind which genius fared
sumptuously, or starved. Beyond Royal Circus, for
instance, in Gloucester Place, Professor Wilson spent
some of his palmiest days, a very nabob of letters ; in
a poverty-stricken old tenement in Church Lane, some
yards below, was born David Roberts, the painter. In
the spacious Moray Place dwelt Dugald Stewart and
Francis Jeffrey, when growing age had brought growth
of prosperity. Dean Ramsay had his home for a time
in Ainslie Place ; and Aytoun's house, in his latter
years, was in Great Stuart Street. Bright and cherished

242

"R. L. S." and Others

names these ; and not less memorable were the meet-
ings at which the choicest of Edinburgh literary society
assembled to welcome some renowned pilgrim from the
south — Thackeray, it might be, or George Eliot — at
Robert Chambers's house in Doune Terrace, at William
Blackwood's in Moray Place, or at John Blackwood's in
Randolph Crescent.

243

CHAPTER XX

THE WEST END

BY common consent, Queensferry Street and Road are
regarded as the line separating the New Town, in the
more restricted sense, from Edinburgh's " West End."
It makes no sharp division of social spheres or of
architectural styles. For to the west, as to the east
of the line, are crescents and terraces where a great
part of the wealth and fashion of the city — senators of
the Court and dignitaries of the Church and the
University, eminent lawyers and doctors, and successful
merchants — have taken up abode; and the buildings,
if belonging to a later period, are not free from the
reproach brought against the monumental structures
of Gillespie Graham in Moray Place and its neighbour-
hood, of being monotonously regular and " magnificently
dull."

The Queensferry Road carries us back, in its origin,
to the archaic age of Edinburgh history. By a track
leading in this direction, from the narrows of the Forth
to the Castle Rock, Queen Margaret must often have
travelled between Dunfermline and the future capital.
By this way her body was secretly smuggled off by
night from the power of the usurper ; and long before
Jonathan Oldbuck and Sir Arthur Wardour drove out

244

The Ferry Road

to the Hawes Inn by the fly, or David Balfour tramped
into town by a devious route from that historic hostelry
— parting with Alan Breck Stewart at " Rest-and-be-
thankful" — pilgrims to St Margaret's shrine travelled
painfully the road to the Ferry and rested at the Pilgrim's
Cross, when they came in view of the spire of Dunferm-
line Abbey, at the spot where the modern tourist,
bowling smoothly along on motor-bus, char-a-banc, or
" bike," catches his first glimpse of the Forth Bridge.

It is a road that crops up frequently in history, from
the day that Alexander III. spurred along it, on his
way to his death, and to the ruin of the kingdom, at
Kinghorn. When it comes fairly into our view it is seen
to leave the end of the Lang Gait at the Kirkbraehead.
Skirting a line of low cottages that ran along the site
of Queensferry Street, it dipped steeply to the bed of
the Water of Leith at the village of Lower Dean,
where the Incorporated Baxters of the burgh had their
mills, the gaunt shells of which, bearing quaintly carved
insignia and mottoes of the craft, and dates going back
to the beginning of the seventeenth century, stand to
this day beside the rushing stream.

The late Miss Alison Dunlop, among the pleasant
memories of the olden time preserved in her little book,
" Anent Old Edinburgh," draws for us a picture of the
deacons and members of the Baxters' Incorporation
marching on their " gaudd day," in the spring weather
of 1716, to the village mills by the Ferry Road, and
marching back again by the same route, after feeing
the millers and feasting on " beef and veall, and broth
and breid," followed by " pypes and tobacko," in William
Gordon's change-house. With the help of the records
of the craft and a little fancy, we see those "douce,

245

The West End

staid, vigorous, old or elderly " baxters, as, " with their
three-cornered hats just a thought awry, and their
Sunday kirk wigs just a trifle ajee, they climb up the
steep Bell's Brae, now spanned by the Dean Bridge."
They turn in the clear evening light, " not to view
the far Forth, with its softened shores and sleeping
islands, but each and all pause and look down for a
parting glance on their property and prosperity, their
great granary still bearing its legend, 'God bless the
Baxters o' Edinburgh, wha Built this house'; then
turning their faces citywards, past Meldrumsheugh,
past the West Kirk, past the now darkening Castle
Rock — to quote the owerword of one of their own old
songs — ' they gang toddlin' hame.' "

At a later date the plunge down Bell's Brae was
avoided by carrying what is now known as the Old
Queensferry Road round by Sunbury and the Belford
Bridge, higher up the water ; and finally, in 1832,
Telford's fine work, the Dean Bridge, spanned the
chasm at a height of 106 feet above the rocky bed of
the stream. It was built to give direct access to the
lands of Dean, till then cut off by the gorge of the
Water of Leith from the growing New Town and West
End. By its help Edinburgh got sure footing on the
left bank of the Water, whence it has spread and is
spreading far to the north and west, while across it,
in the tourist season, pours a tide of holiday traffic
which the modest width of the structure can barely
accommodate. From Randolph Cliff, at its southern
end, or from where Trinity Episcopal Church abuts on
the northmost pier, " many thousands of foot passengers
have leaned over the parapet and gazed down into the
hollow, divided in mind as to whether the palm for

246

The Dean Bridge

picturesque effect should be assigned to the up-stream
view, into murky depths out of which rise the grey
gables and red roofs of the Lower Dean, or Water of
Leith village, fronted by its sheet of falling water and
backed by masses of foliage and buildings, broken by
many spires and pinnacles, and ending in the wooded
crest of Corstorphine Hill ; or to the prospect seaward,
through the green and winding jaws of the gorge and
across Leith and its smoke to the Firth, Jnchkeith, and
Largo Law."

The valley below we shall examine by and by with
somewhat greater care. Meanwhile, we but peep down
into its depths in passing, like the travellers seated
behind the red-coated drivers of the Forth Bridge
'buses. Like these, also, we can spare only a glance
at the spreading suburbs and the fair country beyond,
bounding the Ferry Road at Buckingham, Clarendon,
and Learmonth Terraces, which form so handsome a
western approach to the city; at the site of the lost
village of Upper Dean — once the refuge of Catriona —
beside which the new parish church of Dean has been
erected ; at Daniel Stewart's College, one of the Merchant
Company's Schools, housed in a building which finely
combines the Tudor and Scottish castellated styles ; and
across the hollow opposite, at Fettes College, a richly-
endowed institution on the model of the English Public
Schools, surrounded by spacious grounds and with the
houses of the Masters grouped round the tall spire and
terraced front of the central structure.

Still further afield, and beyond the Victoria Hospital
for Consumptives and the St Cuthbert's Poorhouse, are
the yawning jaws of Craigleith quarry, now flooded and

abandoned, out of which the New Town may be said to

247

The West End

have been built. Beyond come the village of Blackball ;
and the house of Ravelston, the old home of the Foulises
and Keiths, whose old-fashioned garden, filled with
carved relics of the demolished seventeenth-century
mansion, Sir Walter Scott, a familiar guest in the time
of his grand-aunt, Mrs Keith, made the model of that of
Tullyveolan in " Waverley." Under the wooded brow of
Corstorphine Hill is ivy-clad Craigcrook Castle where,
in Jeffrey's time, Dickens and hosts of other brilliant
visitors found hospitable entertainment. And so, in
succession, one passes, or glimpses, Lauriston Castle,
once the family possession of John Law, of Bank of
England and Mississippi Bubble fame ; Barnton, with
its early associations with the Bartons, the great sea
captains, and its later associations with golf; Cammo,
where Alexander III. is said to have halted on his fatal
ride Fifeward, also devoted in these latter days to the
chase of the flying rubber-ball ; Cramond Brig, sacred
to the exploits of Jock Howieson and the " gudeman of
Ballengeich," where the Almond Water is crossed into
West Lothian, until finally, having skirted Lord
Rosebery's demesne of Dalmeny, one reaches the
Hawes Brae, the Ferry, and the Forth Bridge.

From this westward excursus, let us return to the
Kirkbraehead, or, heeding new rather than old and
obliterated landmarks, to the west end of Princes
Street. That thoroughfare is continued, with a slight
deflection from the straight line, along the route
followed by the high road to Glasgow, by streets, some
of which had already come into existence while George
the Third was on the throne. Here again we are in
the footprints of Sir Walter. No 6 Shandwick Place
was his last fixed residence in Edinburgh. In Maitland

248

Sir Walter again

Street opposite — both sides of the way have been
renamed West Princes Street — his son-in-law Lockhart
wrote " Peter's Letters." In lodgings in the adjoining
Walker Street the worn old soldier of literature
laboured like a galley-slave at his " Napoleon," the
toughest piece of work to which he ever set his hand.
In Atholl Crescent — No. 6, the house of his publisher
Cadell — he stayed and made his will before setting out
on his last sad journey to Italy.

There is no lack of other literary and historic
memories in the locality. In No. 23 Rutland Street, for
the thirty years preceding his death, lived the " good
physician," Dr John Brown; here he entertained
Thackeray, and wrote the story of the immortal
" Rab." Melville Street, which possesses a statue of
the second Lord Melville, and preserves at its door-
ways some of the "link extinguishers" of the days
before gas, was a residence of Dr Andrew Thomson,
the famous Edinburgh preacher and divine ; of Fraser
Tytler, the historian ; and of Sir David Brewster. In
Manor Place Sir William Hamilton set up house on
his marriage; here, too, lived Mrs Grant of Laggan,
the poetess ; and in Torphichen Street, near by, Mrs
Ferrier, daughter of Professor Wilson and widow of
Professor Ferrier, brought together social and philoso-
phical coteries. Of streets of more modern date, Douglas
Crescent can claim association with the last years of
that " buoyant veteran of song and classical lore," John
Stuart Blackie, and Chester Street with the genial
Alexander Russel, prince of journalists.

The campanile of Free St George's Church in
Shandwick Place is an excellent addition to the
architectural features of this quarter of the city,

249

The West End

although it rises from an incongruous base. But St
Mary's Cathedral, "the most important ecclesiastical
building raised in Scotland since the Reformation,"
is not likely to be disturbed from its place as the crown
of the works of the West End.

The Cathedral is built on the lands of Coates, on
ground and mainly from funds bequeathed by the late
Misses Walker to the Episcopal Church of Scotland
for the purpose. The architect was the late Sir Gilbert
Scott, and it has been considered one of the finest
of his works in church building. The style is Early
Pointed, wrought out with great knowledge and
elaboration in all the details of the building. It is
278 feet in length from the great western door in
Palmerston Place to the fine triple lancet window at
the east end commanding the perspective of Melville
Street ; and above the crossing of the transepts rises
the central tower and spire to a height of 275 feet.
Since the opening of the Cathedral in 1879 the chapter-
house has been erected, through a bequest of the late
Mr Hugh Rollo, the agent of the Walker Trust. The
spires surmounting the two western towers have yet
to be added to complete the edifice, the cost of which
will thus be raised to over £1 30,000.

Near by, in the beautiful " Cathedral close " of turf
and trees, and in strange conjunction with the Gothic
church, the Song School, and spruce modern mansions
surrounding the enclosure, is the manor-house of Easter
Coates, left externally, as to its older part, in much the
same condition as when it was erected in the early
years of the seventeenth century by that " truly good
and excellent citizen," Sir John Byres of Coates, whose
initials and those of his wife Margaret Barclay, with the

250

St Mary's Cathedral

date 1615, are inscribed on one of the dormer windows.
Lintels and other stones bearing figures, legends, and
lettering, of still older date, are to be found built into
the venerable mansion, and are believed to have been
removed thither from the town residence of the family
in Byres Close, High Street, and from the "French
Ambassador's House," in the Cowgate. The heavily
corbelled corner turrets, the crow-stepped gables, and
tall dormers, with thistles and fleur-de-lys finials, of
this typical Scottish country-house of three hundred
years ago make it an object well worth the careful
preservation it has obtained under the wing of the
Cathedral, to which it renders lowly and grateful
service by accommodating the driving machinery of
the organ.

The Haymarket was long the Ultima Thuleof Edin-
burgh's West End. Guide-books of the later 'forties
inform us that " the open country " was then reached
at "the Hay Weights." Streets and houses now
extend for a mile or two beyond it, both by the Dairy
Road and by the Corstorphine Road, which meet here
at the point where the North British main line from
Glasgow plunges into the tunnel to emerge in Princes
Street Gardens. Dairy has, within a generation, been
turned into a populous workmen's quarter, built upon
lands which belonged of old to the passionate and ill-
fated race of the Chiesleys of Dairy. Their mansion,
containing a seventeenth-century moulded ceiling, is still
to be seen in Orwell Place, and is occupied as an
Episcopal Ladies' Training College. Tramway lines
extend through and beyond Dairy to Gorgie, and the
ground is set thick with tall tenements, churches, and
cemeteries, and with distilleries and other public works.

251

The West End

The other highway, which, if it were pursued, would
lead one past the "royal dwelling" of Linlithgow to
Glasgow, preserves more of a suburban air. A few
hundred yards west of the Haymarket the eye is
arrested by Donaldson's Hospital, a building that has
more the aspect of a palace than of a charitable
institution for the housing and education of deaf and
dumb and other poor children. The Hospital, designed
by Playfair, stands on a terrace, well withdrawn from
the street, in the midst of its own spacious grounds,
which on the other side descend to the Water of Leith.
It forms a great quadrangular mass, 270 feet on the
side, regularly and ornately Elizabethan in style, with
battlemented embrasures rising above the many
mullioned windows, and surmounted at the corners
and over the principal entrance by towers with
groups of ogee-roofed pinnacles. Its founder, James
Donaldson, who bequeathed a sum of £2 10,000 for
its erection and maintenance, was a bookseller at the
West Bow, and one of the pioneers of cheap literature.

Farther out, past the Murrayfield Station, on the
Caledonian branch line to Leith, is Coltbridge and the
crossing of the water already mentioned in connection
with that ignoble incident in the annals of the King's
Dragoons and of the '45, known as the "canter of
Coltbrig." The lands of Murrayfield, beyond the
stream, are being rapidly feued ; the mansion-house
is associated with the memory of the learned and
accomplished Alexander Murray, Lord Henderland,
the friend of Scott.

The wooded southern sides of Corstorphine Hill
are sprinkled with villas and country residences, one of
which, Beechwood, the home of the Dundases of

252

Murrayfield and Corstorphine

Dunira, is of age sufficient to have attracted the
admiring notice of Cumberland as he marched past by
this route on his way to Culloden. Below the firs of
" Rest-and-be-thankful," by which goes a footpath over
the hill, affording marvellously beautiful prospects of
city and country, is spread the Murrayfield golf course.
On the left-hand side of the high road are the level
or hollow fields once filled by the lochs and marshes
that at one time stretched for many miles westward to
Gogar and beyond, and formed an important defence
of Edinburgh on this side. Through the trees to the
south, the glimmer of the white walls of the castellated
old mansion of Saughton may be seen, and in the
distance the range of Pentland makes a fine background.
Three miles from the Haymarket, the explorer is
deposited, by train or motor-bus, at the growing
and well-sheltered village of Corstorphine. Its church,
an early fifteenth-century building, dedicated to St
John the Baptist, is one of the sights of the neigh-
bourhood. A lantern lighted above the porch guided
the passenger who adventured after nightfall to make
the passage of the bogs to southward. Within,
under Gothic canopies, recline stone effigies of the
Lords Forrester, aforetime lords of the manor, who
endowed this collegiate charge. The traces of their
castle have wholly disappeared from the Doocot Park,
and the wraith of the wicked Lord Forrester has ceased
to haunt the shadow of the great plane tree where he was
slain by the woman whom he betrayed. But Corstor-
phine, although no longer famed for its cream and for
the mineral spring that made it " a fashionable watering-
place" a hundred years ago, is still much frequented,
and is worthy of a visit by such as are in quest either of
antiquities or of country air and scenery.

253

CHAPTER XXI

THE WATER OF LEITH

" I SUPPOSE you will tell me next," said Master George
Heriot to the faithful but pragmatical servant of Nigel
Oliphant, " you have at Edinburgh as fine a navigable
river as the Thames, with all its shipping!" "The
Thames!" retorted Richie Moniplies with ineffable
contempt. " God bless your honour's judgment, we
have at Edinburgh the Water of Leith and the Nor'
Loch." Although the Water of Leith scarcely bears
out the boasts of the future laird of Castle Collop —
although it was not until the eighteenth century was
well advanced that the city began to spread out its
skirts to the banks of the stream — the little river that
hurries down from the northern slopes of the Pentlands
to the port and piers of Leith has exercised too
important an influence on the history of Edinburgh, and
is too interesting a feature in its topography, to be
passed over lightly.

Twice, at least, we have crossed it in suburban
excursions to the west and north. But it is worth while
to glance rapidly down its valley from the source to the
sea ; for, whether the water brawls over its sandstone or
whinstone ledges between high banks, or meanders
lazily through fat meadows, it is, and has long been, in

254

From Source to Sea

close touch with the life and fortunes of the city. In
former times the stream and gorge formed an important
strategic defence of Edinburgh from enemies approach-
ing from the west. In our happier days, when the
Water, purified from pollutions and restocked with fish,
has returned to its old golden amber colour, its valley
has become one of the " beauty spots " of the capital.
The Pentland Hills, from which it draws its life-blood,
are brought so near at hand by the branch railway that
follows all the windings of the water to Balerno, that
they may be counted as one of the playgrounds of
this most favoured town, and the breeziest and most
romantic of them all. The last stage of its journey
brings us to Leith — "to the place," as is written in
"The Valley of the Water of Leith," "where French
influences and manners stepped ashore on Scottish
ground ; the scene of so many struggles with our ' auld
enemies ' and ' auld allies ' ; whose pier has witnessed a
long procession of kings and queens, warriors and
churchmen, embarking or landing to make history ; the
busy modern port, which is still one of the chief links
between Edinburgh and the great world without."

From time immemorial, the grain that fed the city
has been ground by the Waterside ; " its tail-races
foamed, and the dusty sacks travelled by the Lanark
Road before Magna Charta." As far as history or
tradition carries us back, there has always been in the
valley the hum of the wheel mingling with the sound of
the water ; every summer, in the words of R. L. Steven-
son, that true lover of this much-abused, much-bepraised
stream, it has " brimmed like a cup with sunshine and
the song of birds." There are still large grain-milling
establishments on or near its banks ; but the water and

255

The Water of Leith

the water-power are in these modern times employed
chiefly in the service of paper-making for Edinburgh's
great printing and publishing industries, rather than in
the grinding of oat and barley meal, or of snuff.

In the recesses of the Pentlands, where the Water
of Leith has its taproots, one is far out of the ken of
the town with its smoke and cares ; on heathery
hillsides or in mossy places, in which the hunted
Covenanters once lurked while " men of Belial " were
out in quest of them, and that sheltered the fanatic
John Gibb and the " Sweet Singers of Bo'ness," what
time they waited, in the fogs and swamps of the hills, to
see Heaven's judgment descend on " the sinful, bloody
city of Edinburgh." The Border raiders, also, were
familiar with the passes into the valley, especially that
by the Cauldstane-slap, between the East and West
Cairn Hills, guarded by the now ruinous Cairns Castle.
The Water Trust of the city has impounded the surplus
water of the Pentlands for town supply or compensation
purposes ; and at Harperrig, Thriepmuir, and elsewhere,
the hills are reflected in the spacious ponds formed at
their feet, and coot and water-hen make their haunt on
ground over which, if we may believe legend, partly
supported by historical fact, Robert the Bruce was used
to chase the buck from the royal hunting-lodge of
Bavelaw, and Queen Mary to go ahawking from Lennox
Tower.

This crumbling old keep by the waterside has tradi-
tional association also with George Heriot, and with the
Great Montrose; and a little below it is the Brig of
Currie, across which Dalyell rode with his troopers to
intercept and scatter at Rullion Green the draggled and
weary " Westland Whigs," who had halted for the night

256

The Pentlands

at Colinton. Half-way between Currie and Colinton is
Juniper Green, which was already a favourite summer
resort in Carlyle's time ; and in quaint Baberton House,
close by, Charles X. found quiet harbourage when
revolutionary storms drove him across the Channel.
Golf is usurping the place of literary and historical
memories at Baberton ; " the club-laden caddie may be
seen faring afield by paths in which the author of
* Sartor Resartus ' held Francis Jeffrey in discourse ;
and divots are turned and balls lost where the French
King once promenaded in exile, and fed his thrushes
and sparrows." Golf has also perched on the crown of
Torphin Hill.

More famous as a retreat of lettered ease two or
three generations ago was Colinton, which has been
written of as the " Tusculum " of the neighbouring
capital, where champions of the forum, the senate, and
the academy came to wear their laurels or recruit for
fresh conflict. Mackenzie, the " Man of Feeling," and
Alison, the once admired but now neglected author of
the " Essay on Taste," were among its literary law-
givers. Cockburn's rural paradise, " bonnie Bonally," is
scarce a mile away, in a " lirk," or fold of the Pentlands.
But chiefly is Colinton made a place of pilgrimage as
being the " Kirkton " of Stevenson's " Lowden Sabbath
Morn " — the end of the " Kirkward mile " from Swanston.

And aye an' while we nearer draw
To whaur the Kirkton lies alaw,
Mair neebours, comin' saft and slaw

Frae here and there,
The thicker thrang the gait an' ca'

The stour in air.

The old brig and the kirk, the kirkyard and manse,
257 R

The Water of Leith

are in the jaws of Colinton dell, overhung by the cliffs
of Colinton House and Hailes ; and in the manse for
many a year lived the Rev. Lewis Balfour, one of the
best beloved and remembered of a line of distinguished
parish ministers, and the maternal grandfather and
namefather of " R. L. S.," who spent the holidays of his
childhood in this secluded and rather ghostly spot,
where "every sight and sound — the shadowing ever-
greens, the grey tombstones, the muffled roar of the
water beneath, even the silence brooding in the church-
yard above — conspire to feed a romantic imagination."

In the shadow of its ancient holly hedges is a frag-
ment of Colinton Castle, the seat of the Fowlises of
Colinton. It was besieged and taken by Cromwell, as
was its neighbour, Redhall. Lower down the Water,
Craiglockhart House, opposite Slateford, was the
residence of three generations of the eminent dynasty
of the Munroes, founders of the Edinburgh school of
anatomy ; while a little farther back from the stream is
Redford, which has been acquired and is being laid out
by the War Office as Cavalry Barracks. Slateford
village itself, a squalid place enough, bestridden by the
Union Canal aqueduct and the viaduct of the Cale-
donian Railway, remembers that Prince Charlie slept
for a night in a cottage still standing at Gray's Mill,
and that the magistrates of Edinburgh came to its brig-
end to deliver up the city keys to the Young Chevalier.
Close to its Station are the extensive new Abattoirs
and Cattle Markets belonging to the Corporation.

Here the Water of Leith draws away from the
neighbourhood of the hills and wanders for a space in
flat and open country on the city margin. It is joined
by the Murray burn, which has flowed under Dalmahoy

258

Colinton Dell

Crags, past Dalmahoy House, a seat of the Earl of
Morton ; past Hatton House, also, the fine old Scoto-
French chateau, superinduced on a more ancient tower,
where Bothwell halted on his ride to capture Mary
Stewart, and where Jeffrey wrote his Edinburgh Review
articles ; past Warriston, Riccarton, and Hermiston, all
of them names steeped in history or romance. On the
banks of the Water itself, near where the Glasgow high
road crosses at Gorgie, are the dilapidated old seven-
teenth-century mansion of Stenhousemills — which, like
the neighbouring and contemporary Gorgie House,
claims, on the slender ground of possessing a ceiling of
his date, to have a chamber slept in by Charles II. —
and the ivied walls and green meadows of Saughton
Hall. This building and the adjoining grounds have
been purchased by the City and incorporated in a
new Public Park, which includes a golf course, and
extends along the banks of the stream as far as
Coltbridge. Near Coltbridge, screened by riverside
willows, is a smaller and yet older manor-house, Rose-
burn, bearing curious sixteenth-century mural carvings
and inscriptions, and possessing traditions of the Queen
of Scots and of Protector Oliver, and more authentic
records proving that it was built by Mungo Russell,
City Treasurer, in 1583.

Below Coltbridge the stream again enters a deeply
cut valley which becomes a rocky gorge. It hurries
past the Doocot Park, rests for a little in the still,
willow-shaded reach of the " Cauldron," and encloses the
green island of the " Haugh," on which, it is said, the
local sympathisers with the Pentland Rising secretly
assembled and set up their standard by a thorn tree.
Occupying the adjoining bank are the grounds of John

259

The Water of Leith

Watson's Hospital, an educational charity housed in a
substantial building whose plain classic features are
screened by its trees ; more prominent are the white
towers of its neighbour, the Orphan Hospital — successor
to the institution that stood under the first North Bridge
— which bears over its portico the Clock of the old
Netherbow Port.

Bell's Mills and Sunbury, the new Bridge carrying
the Old Queensferry Road across the stream, and the
Dean Cemetery are the next landmarks by the waterside.
The Cemetery, the New Town's " Pere la Chaise," has
taken up the beautiful and commanding site once held
by Dean House and its grounds, the seat of the Nisbets,
" Hereditary Poulterers to the King." Of their ancient
castellated mansion all that remains are a few heraldic
carvings and fragments of grotesque sculpture built
into the terraced wall of the cemetery overlooking the
stream. Their history, like that of the Easter Coates
group, and of other sculptured stones in the neighbour-
hood of Edinburgh, is traced in articles contributed to
the first volumes of the Book of the Old Edinburgh Club.
In the Dean sleep a host of famous men of letters, of
law, of art, and of science — John Wilson and his son-in-
law, Aytoun ; Jeffrey and Cockburn ; Alexander Russel,
and John Stuart Blackie; Paul Chalmers and Sam
Bough ; Edward Forbes, the naturalist (the last tenant
of Dean House) ; Goodsir, the anatomist ; Nasmyth, the
inventor of the steam hammer ; and General Sir Hector
Macdonald, of Soudan fame. A goodly company in
death !

Of the hamlet of Upper Dean the last traces have
been removed. Its site is in part occupied by an exten-
sion of the Cemetery. But the lower village, known as

260

[To face page 260.

The Dean Cemetery

Water of Leith, holds its place sturdily in the deep
hollow spanned by the Dean Bridge. Above the cauld
and pool into which the radical weavers and gristers of
the Dean flung their pikes and Lochaber axes when
authority had got wind of the plottings of the " Friends
of the People," there have arisen a new Board School
and the picturesque group of the Wellcourt buildings, a
successful experiment by the late Mr J. R. Findlay of
Aberlour, showing how greatly the houses and surround-
ings of the poorer working classes can be improved
without breaking with the spirit of the past and of the
scene.

Of the Water of Leith dwellings as a whole, however,
it can still be said that " they look as if they had been
carted to the edge of the valley bank on either hand
and emptied pell-mell into the hollow below," with the
result that " every house acquired a quaint individuality
of its own ; had its own level ; its own angle to alley,
terrace, or mill-lade ; its own style of outside stair and
doorway." Over their neighbours continue to tower, as
they have done for well-nigh three centuries, the tall
gaunt walls, many-storeyed and many-windowed, and
encrusted with the insignia of the milling and baking
craft, of the mills and granaries of the ancient Baxters'
Incorporation, for the most part turned in these days to
purposes quite other than those for which they were
originally designed.

A pleasant footpath follows the right-hand edge of
the stream, under the arches of the Dean Bridge, and
past St Bernard's Well. The mill-lade with its foul
froth has been removed, and the little river again dimples
in clear brown pools, and churns whitely over its ledges
under the green slopes and screening foliage of the Moray

The Water of Leith

Place, Belgrave Crescent, and Ann Street Gardens. The
spot, with its talking water and whispering trees, will
" infinitely please " the visitor, as it did David Balfour,
as he " took his way down the glen of the Leith river
towards Stockbridge and Silvermills," to hold tryst with
Alan Breck Stewart in " the scrog of wood besouth the
mill-lade."

St Bernard's mineral spring, discovered about 1760,
was at one time held in such high repute for its
medicinal virtues, that the " nobility and gentry " took
summer quarters in the valley to drink deep draughts
of it and of the country air. Francis Garden, Lord
Gardenstone, a judge of Session celebrated for his
prodigious powers of snuff-taking and drinking, as well
as for his learning and benevolence, raised the
beautiful little Doric temple over the Well in 1789. In
1884 it was purchased and presented to his fellow-
townsmen by the late Mr William Nelson, after it had
been restored and redecorated by Mr Thomas Bonnar,
a new statue of Hygeia, by D. W. Stevenson, placed
under a canopy, and a charming pleasance formed
around it. Under these new and attractive conditions
St Bernard's Well has recovered something of its lost
vogue.

Dean Terrace and Ann Street, which overlook the
valley and Well, have associations with Christopher
North and De Quincey, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir
James Young Simpson. The Scottish Reynolds was a
" Stockbrig bairn," his father having been a poor yarn-
boiler by the waterside, and he retained a kindly
attachment to his place of birth. Afterwards, when he
rose to fame, he became owner through his wife, of the
lands of Deanhaugh, and traces of the footbridge by

263

St Bernard's Well

which he crossed the water from his house of St
Bernard's to his studio in York Place may still be seen
on the river bank opposite Dean Terrace. On the site
of the present Danube Street was the house of an
eccentric Writer to the Signet and antiquarian, Mr
Walter Ross, who built beside it a tower, known as
" Ross's Folly." In dread lest he should be interred
alive, he left directions that his body should be preserved
in the tower, and there accordingly it lay for many
years until it was buried in the West churchyard. Into
his " Folly " Mr Ross built all the carved stones of Old
Edinburgh on which he could lay hands ; and some of
these, on its demolition, were removed to Abbotsford.
He also set up in his grounds, on the spot where Ann
Street overlooks the valley, a rough-hewn block,
intended by the city authorities of the day to be
chiselled into a statue of Cromwell, but which, after the
Protector's death, lay for a full century on Leith
Sands.

Stockbridge has many other notable memories.
James Hogg wrote " The Queen's Wake " in lodgings
in Deanhaugh Street ; David Roberts was a native ;
Sir John Watson Gordon, Horatio M'Culloch, and
David Scott were residents ; Carlyle and his wife set
up house at Comely Bank, where Teufelsdrockh could
smoke his pipe in the front garden, " far from all the
uproars and putrescences, material and spiritual, of the
reeky town," seeing only " over the knowe the reflection
of its gaslights against the dusky sky." The town has
now swept down and seized upon Comely Bank ; houses
partly enclose the ancient " Bowbutts," now the
Academy cricket park in Raeburn Place. But the
locality continues to preserve an air and character of

263

The Water of Leith

its own, inherited from the time when " Stockbrig " was
a rural village, with a wooden footbridge and ford across
the Water ; and its inhabitants still continue to cherish
a special affection for it. To this crossing of the stream
formerly descended both the Kirk Loan and Gabriel's
Road. The latter has still a local habitation and a
name, and may be discovered by those who explore
Henderson Row, where behind their screen of trees
will be found the Deaf and Dumb Institution and the
Grecian front of that Edinburgh Academy of which
Cockburn, Leonard Horner, and Scott were among the
early patrons, and that has reared so many eminent
scholars and brave soldiers. In close proximity to the
water have risen two handsome structures in which the
working classes of the district have a special interest —
Public Baths and a Workmen's Institute, the latter
built, like similar institutions in other parts of the
town, from funds left by the late Mr Thomas Nelson.
Among other amenities of Stockbridge is the new
Northside Park, formerly Inverleith farm.

Immediately adjacent to this is a yet more attractive
pleasure ground, the Arboretum, now joined with the
Botanic Gardens. They form a shady and delightful
place of resort for citizens and visitors, especially on
fine Sundays in summer when the trees aise in leaf, and
the shrubs and plants that adorn the walks, the Rock
Garden, and the greenhouses are in blossom ; while
from the swelling hill on which Inverleith House is
built there is a magnificent view of Edinburgh from the
north. The house, now the official residence of the
Professor of Botany, is a later edifice, and stands
farther back from the margin of the Water than the
mansion of Inverleith, in which resided the proud

364

The Botanic Gardens

merchant families of the Touris and the Rochheids;
but a relic of their time and of its artistic achievements
may be seen in the grotesque stone animals — lions or
leopards — that guard the entrance gateway from
Stockbridge.

On the other side, the Botanic Gardens open into
Inverleith Row, leading from Canonmills past Golden
Acre to Trinity and Granton. Canonmills, we have
already seen, was a village of ancient date, attached to
the Barony of Broughton. The canons of Holyrood had
their mills planted there in the twelfth century. Its
Loch was a " fair-sized sheet of water," where angling
and fowling were to be had before the town broke in
upon the ground and drained it to form a site for work-
shops and a gymnasium, latterly a football ground. Mill-
ing, which had gone on for nearly eight hundred years at
Canonmills, has ceased, and the granaries are tumbling
down. The place is of note in the ecclesiastical annals of
Scotland ; for in the Tanfield Hall, now a bonded ware-
house, adjoining the city gas stores, the Free Church of
Scotland was instituted in 1843, and two or three years
later the Secession and Relief Churches came together
here to form the United Presbyterian Church. It is
still remembered, also, that by this route from Granton,
Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort made their first
entry into Edinburgh, in the year before the " Disrup-
tion " ; all was ready for the reception and welcome of
the royal guests under an archway at Canonmills — all
except the Lord Provost and Bailies, who had somehow
mistaken the hour !

The neighbourhood, like others along the Water of
Leith, is closely associated with R. L. Stevenson. He
was born at No. 8 Howard Place ; he went to his first

265

The Water of Leith

school in Inverleith Row ; he was drilled in the Latin
grammar at the Academy. The house of Warriston,
whose trees overshadow his birthplace, was the scene
of a memorable seventeenth-century murder, of which
" Weir of Warriston " was the victim, and the wronged
wife an actor in the crime; the name has an air
of tragedy, and may have suggested " Weir of
Hermiston." " Death's dark vale " was, to Stevenson's
childish fancy, " a certain archway in the Warriston
Cemetery — a forbidden, but beloved spot." In this
beautiful and still secluded place, by the borders of the
Water, rest many of the illustrious dead of the city,
among them Sir James Young Simpson, and Alexander
Smith, the poet and essayist.

Farther down the stream, beyond Powderhall and
its race-track and the Destructor — erected by the
Corporation for the disposal of the city refuse — is
Bonnington. James the Fourth and his Court rode
across its bridge in 1504, to be present at the launching
of the " Great Michael," in the New Haven, which the
king designed to be a great shipping and shipbuilding
port that would cast Leith into the shade. Hertford's
invading army crossed at Bonnington after their galleys
had " laid their snouts to the craigs " at Granton, and
the host which Cardinal Beaton had hastily assembled
to oppose them had been scattered like chaff.

Bonnington was the cradle of woollen manufactures
in Scotland; but of perhaps greater interest to the
average visitor is the fine old mansion of Pilrig, which
by the shield above a doorway and the date on a dormer
window proclaims that it was built in 1638, by Gilbert
Kirkwood and his spouse Margaret Foulis. Early in
the eighteenth century it became the property of the

266

Bonnington and Pilrig

Leith merchant family of Balfour, with descendants of
whom it still remains ; and it may be remembered how,
on a certain occasion, David Balfour of Shaws paid it a
visit, and had an interview with his far-away cousin, the
Laird of Pilrig.

But at Pilrig and Bonnington we are already on or
within the frontier of the separate burgh of Leith.

267

CHAPTER XXII

LEITH, PORT AND BURGH

THE Burgh of Leith lies outside the municipal bounds
of Edinburgh, and the seaport town, which, with good
historical cause, lays claim to being the "key of the
capital and of the Kingdom," has successfully resisted
attempts to amalgamate it with its bigger and more
illustrious neighbour. But the story and the fortunes
of the two places are so interwoven, they have grown
so closely together, socially and topographically, that
Leith and its 80,000 inhabitants may be considered
part and parcel of the Greater Edinburgh.

Leith Walk has for generations been the main
passage from the City on the hills to the Port on
the shore. It is on the line of the earthen rampart
behind which David Leslie baffled all the attempts
of Cromwell to seize Edinburgh from this side; and
along it Charles II., crowned King of Scots at Scone,
rode from his lodgings in the Kirkgate into the capital.
Down to the middle of the eighteenth century the
Walk was a gravel path only twenty feet wide, and
traffic followed more the older thoroughfare by Easter
Road. But the opening of North Bridge, which had as
one of its objects the improvement of the access to the
port of Leith, made great changes.

368

Leith Walk

Between nursery gardens and open spaces — nearly
all of them now built upon — there stretched, for more
than a mile, one of the widest and airiest of thorough-
fares. The shadow of the gallows was removed from
the spot which had known for centuries the execution
of criminals and the burning of witches, near the site
of Leith Walk Station and not far from the modern
common boundary of Edinburgh and Leith. The
former rampart of defence became the favourite " walk "
of citizens, old and young, on their way to enjoy the
fresh salt breezes on Leith pier and to put an edge on
appetites that could afterwards be blunted by feasting
on the succulent " Pandore oysters," for which the Old
Ship Inn and other taverns on the Shore were famed.

At the foot of the Walk we come to the historic
limits of Leith, when it still dwelt within walls. The
Kirkgate leads straight into the heart of the town — a
narrow and crowded street that has not yet lost all
traces of the antique and the picturesque. By the tram-
ways— which in Leith are electric, while Edinburgh still
hangs on to an antiquated cable system — one can pass
along Junction Street, following roughly the direction
of the old defences, and across Junction Bridge to North
Leith and to Newhaven ; or proceed through Consti-
tution Street to Bernard Street and the Albert, Edin-
burgh, and Imperial Docks ; or go eastward, along the
margin of Leith Links, to Seafield.

Leith has had a stormy history. It has known much
of siege and sortie. No place has been more battered
by invasion and civil wars. And yet it has been
disposed to set down as its greatest wrongs and injuries
those which it suffered at the hands of its neighbour
Edinburgh in times of peace. It has traditions of

269

Leith, Port and Burgh

Roman occupation. But its genuine annals do not go
back beyond the date when a grant of its harbour
was made by David the Saint to his monastery of
Holyrood. A charter of Robert the Bruce, in 1329,
confirmed a grant of the port and mills to the town of
Edinburgh ; and under the thrall of Edinburgh Leith
remained until well into the nineteenth century. It
had exacting Superiors in the restless, plotting race
of the Logans of Restalrig, a fragment of whose fortalice
forms part of the farmhouse of Lochend, poised over
the waters of Lochend Loch. Edinburgh fell heir to
these feudal rights also, and for many a day exercised
a trade monoply and civil jurisdiction within the vassal
burgh, which it treated as conquered territory.

But Leith has long been in the enjoyment of Home
Rule, and the days of its bondage are only a memory,
like the sackings and burnings which it endured from
Hertford's troops; like its long siege by the English
and the Lords of the Congregation, who fought des-
perately to take it from the hands of the French and
the Queen Regent; and like its seizure by Oliver
Cromwell, who built the Citadel to " bridle Scotland,"
and, far in advance of his day, started a newspaper to
guide its perverse politics.

In and near the Kirkgate are some of the most
noteworthy of the historic buildings and sites of the
burgh. The old Balmerino mansion, the quarters of
Charles II. while an unwilling guest of the Presby-
terian party, has been turned into stores and small
dwelling-houses. A house on the other side of the
street, raised on low, pillared arches, is conjectured to
have been " Cant's Ordinary," the hostelry where the
Regent Morton and the lords who had thwarted his

270

The Kirkgate

plans " dined jovially " to celebrate their reconciliation.
It has gone, and along with it has disappeared the
reputed house of Mary of Guise, in Water Lane, and
the battered form of the Council House in the Coal
Hill, in which Mar, Lennox, Morton, Lethington, and
other rulers of the kingdom plotted and debated. One
or two fine old family mansions, with corbels, wheel
stairs, and pious inscriptions may still be found about
Quality Street. But the burgh improvers, in sweeping
away the congeries of narrow, mean, and filthy streets
and dilapidated houses that filled the space between
the Kirkgate and the Shore, have made havoc with
Leith's antiquities. The removal of the grim-featured
old Tolbooth from Tolbooth Wynd is a story as old
as Sir Walter Scott's day, and was done against his
protest. St Anthony's Preceptory — the oldest of the
Leith foundations — and King James's Hospital which
succeeded it, have disappeared from the environs of
St Mary's Church ; and the Trinity House, standing
opposite the church gate, preserves only a carved stcoie
with the date 1555, of the original house built for the
poor by the " Masters and Mariners " of the port.

St Mary's Church is a structure in which Leith
takes just pride. It was built in 1483, and was
handsomely restored about fifty years ago. In 1609
it became the parish church of South Leith in place
of Restalrig, perhaps as a mark of royal favour to
the first Protestant minister, "Davie Lindsay," who
married James the Sixth to Anne of Denmark in
Norway, and whom the grateful monarch afterwards
made Bishop of Ross. A traveller who visited St
Mary's about this period says that, like its neighbour
of North Leith, it was " a fairer Church for inwork than

271

Leith, Port and Burgh

any he saw in London," and had " two seats-royal " in
it. A later incumbent was the Rev. John Logan,
reputed author of the " Ode to the Cuckoo," and of
many of the " Paraphrases.* He was ousted for what
was then deemed the unclerical and irreligious exercise
of writing dramas ; and a similar fate, for a similar
fault, overtook, it will be remembered, the author of
"Douglas," the Rev. John Home, who was born in
Quality Street, and is buried, with other men of
distinction, in South Leith Churchyard.

The Churchyard opens on the east into Constitution
Street, the most handsome of the Leith business
thoroughfares. It contains the Post Office and the
Corn Exchange, and in it and in Bernard Street
which joins it, beside a monument to Robert Burns,
are a number of the principal merchant and shipping
houses and bank and insurance offices of the busy port.
It leads to the Albert Dock, completed in 1869, when
the centre of gravity of the trade of the harbour began
to move back again from the left to the right bank
of the river that divides North from South Leith.
Opening from it is the newer and more commodious
Edinburgh Dock ; and the Imperial Dock, a third and
yet more spacious receptacle, reclaimed from the
foreshore for the accommodation of the growing shipping
and commerce of the port, has since been added.

These three great works, stretching along what was
once the sea-front of Leith Links, have cost not much
short of a couple of millions sterling. They afford
quay -room for large ocean-going steamers. For
although a great part of the trade of Leith is still with
the Baltic and the Low Countries, from which since time
immemorial it has been a large importer of timber and

272

Leith Docks and Links

grain, the extension and deepening of its docks have
enabled it to open up a profitable intercourse with the
farthest ends of the earth.

As for the Links, they continue to be, as in the
days when Charles II. and his brother the Duke of
York golfed over them — the great playground of Leith.
Like so many other sites in the burgh, this great,
bare, open space has warlike memories. Duels have
been fought upon it, and crowds have assembled here
to see pirates and other malefactors strung up on the
sands. " Giant's Brae " and " Lady Fife's Brae " mark
spots whence the English troops and the Protestant
party brought their batteries to bear on the walls
defended by the Sieur d'Esse and the French garrison
during the siege of 1560. On the Links Leslie held
his leaguer, and the Presbyterian clergy purged the
Scottish host of" Malignants " and " Engagers " previous
to setting out for Dunbar. The spot has known also
Borlum's Highlanders in the '15, and Prince Charlie's
followers in the '45. It is skirted now by handsome
houses ; a cemetery and sea promenade are at its
eastern extremity ; Leith Academy and several of the
churches of the burgh look out upon its turf and trees.

If Leith took its recreation on the Links, it resorted
to the Shore for business. Nowadays, the Old Harbour
above the lower drawbridge is neglected by trade, and
only the smaller fry of shipping craft lie against the
quay walls. The Shore has become a kind of back-
water of commerce. There is a strong seafaring flavour
about the groups that hang around the bridges and
dock gates. In the range of tall houses that stretch
from the Sheriff Brae and the Coal Hill to the Graving-
docks there is still an antique and outlandish air — some-

273 s

Leith, Port and Burgh

thing reminiscent of the past and of Leith's long
intercourse with Norway and Holland, Bremen and
Dantzig. Some of the oldest and most picturesque of
these houses have fallen. Among the newer buildings
is a Sailors' Home. The dormer windows of the " New
Ship," and the " Old Ship's " carven and gilded image
of a well-manned vessel in full sail — the arms of Leith
— look down upon wharf and pavement as in the brave
days of old when Edinburgh society was more wont to
come down to the neighbour burgh for fresh air and
frolic.

The Shore and the wooden piers once attached to it
have witnessed many historic landings and departures.
"James I. of Scots stepped ashore here in 1423 with
Joan Beaufort, the Queen he had won in exile. Here,
also, landed Mary of Gueldres, wife of James II.; and
Margaret of Denmark, the consort of James III.
Another bride landed on Leith pier in 1537, and bend-
ing down as she put foot to shore, kissed the soil of the
land of her adoption. This was Magdalen, the fragile
Lily of France, first wife of James V. — ' the Queen of
twenty summer days.' Her successor, Mary of Guise,
was of another strain ; but she also brought sorrow for
Leith and Scotland, and for herself." The next royal
vision — "the loveliest and most fateful ever seen on
Leith pier" — was that of Mary Stewart returning to
her own stern land from the fair fields of France. If
we may believe Knox, " never was seen so dolorous a
face of heaven" as at her coming. There were later
royal landings; for King James VI. handed ashore
Anne of Denmark at Leith harbour after sore buffetings
in the North Sea from storms which were believed to
have been raised by the malignant Lothian witches;

274

Leith Pier Landings

and a tablet on the quay-wall points the spot where, to
the ecstatic joy of Walter Scott and other loyal subjects,
George IV. stepped to land, the first Hanoverian
sovereign to put foot on Scottish earth.

At Brigend, the upper extremity of the Shore,
Abbot Robert Ballantyne, of Holyrood, built in 1493
" three stonern arches " across the water, uniting South
and North Leith. The piers were still standing when
Sir John Gladstone, grandfather of the statesman, was
born near the Brigend, where his father was a worthy
flour and barley miller. Sir John's interest in his
birthplace has substantial testimony in St Thomas's
Church and almshouses, built and endowed by him in
the neighbouring Sheriff Brae, in close vicinity to Leith
Hospital.

Abbot Ballantyne's bridge was intended to be an
access to the new Church of St Ninian's, which he
erected on the Rude-side, as the North Leith lands
belonging to the monastery were then called. It stood
opposite to the Brigend ; but there remain only an
ancient steeple and the manse, on the lintel of which is
inscribed the date 1600. The Parish Church has been
removed some distance westward ; and the old manse
and steeple are now appropriated as warehouses and
offices. In the churchyard behind, and extending along
the waterside, are many weather-beaten tombs of Leith
skippers and merchants ; and here rests Robert Nichol,
one of the sweetest of Scotland's minor poets.

The vicinity of the Sandport and Coburg Street
contains some fragments of seventeenth-century Leith,
although not to be compared in age and interest with
those on the other side of the stream. Of Leith Citadel,
to build which Cromwell demolished the venerable

275

Leith, Port and Burgh

chapel of St Nicholas-by-the-Sands, only an archway
remains, and it will be found within a few yards of the
North Leith Station of the North British Railway.
The Citadel soon turned from its warlike purposes to
trade and manufacture ; but it mounted guns so late as
1779 to repel Paul Jones. Its successor is Leith Fort.

The main street of North Leith — Commercial Street
— runs past the railway station and the Old Docks. The
Custom- House stands upon it; and it is overshadowed
by huge and dismal ranges of bonded warehouses. All
the territory to seaward of it, covered by docks, wharves,
shipbuilding yards, and esplanades, is "salvage from
the Firth." The modern commercial progress of the
port of Leith began in earnest on this ground with the
opening of the nineteenth century. Work on the Old
Docks was started in 1800; the Victoria Dock came
fully fifty years later. The shipping traffic of Leith
has grown until, compared with what it was a hundred
years ago, it is " much what a first-class ocean liner is
to an old Leith and London smack," of the type in
which our great-grandfathers made the long voyage to
the metropolis in the days of the Great War.

As the docks widened and the wharves filled with
merchandise, the Piers of Leith pushed farther out to
sea towards Inchkeith. The East Pier, the elder of the
two, was long the favourite promenade with those who
" flocked " on foot and in coaches to the Pier of Leith to
divert themselves, to tussle with the strong sea-breezes,
and drink in, along with health and strength, the views
of Firth and shore, and of the rock-set city rising above
the forest of shipping of its subject port. All that was
learned and brilliant in the Edinburgh and Leith society
of former days have paced here— Burns, and Scott, and

276

The West Pier

Carlyle among them ; David Hume arm-in-arm with
the author of " Douglas," on their way to end a friendly
disputation over a bottle of port ; Hugo Arnot, " riving
at his speldrin," and looking, as the Parliament House
wit said, " like his meat."

The West Pier has in these latter days become the
familiar platform for bracing walks and for meetings
and partings. From it sail the Forth passenger
steamers, making for Aberdour Bay and the arches
of the Forth Bridge ; for all the windings of the
Firth and the river to Alloa and Stirling ; or eastward
to where the breezes blow from the North Sea at Elie
and Crail, or off the Bass and the May.

Newhaven harbour and fishing village are to the
west of the piers and esplanade and within the municipal
bounds of Leith. The place is worth a visit, if not for
the fish dinners, now a little out of fashion, for what still
remains after recent changes of the quaint aspect of the
main street and closes, cumbered with forestairs and
fishing gear, and the character, ways, and costumes of
the seafaring folk that inhabit it. Steenie Mucklebackit
may be seen leaning against the quay-wall; and
Christie Johnston, in clean striped petticoat and white
mutch, baits the lines on the doorstep, or carries her
creel and basket afield on her stalwart shoulders. The
old " Port of Grace " still gleans a considerable harvest
from the salt water ; although its oyster-scalps have
been destroyed, the steam trawlers have thinned the
nearer waters of their finny spoils, and the fishermen
have to go further to sea in quest of daily bread. The
community — an ancient and sturdy one — is conjectured
by some to have in it admixtures of Dutch and Frisian
blood, and rarely intermarries with stranger stock.

277

Leith, Port and Burgh

Beyond Newhaven is the pleasant sylvan suburb of
Trinity, with its Baths and Public Gardens — a spot where
one can enjoy shade and sun and wind. Still further west
is Wardie, and then Granton, the capacious harbour built
and owned by the Dukes of Buccleuch. Fleets of yachts,
trawlers, and trading craft find shelter behind its piers ;
and from Granton the ferry steamer makes regular pass-
ages to Burntisland, lying directly opposite. Caroline
Park, formerly Royston, a mansion of the period of
Queen Anne, with richly-painted panels and ceilings,
has been made into the offices of a printing-ink work.
It belonged to the eminent Sir George Mackenzie,
Viscount Tarbat, and first Earl of Cromarty, and was
renamed by a later owner, the famous John, Duke of
Argyle and Greenwich, after his daughter, who carried
the property into the Buccleuch family. The older
Granton Castle is a ruin by the sea ; and both House
and Castle are overshadowed and fumigated by the
huge gasometer and works of the Gas Corporation.

To those who would prolong the walk by the shore
westward, there can be promised many fine and chang-
ing views of the Firth and its islands. The coast line
is screened by the trees of Craigroyston and Cramond ;
and at the sheltered and romantic inlet of Cramond-
mouth, famous in the annals of smuggling, one can be
ferried across the Almond Water to the beautiful woods
of Dalmeny and Barnbougle, which end only at the root
of the piers of the Forth Bridge.

CHAPTER XXIII

PORTOBELLO

IN 1896 an Act was passed by which the burgh of
Portobello was united to the city of Edinburgh. The
process of municipal amalgamation was completed in
1900, and the new city Ward has derived from this change
of municipal status many embellishments and additions
to its amenities. Socially, the annexation of Portobello
to Edinburgh is an old story ; from its first beginnings
it has been " Edinburgh-on-the-Sea." The nexus of
union was, for a time, little more than the principal
highway which joins the capital to the watering-place
three miles distant.

This narrow bond is the London Road, followed by
the tramway line, which at Jock's Lodge passes near
the old village of Restalrig, with its church, once a
collegiate foundation, dedicated to St Mary and the
Holy Trinity, and served by a Dean and prebends.
The present church is the pre-Reformation choir re-
roofed. The interesting churchyard contains a more
notable relic of the past in a crypt, with groined arches
springing from a central shaft, which is supposed to
have been the mausoleum of the Logans of Restalrig,
but which, it has been conjectured, may have been in

earlier use as the chapter-house of the Collegiate clergy.

279

Portobello

This interesting specimen of fifteenth-century architecture
was restored by the late Earl of Moray, under the direc-
tion of Dr Thomas Ross ; and among other discoveries it
was found that it had contained a decorated upper as well
as under chamber, and that below it was a strong spring
of water, suggesting that here is the veritable site of the
Holy Well of St Triduana, Virgin and Martyr, which of
old brought many pilgrims to Restalrig, Outside of
the city limits, likewise, are the artillery, formerly the
cavalry, barracks of Piershill ; the loch and mansion of
Lochend, of whose owners mention has been made ; and
yet another seemly relic of the past, Craigentinny
House, an old mansion of the Nisbet family, now
represented by Mrs Nisbet Hamilton Ogilvie. The
Craigentinny sewage meadows are being feued and
built upon. It is worth while turning aside from the
road a few yards to view the sculptures that adorn the
monument of the late Mr Christie Miller, behind
Craigentinny farm.

Those who travel to Portobello, however, usually
have their thoughts fixed upon the sea and the sands,
the pier and the esplanade. It has brickwork and
other manufactures ; but its fortune is its site on sandy
and shallow water facing the breezes of the Firth. It
may be said to be bounded on the west by the Figgate
burn and on the east by the Brunstane burn, both of
them now drumlie brooks ; and the ground on which it
is built was, only a century and a half ago, part of those
" Figgate Whins," in exceedingly ill repute as the haunt
of footpads and highwaymen — a spot from whence a
President of the Court of Session was once kidnapped
and whipped off to a Border keep by moss-trooping
" Christie's Will."

280

Portobello Sands

The name dates the beginnings of Portobello as
following upon Admiral Vernon's great naval victory in
the Bay of Carthagena. Tradition connects it with a
buccaneering veteran — another "Admiral Guinea" —
who here brought himself to anchor after a wild career in
the Caribbees. At the close of the eighteenth century
Portobello could still be described as " a rising village
of 300 inhabitants," [employed in the manufacture of
brick and pottery. But when its reputation as a place
of summer residence and sea-bathing began to grow,
it spread amain along its sands ; streets and villas
covered the 'once waste places of the Figgate Whins,
and lodging-house keeping competed with brickmaking
as a source of profit to the population.

In 1833 Portobello was formed into a burgh. But
before that date it had begun to attract a little literary
coterie, and to attain some social consequence. George
the Fourth had paid it a visit ; Walter Scott often came
to it, especially when his son-in-law, Lockhart, occupied
a house in Melville Street; "Nairne Lodge," outside
Portobello bounds, on the large new thoroughfare of
Willowbrae Road, is a memento of the residence of the
sweet singer of " The Land of the Leal " ; in a later
generation, Hugh Miller, David Laing, and Sir David
Brewster were frequenters of Portobello.

The town has continued to spread and to prosper,
not so rapidly indeed as the great watering-places of
the South, but perhaps sufficiently to justify the claim
it puts forward to be the " Brighton of Scotland." It
has its full share of public institutions and recreations —
its Town Hall and Municipal Buildings, its Baths and
its Golf Course, churches galore, and, above all, its pier
and sands. On Saturdays and trade holidays Edin-

281

Portobello

burgh empties itself on Portobello beach. Joppa, its
western extremity, enjoys a greater measure of quiet
and seclusion. Behind the town are historic sites and
old mansions not a few, among them Brunstane House,
the heritage successively of the Crichtons, the Lauder-
dale Maitlands, and the Argyle Campbells.

The coast road, which for seven miles carries an
electric tramway, winds on past New Hailes and
through Fisherrow, and crosses the Esk into the
"honest toun" of Musselburgh. The famous Links
come between it and the sea, and near at hand is " the
battlefield of Eastern Scotland "—Pinkie Cleuch, and
Carberry Hill, and, to the east of these, Prestonpans,
where "Johnnie Cope" fled before the Highland
claymores. Further on are delectable spots, sacred to
golf, famous in story, and well winnowed by the east
wind — Cockenzie and Gosford, Aberlady and Gullane,
Dirleton and North Berwick ; and on each and all of
them Edinburgh has laid or is laying its grasp. In
the summer season, at least, they are part of the Royal
and Romantic City.

282

INDEX

ABBEY LAIRDS, no
Abbey porch, 5, no, 112
Abbey Strand, 1 10
Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, 151
Acheson, Sir Archibald, 103
Adam, Dr, Rector of High School,

138, 150, 152
Adam, Lord Chief Commissioner,

house of, 233
Adam, Robert, architect, 144, 174,

217

Adam Square, 174
Adam, William, architect, 158
Advocates' Close, 56, 187
Advocates' Library, 52
Ainslie Place, 240, 242
Albany, Robert, Duke of, 32, 74
Alexander III., 73, 248
Alison, Rev. A., 257
Alison, Sir Archibald, 236
Alison Square, 133, 150
Allan, David, 91, 105
Allan, Sir William, 242
Almond Water, 248, 278
Alva, Lord Justice-Clerk, 23
Ambrose's tavern, 209
Anchor Close, 54
Anderson, Sir Rowand, architect,

i$3» 237

283

Anne of Denmark, 64, 166, 180,

271, 275

Ann Street and Gardens, 262
Arboretum, 263
Argyle Battery, 66, 80
Argyle, Earl of, 77, 101, 135
Argyle, Marquis of, tomb in St
Giles, 32

his house, 44

in Argyle Tower, 80

his execution, 101, 160
Argyle Square, 147, 149
Argyle Tower, 77, 80
Arnot, Hugo, 5, 149, 277
Arthur Seat, 9, 112, 124-7, 207
Assembly Hall and its spire, 61
Atholl Crescent, 249
Auchinleck, Lord, 47
Audubon, the naturalist, 236
Aytoun, W. E,, 59, 242, 260

BABERTON, 257
Bagimont Roll, 117, 140
Baird, Sir David, 68
Bakehouse Close, 103
Balcarres, Countess of, 88
Balfour, Sir Andrew, 12
Balfour, Rev. Dr Lewis, 258
Balfours of Pilrig, 267

Index

Baliol, Edward, 117

Ballantyne, Abbot, 275

Ballantyne, James, loo

Balm Well at Liberton, 178, 184

Balmerino family, 221, 270

Bank of Scotland, 59

Bank Street, 59

Bannatyne, Lord, 105

Banqueting Hall (or Parliament

Hall), at Castle, 83
Barclay United Free Church, 195
Barnton, 248
"Barras," the, 169
Bavelaw, 256
Baxter's Close, 62
Baxters' Incorporation, 245, 261
Bearford Parks, 208
Beaton, Archbishop, 90, 134, 140
Beaton, Cardinal, 27, 90, 266
Begbie's murder, 89
Begg, Rev. Dr, 176
Belhaven, Lord, 116
Bellenden family, 99, 106
Belle vue, 239
Bell's Mills, 260
Bell's Wynd, 46-48
Beth's Wynd, 57
Big Jack's Close, 100
Bishop's Close, 88, 92
Black, Adam, 18, 218
Black, Dr Joseph, 137, 173
Blackford Hill, 177, 182
Blackfriars Monastery, 89, 137, 140
Blackfriars Street or Wynd, 54, 89,

92, 134

Blackie, Prof., 144, 212, 249, 260
Blacklock, Dr, 150
" Black Saturday," 108
Black Turnpike, 46
Blackwood, John, 243
Blackwood, William, 178, 215, 222,

243

284

Blackwood's Magazine, see " Maga "
Blair, Dr Hugh, 47, 149, 161, 187
Blair, Prorost Sir William Hunter,

45, 173

Blair, Robert, of Avontoun, 148
Blair Street, 45
Bonally Tower, 190, 257
Bonnington, 266
Bore Stone, the, 182, 189
Borlum and his Highlanders, 13,

273

Borthwick's Close, 46, 48
Boswell, James, 7, 47, 64, 97, 132,

137
Bothwell, Adam, Bishop of Orkney,

57, n6
Bothwell Brig, 159

Bothwell, Francis Stewart, Earl of,

58, 90, 108

Bothwell, James Hepburn, Earl of,
marriage of, 57, 116
the murder of Darnley, 90, 141
associated with Holyrood, 121

with the Calton Hill, 224

with Hatton House, 259
Bothwell, Lady Anne, 57
Bough, Sam, 260
Bourgois's tavern, 22
Bow-foot, 169, 171
Bow Head, 60
Braid Burn, the, 182
Braid Hills, 177, 181, 190, 191
Brewster, Sir David, 145, 249, 281
Bridgend, 1 80

Bristo Port, 75, 149, 150, 167
Bristo Street, 150, 152
British Linen Company Bank, 89,

230

Brodie, Deacon, 19, 47, 65, 100, 150
Brougham, Henry, 51, 138, 152,

166, 186, 232
Broughton, 97, 209, 214

Index

Brown, Dr John, 222, 249

Brown, Rev. Dr John, senior, 241

Brown Square, 147, 172

Bruce, Robert, 118, 192, 256, 270

Bruce, Sir William, of Kinross, 119

Bruntsfield, 187-8, 192, 195

Brunstane, 282

Buccleuch, $th Duke of, statue of,

57

Buccleuch Parish Church, 150
Buchan, nth Earl of, 88, 232
Buchanan, George, 46, 161
Buckstane, the, 192
Burgh Loch, 2, 154, 172, 178, 185,

195
Burgh Muir, 4, 182, 183, 187, 189,

195
Burke and Hare murders, 57, 145,

168

Burnet's Close, 43, 46-7
Burns, Robert, 19, 28, 47, 58, 159,

277

in Daunie Douglas's, 54
relics in Municipal Museum, 55
in Baxter's Close, 62
Lodge Canongate Kilwinning,

101

and Robert Fergusson, 106
and Clarinda, 150, 21 1
Scott's meeting with, 173
his new town lodging, 211
his monument on Calton Hill,

223

in George Street, 233
statue at Leith, 272
Burton, Dr John Hill, 54, 193
Butter Tron, the, 60
Byres' Close, 56, 250
Byres, Sir John, of Coates, 161,
250

CAIKD, Principal, 140

Cairns Castle, 256

Calton Burgh, 214, 221

Calton Churchyard, 221-2

Calton Hill, 2, 9, 12, 130, 211, 213,

220

Calton Jail, 220
Campbell's Close, 26
Campbell, Sir Hay, 148, 150
Campbell, Thomas, 133
Canal and Basin, 197-8
Canal Street, 15
Candlemaker Row, 156, 160
Candlish, Dr, 199
Cannonball House, 67
Canongate, the, 2, 6, 85, 96-111
Canongate Burgh Cross, 104
Canongate Coachdrivers' Society,

105

Canongate Churchyard, 104-5
Canongate Parish Church, 104
Canongate Tolbooth, 97, 99, 103-4
Canonmills, 97, 209, 214, 265
"Canter of Coltbrig," the, 208, 252
Cap and Feather Close, 2, 18
Cape Club, 22, 54
Carlyle, Thomas, at Baberton, 257

his description of Old High
Street, 24

on High Street pageants, 37, 78,
202

as Lord Rector of University,

144

in Simon Square, 175
on Jeffrey and Cockburn, 235
on the National Portrait Gallery,

238
at Comely Bank, 263

Carnegie, Andrew, 59

Caroline Park, 278

Carrubber's Close, 90, 92

Carstares, Principal, 80, 161

Casket Letters, 149

Index

Castle Barns, 199

Castle Braes, 66

Castle Church, 81

"Castle of Clouts," the, 138

Castle, Edinburgh, 16, 71-84

Castle Hill, 41, 61, 65, 66

Castle Rock, 8, 65, 66, 79

Castle Street, 211, 216, 233, 236

Cat Nick, the, 129

Cattle Markets in Portsburgh, 168

at Slateford, 258
Cauldstane-slap pass, 256
Causeway side, 177
Chalmers Close, 91
Chalmers, Dr, 92, 149, 187, 231
Chalmers, Paul, 260
Chalmers' Hospital, founder of, 105
Chambers, Robert, 15, 20, 192, 243
Chambers, the publishing house of,

56, 215

Chambers Street, 136, 143, 174
Chambers, William, 56, 146
Charles Edward, Prince, at Bow
Head, 61

at Holyrood, 106, 119, 122

first entry into Edinburgh, 126

at Duddingston, 128

visit of, to Grange House, 186

at Slateford, 258

associations with Leith Links,

273
Charles I., 37, 79, 167

at the Castle, 77

and Moray House, IOI

at Holyrood, 114, 119, 122-3
Charles II., 50, 112, 122, 268, 270,

273

Charles X. of France, 119, 257
Charles Street, 152
Charlotte Square, 229, 131, 235,

236
Chepman, Walter, 32, 91

286

Chessels' Court, 100

Chiesleys of Dairy, 59, 161, 251

City fever hospital, 139, 192

" Clamshell Turnpike,'* 46

Clerihugh's tavern, 21, 25, 55

Clerk Street, 176

Clockmill House, 125

Clubs in Old Edinburgh, 19-22, 41

Cockburn Association, 91

Cockburn, Henry, Lord, n, 15, 51,

128, 1 86, 234, 260
on George Square, 151
on Hope Park, 155
on the South Bridge, 173
at Bonally Tower, 190, 257
on Calton, 221

house of, in Charlotte Square, 234
on Drumsheugh, 239
Edinburgh Academy, 264

Cockburn, Mrs, 150

Cockburn Street, 18, 55

College Wynd, 136, 137

Colinton, 257-8

Comely Bank, 263

Comiston, 190

Constable, Archibald, 54, 215, 222

Corn Exchange, Grassmarket, 170

Corstorphine Hill, 10, 247, 252

Corstorphine Village and Church,

253

County Buildings, 57-8
Court of Justiciary, 50
Court of Session, 51
Covenant Close, 46-7
Cowgate, S3, 59, 134-136
Cowgatehead, 166
Cowgate Port, 75, 132, 134
Craig, James, 210
Craig, John, Knox's associate, 136
Craig House, 192, 258
Craig, Sir Thomas, 56
Craigcrook Castle, 248

Index

Craigentinny House, 280

Craiglockhart Castle, 192

Craiglockhart Hills, 190, 192

Craiglockhart House, 258

Craigmillar Castle, 128, 179

Craigroyston, 278

Craig's Close, 54

Cramond, 248, 278

Crawford, Abbot, 114

Creech, William, publisher, 19, 36,

48, 54, 161, 232
Creech's Land, 18, 36
Crichton, the Admirable, 47
Crichton, Chancellor, 75
Crichton, George, Bishop of

Dunkeld, 46, 108
Crochallan Fencibles, 20, 54, 238
Croft-an-Righ House, 109
Cromwell, Oliver, 56-7, 61, 77, 86,

101, 119, 142, 167, 201, 258,

263, 268, 270
Crosbie, Andrew, 56
Cross, Mercat, 4, 27, 36-38, 40
Crow Hill, 126
Cullen, Lord, 148
Cumberland, Duke of, 119, 122,

253
Cunningham, Dr, 187

DALMENY, 248, 293
Dairy, 251

Dalrymples of Stair, 51
Dalyell of Binns, 100, 256
Darien House, 152
Darnley, Henry Stewart, 104

associations with Edinburgh

Castle, 82

with Holyrood, 121-2
with Craigmillar, 180
burial-place of, 116
murder of, 1401
Dasses, the, 126

287

David I., 13, 73, 9$, »*, "4, 270

David II., 74, 81, 116, 117

Davie Deans's Cottage, 129, 133

Dean Bridge, 245-7

Dean Cemetery, 260

Deanhaugh, 262

Dean House, 260

Dean Terrace, 262

Defoe, Daniel, 48

De Quincey, Thomas, 150, 203,

242, 262
De Witt, " portraits " at Holyrood,

123

Dick family, 128, 178, 186
Dick, Sir William, of Braid, 185
Dickens, Charles, 242
Dickson, Rev. Dr D., 202
Dickson's Close, 89, 91
Donaldson's Hospital, 252
Douglas Cause riots, 176
Douglas, Dannie's, tavern, 41, 54,
Douglas, Duke of, house of, 44, 140
Douglas, Gavin, 134
Douglas Wars, the, 75, 133
Douglas, William, miniature painter,

239

Douglas, Sir William, 74
Doune Terrace, 243
Drumdryan Street, 196
Drummond of Hawthornden, 137

143, 167
Drummond, George, provost, 17,

105, 139

Drummond Street, 140
Drummore, Lord, 44
Drumselch Forest, 73, 128, 180
Drumsheugh, 210, 230, 240
Duddingston Lodge, 128
Duddingston Village and Loch,

127-8

Duke's Walk, 125
Dumbiedykes, 98, 129, 133, 134

Index

Dunbar, battle of, 165
Dunbar, William, 4, 34, 42, 118
Dunbar 's Close, 57
Duncan, Admiral Lord, 151
Dundas of Arniston, 51
Dundas, Henry, the first Lord
Melville, 19, 88, 229, 230,

249

Dundas, Sir Laurence, 230
Dundee, John Graham, of Claver-

house, 66, 73, 208
Dunecht telescope, 182
Dunfermline, 72, 245
Dunlop, Miss Alison, 245
Dunsappie Crag and Loch, 127
Durie, Lord, 48, 280

EASTER COATES MANOR-HOUSE,

210, 250

Easy Club, the, 20
Edinburgh Academy. 264
Edward I., 73, 117
Edward II., 114
Edward III., 117
Edward VI., 86
Edward VII., proposed memorial

of, no
Edwin, King of Northumbria, 29,

71

Eglinton, Countess of, 54
Eldin, Lord, 238
Elf Loch, the, 192
Elliot, Jean, 148
Elphinstone Court, 88
Ermengard, Queen, 73
Erskine, Dr John, 158
Erskine, Henry, 51, 88, 152
Erskine, Lord Chancellor, 88, 138
Erskine, of Grange, 89
Erskine, Ralph, 152
Eskgrove, Lord, (I
Esplanade, Castle, 65-6

FAIRLIE FAMILY, of Braid, 188
Fairmilehead, 190
Falcon Hall, 189

Falconer, author of the "Ship-
wreck," 91
Fergus I., 123

Fergus, Lord of Galloway, 114
Ferguson, Adam, 173
Fergusson, Robert, poet, birthplace

of, 1 8, 54

on Old Edinburgh life, 39-42
tomb, 106
death of, 153
sits to Runciman, 176
Ferrier family, 233, 249
Fettes, Sir William, 105, 236, 247
Fettes College, 247
Figgate Whins, 4, 48, 280
Findlay, J. R., 237
Fire Station, 168
Fishmarket Close, 43, 46, 48
Fleshmarket Close, 8, 19
Flodden, 38, 182, 188
Flodden Wall, the, 75, 130 et sey.t

165-6

Forbes, Edward, 260
Forbes, Lord President Duncan,

51, 161
Forbes, William, Provost of St

Giles, 29

Forbes, Sir William, 159, 233
Forresters of Corstorphine, 253
Forrester's Wynd, 134
Forth Bridge, the, 248, 278
Fortune's Tavern, 53
Fountain Close, 86, 88, 91
Fountainbridge, 196-7
Foulis family, 161, 258
Fraser, Sir William, 143
Frederick Street, 216
Free Church, founding of, 212,

26S
288

Index

Free Church Assembly Hall, 67

in John stone Terrace, 70
Free Library, 59, 135
Friars Wynd, see Bluckfriars Street
Fullarton Wynd, 57
Fullerton, Bailie, his house, 86

GABRIEL'S ROAD, 209, 264

Gallachlaw, 191

Gallowlee, 97, 210

Gardenstone, Lord, 262

Gay, the poet, 106

Geddes, Alexander, 239

Geddes, Jenny, and her stool, 30, 33,

37, 238

Geddes, Professor, 64, 69
General Assembly, annual opening
in St Giles, 33

meeting-place on Castle Hill,

69-70

George IV., 58, 221, 231
George IV. Bridge, 57, 135, 148,

225,275
George V., 1 20
George Square, 148, 149, 151
George Street, 229-35

statues in, 231
Gib, "Pope," 152, 161
Gib, Rob, his ordinary, 40
Girth Cross, 108-9
Gladstone family and Leith, 275
Gladstone, W. E., 37, 212
Gladstone's Land, 62
Glammis, Lady, 66
Glenlee, Lord, 148
Goldsmith, Oliver, 48, 137
Goldsmiths' Hall, 174
Goodsir, John, 260
Goose Dub, 154
Gordon, Duke of, Governor of

Castle, 68, 78
Gordon, Jane, Duchess of, 88

Gordon House, Castle Hill, 68

Gordon, Sir John Watson, 105, 263

Gorgie, 259

Gosford, Earls of, 103

Gourlay's House, 58

Gow, Neil, 23

Grange suburb, 177

Grange Cemetery, 187

Grange House, 184-6

Grange, Lady, 89

Grant, Mrs, of Laggan, 249

Grant, Sir Francis, 152

Grant, President, 175

Granton, 278

Grassmarket, 165, 169-71

Gray, Sir William, of Pittendrum,

62

Great King Street, 241-2
Great Stuart Street, 242
Green Market, 2
Greenhill, Livingstones of, 188
Greenside, 224, 226
Gregory, Dr James, 105
Gregory, Dr John, 100
Greyfriars Church, 156, 158
Greyfriars Churchyard, 157-62
Greyfriars Monastery, 156, 169
Guest, General, 78
Guthrie, Dr, 187, 218
Guthrie Street, 137
"Guttit Haddie," 126
Guy of Namur, 195

HADDINGTON, Earl of (Tarn o' the

Coogait), 135
Haddo's Hole, St Giles, 31
Haggis Knowe, 126
Hailes, Lord, 99
Halkerston's Wynd, 3, 13, 17
Hall, Captain Basil, 233
Hammermen, Incorporation of, 32,

136

289

Index

Hamilton, "Cocked Hat," 232
Hamilton, Sir William, 242, 249
Hamilton's Entry, 151
Hanna, Dean, 33
Hanover Street, 212, 216
Harrison, Sir George, 182
Hart, Andro, printer, 54
Hart's Close, 2
Hatton House, 259
Haugh, the, 259
Hawse, the, 126
Haymarket, the, 251
Heart of Midlothian, the, 34
" Heave Awa " House, 92
Henderson, Alexander, 161
Henley, W. E., 19
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 123
Henry IV., 74, 117
Henry VI., 169
Herd, David, 54, 150
Heriot, George, senior, 163
Heriot, George, junior, 36, 48

his Hospital, 163-5
Heriot Row, 212, 237, 242, 250
Heriot-Watt College, 14$, 164
Hermand, Lord, 20
Hermitage of Braid, 182
Hertford, Earl of (Duke of Somer-
set), 76, 114, 178
High Riggs, 165, 168, 196
High School, 64, 137-9, 223
High School Wynd, 136-8
High Street, the, its closes and

associations, 24-33, 34-44
Hogg, James, the Ettrick Shepherd,

59, 191, 209, 233, 263
Holyrood Abbey, 96, 112-18, 270

notabilities buried in, 115-16
Holyrood Palace, 2, 112-23

State apartments, 120

historical apartments, 121-2

gardens, 123

Holyrood Palace, the Picture

Gallery, 123

Holyroodhouse, Lord, 57
Home, Countess of, 101
Home, John, 6, 100, 187, 272
Honeyman, Bishop, 90
Hope, of Rankeillor, 154
Hope Park, 155
Hope, Sir Thomas, 59, 135
Hopetoun, John, Earl of, 23, 231
Horner, Francis, 138
Horner, Leonard, 164, 264
Horse Wynd, 105, 136
Howard Place, 265
Hume, David, in the New Town, 4,

211, 232

and Advocates' Library, 25

dwellings of, 63-4, TOO

mausoleum of, 222

associated with Leith, 277
Hunter Square, 45
Hunter's Bog, 126
Hunter's Tryst, 191
Huntly, George, second Marquis

of, 103, 108

Huntly, fourth Earl of, 103
Huntly House, 103
Hyndford Close, 87, 92

INCH, the, 179
Indian Peter, 40
Inverleith House, 264.
Irving, Edward, 92, 241
Isle of Man tavern, 54

JACK'S LAND, 100
Jacob's Ladder, 223
James I., 74, 113, 118, 156, 274
James II., 75, 116, 118, 131, 169
James III., 118, 123
James IV., 79, 83, 118-19, 169,
188-9, 266

290

Index

James V., 51, 79, 90, 119, 133, 179,

1 80

burial-place, 116
James VI., 38, 57, 58, 64, 102, 108,

ill, 128, 180, 193, 271
relations with George Heriot, 36
birth in Edinburgh Castle, 77
and Edinburgh University, 140,

142

marriage of, 274
James VII. (James II. of England),

77, 104, 114, 115, 119
James's Court, 62-3
Jamieson, Dr John, 175
Jane, or Joan, Beaufort, Queen of
James I. of Scots, 74, 118, 274
Jeffrey, Francis (Lord Jeffrey), 51,

257,259

office held by his father, no

at High School, 138

birthplace of, 152

dwelling of, in George Street, 234
in Moray Place, 242

burial-place of, 260
Jeffrey Street, 91, 131
Jock's Lodge, 279
John of Gaunt, 117, 140
John Watson's Hospital, 260
Johnnie Dowie's, 58
John's Coffee-house, 49
Johnson, James, 47
Johnson, Dr Samuel, 64, 97, 128,

132, 137

Johnston, of Warriston, 55
Johnston Terrace, 65
Johnstone, Chevalier, 210
Jones, Paul, at Leith, 276
Juniper Green, 257

KAMES, Lord Henry Home, 63, 100

Kay Stone, the, 191

Kay's " Portraits," 40, 49, 198

Keith, Bishop, 105
Keith, Mrs, of Ravelston, 248
Kemp, George Meikle, 197, 218
Kennedy's Close, 45
Kilwinning, Abbot of, 1 08
Kincaid, John, of Craig House, 193
King's Confession, the, 53
King's Park, 124-9
King's Stables Road, 65, 168, 199
Kirk of Field, 140
Kirk stile, the, 34
Kirkbraehead, 199, 244, 248
Kirkaldy of Grange, 58, 77, 93
Kirkgate, Leith, 269, 271
Kirk Loan, the, 199, 208, 264
Kittle Nine Steps, the, 65
Knox, John, 19, 29, 30, 140, 274

grave of, 50

house in Warriston's Close, 56

house of, at Netherbow, 93-5

at Holyrood, 121
Krames, the, 34

LADY LAWSON'S WYND, 168

Lady Stair's Close, 62

Lady Yester's Church, 139

Laigh Council-house, 35, 54

Laing, David, 174, 281

Lang Gait or Dykes, 9, 201, 208-9

Lauder brothers, painters, 242

Lauder, Sir Thomas Dick, 183, 187

Lauriston, 154, 159, 164

Lauriston Castle, 248

Law, John, the financier, 248

Lawnmarket, 60-5

Lee, Principal, 140

Leith, 268-78

citadel of, 276
Leith Docks, 272
Leith Links, 273
Leith Shore, 273
Leith Walk, 210, 268
291 T 2

Index

Leith Wynd, 4, 97, 99, 130

Lennox Tower, 256

Leslie, Alexander, 77

Leslie, David, 191, 201, 208, 210,

268,273

Leslie, Sir John, 148
Leven and Melville, Earl of, bequest,

31, H5

Leven Street, 196
Libberton's Wynd, 57
Liberton, 176, 177, 181
Lincoln, Abraham, 222
Lindsay, Lady Anne, house of, 88
Lindsay, Rev. David, 271
Lindsay, Sophia, of Balcarres, 77
Littles, the, of Craigmillar, 65, 143,

161, 179, 181
" Little France," 1 80
Livingstone, Dr David, 218
Lochend, 270
Lochiel, at Netherbow, 86
Lochrin, 154, 196
Lockhart, J. G., 59, 174, 211, 242,

249, 281

Lockhart, Lord President, 59, 89
Logans of Restalrig, 125, 270, 279
Logan, Rev. John, 272
Longmore Hospital for Incurables,

184

Lothian Hut, 105
Lothian Road, 198
Lothian Street, 150
Loughborough, Lord Chancellor,

88, 138

Lovat, Lord, 23, 89
Lovat's Land, 91
Lover's Loan, 187
Luckenbooths, the, 27, 34, 40
Luckie Middlemass's howff, 42
Luckie Wood's howff, 21
Lyceum Theatre, 200
Lyndsay, Sir David, 91, 224

M'CULLOCH, Horatio, 263
Macdonald, Sir Hector, 260
M'Ewan Hall, 153
MacGregor, Rev. Dr James, 203
Macgregor, James Mohr, 78
Macgregor, of Glenstrae, 38
Macintyre, Duncan Ban, 161
Mackenzie, Henry, 54, 148
at High School, 138
burial-place and birthplace, 161
associations of, with Colinton, 257
Mackenzie, Sir George ( " Bluidy

Mackenzie"), 51-2, 88
his tomb, 160-1
M'Laren, Duncan, M.P., 178
Maclehose, Mrs, 150, 211
M'Math, Janet, 186
MacMorran, Bailie, 64
MacQueen, Robert, Lord Braxfield,

48, 152

MacQueen, Michael,and his wife, 135
M 'Vicar, Rev. Neil, 202
"Maga" {Blackwood*s Magazine),

178, 211, 215,234-5
Magdalen, Queen of James V., 116,

H7, 274

Magdalene Chapel, 136
"Maiden," the, 38
Main Point, 167
Major Weir's Land, 1 66
Malcolm Canmore, 72
Mallet or Malloch, David, 138
Mansfield, Lord, 51
Mar, Earl, of the '15, 14, 211
Mar, Regent, 86
Margaret, Queen of Alexander III.,

73

Margaret of Anjou at the Grey-
friars, 169

Margaret of Denmark, 118, 274
Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV.,
83, 118

Index

Marrowbones Club, 21

Martin, David, 239

Martyrs' monument, 160

Mary King's Close, 42, 55

Mary of Gueldres, Queen of James

II., n, 117, 123, 169, 274
Mary of Guise, Queen of James V.,

67, 76, 166, 271

Mary, Queen of Scots, 46, 55, 60,
86, 90, 102, 107, 109, 140, 156,
186, 194, 224, 256, 259
marriage with Bothwell, 57, 116

with Darnley, 104
associations with Castle, 76, 82
with Holyrood, 119, 1 21
with Craigmillar, 179
her " Bath," 108
at Leith, 274
Masterton, Allan, 58, 137
Meadows, the, 154, 176
Meggetland, 197
Melrose, Abbots of, 89, 93
Melville, Lord, see Dundas, Henry
Melville Column, the, 230
Melville Street, 249
Mercat Cross, see Cross
Merchant Maidens Hospital, 153
Merchants' House, 174
Merchiston Castle, 193-4

suburb, 177
Merlin's Wynd, 45
Miller, Hugh, 179, 187, 281
Miller, Mr Robert, cited, 56, 93
Milton House, 106
Mint or Cunzie House, 135
"Mirror" Club, 48, 105
Mitchell, the Covenanter, 90
Monboddo, Lord, 101
Moncreiff, Rev. Sir Henry, 203
Monk, General, 150
Monro family, surgeons, 139, 258
Mons Meg, 77, 80-1

Montrose, James Graham, the
Great Marquis, 32, 35, 102, 104,
107, 108, 159, 194, 256

Moray House, 101-2

Moray Place, 234, 242

Moray, Regent, 32, 109
his lodging, 120

Morningside, 189

" Morocco Land," 99

Mortonhall, 191

Morton, Regent, 35, 58, 90, 149, 161
his house, 90

Moryson, Fynes, 25

Mossman, James, 93, 163

Moubray House, 91

Moultrie Hill, 6, 209

Mound, the earthen, 8, 10, 15, 59

Moyes, Shadrach, 215

Municipal Buildings, 28, 55

Municipal School of Art, 168

Municipal Museum, 55, 160

Murray, Alexander, Lord Hender-
land, 137, 252

Murray, Miss Nicky, 48

Murray, Secretary, 101, 151

Murrayfield, 252

Museum, Royal Scottish, 146-7

Museum of Society of Antiquaries,
237

Mushat's Cairn, 125

Musselburgh, 282

Mylne family, 162

Mylne, John, master mason, 115, 162

Mylne, Robert, King's Mason, 119

Mylne's Square, 22

NAIRNE, Lady, 281

Napier family, of Wright's Houses,

194-5

Napier, of Merchiston, 33, 193-4
Napier, John, inventor of logarithms,

33, 194
293

Index

Nasmyth, Alexander, 238
Nasrayth, James, 49, 260
National Covenant and Magdalene

Chapel, 136
signed in Greyfriars Churchyard,

159

National Picture Gallery, 218-19
National Portrait Gallery, 237-8
Neaves, Lord, 237
Nelson & Sons, 61, 178
Nelson, Thomas, 264
Nelson, William, 80, 83, 262
Nelson's Column, Calton Hill, 224
Netherbow, the, 2-4, 27-8, 85-95
clock at Orphan Hospital, 260
New Street, 26, 99
Newhaven, 266, 277
Newington, 176-7
Newington House, 178
Newton, Charles Hay, Lord, 20, 51,

238

Nicol, Robert, 275
Nicolson, Lady, 175
Nicolson Square, 175
Nicolson Street, 145, 173, 175
Nichol, William, 52, 222
Niddrie-Marischal, 179
Niddry's Wynd, 89
Nisbets of Dean, 203, 260, 280
North Bridge, Old and New, 1-23
North British Station and Hotel,

206, 217
North, Christopher (Professor John

Wilson), 59, 200, 211, 218, 235,

242, 260, 262

North College Street, 137, 146
Nor' Loch, the, 2, n, 23, 211
Nova Scotia Baronets, 67

OGILVY, Lady, 78
Observatory, on Blackford Hill, 182
on Calton Hill, 225

Old Assembly Close, 46, 48
Old Bank Close, 58-9
Old Playhouse Close, 100
Oldrieve, Mr, of Board of Works,

117

Old Stamp Office, 53
Oliver & Boyd's publishing premises,

89

Orphan Hospital, 6, 260
Outlook Tower, 69
Over Liberton House, 181

PALMER'S LANE, 176

Palmerston, Lord, 105

Panmure Close, 105

Paoli, 64

Parliament Close, 34, 49

Parliament House, 51-2

Parliament Lobby, 50-1

Parliament Square, 49 et seq.

Paterson's Chophouse, 21-2

Paterson's Close, 62

Paul's Work, Hospital of, 131

Peffermill, 180

Penny Well, 184

Pentland Hills, 190, 255

Pentland Raid, 196, 259

Physic Gardens, 6, 12

Pillans, Dr, 138

Pilrig, 266

Piozzi, Mrs, 233

Pitcairn, Dr Archibald-, 161

Pitt's statue, 231

Playfair, John, architect, 144, 225,

241, 252

Pleasance, the, 75, 98, 132
Poker Club, the, 22
Pont, Rev. Robert, 202
Porteous, Mob and Riots, 35, 129,

134, 161, 169
Portobello, 279-282
Post Office, General, 6, 48, 217

294

Index

Potterrow, 136, 150, 167

Potter-row Port, 75

Pow Burn, or Jordan, 183

Powderhall, 266

Presbytery Club, 22

President's Stairs, 49

Preston, General, 78

Prestons of Gorton and Craigmillar,

29, 55, 179
Prestonfield, 128
Prestonpans, 139
Prince Consort, the, 231, 265
Princes Street, 9, 204-19

gardens, 15, 217-18

monuments in, 218
Punch bowl, the, 126
" Purses," the, 34

QUADRANGLE, the College Uni-
versity, 141, 145

Quakers' meeting -place, in the
Pleasance, 133

Queen Street, 213, 234, 235, 236-9,
240

Queen Street Ladies' College, 237

Queensberry Lodge, 106

Queensferry Road and Street, 209,
244, 246

RADICAL ROAD, 128

Raeburn, Sir Henry, 54, 203, 238,

262-3

Rae's Close, 99
Ramsay, Allan, 18, 20, 36, 54, 68,

90, 98, 106, 107, 161, 218
Ramsay, Dean, 203, 242
Ramsay Lane, 68
Ramsay Lodge, 68
Randolph Crescent, 210, 243
Ravelston House, 248
Redford Cavalry Barracks, 258
Redhall, 258

Regalia of Scotland, 79

Regent's Bridge, 213

Register House, 209, 217

Reid, Bishop Robert, 140

Restalrig, 270, 279

Rest-and-be-thankful, 245, 253

Richard I. of England, 117

Richard II., 114

Riddle's Court, 64

Rizzio, murder of, 46, 104, 108,

116, 121
Robert III., 29
Roberts, David, 242, 263
Robertson, Principal, 137, 140, 153,

186, 187

Robertson, Lord, 51
Robertson's Close, 135
Robertson Memorial Church, 187
Rood or Rude Well, 96
Rose Court, George Street, 214, 229
Rosebery, Lord, 62, 218
Roseburn, 259
Roslin, 190
Ross, Walter, 263
Rothesay, Duke of, 32, 74
Roxburgh Close, 56
Royal Bank, 230, 239
Royal Blind Asylum, 173
Royal College of Physicians, 237
Royal Exchange, 54
Royal Lunatic Asylum, 192
Royal High School, see High

School
Royal Infirmary, old and new, 12,

89, 138, 139, 154
Royal Institution, 219
Royal Riding School, 175
Royal Scottish Geographical Society,

200

Royal Scottish Academy, 219
Royal Vault, Chapel Royal, 116-17
Ruddiman, Thomas, 137

295

Index

Rullion Green, 190, 256
Runciman, Alexander, 105, 176
Russel, Alexander, 54, 249, 260
Rutherford, Dr Daniel, 87
Rutland Street, 249
Rynd, Janet, 135

ST ANDREW'S CHURCH AND DIS-
RUPTION, 212

St Andrew Square, 211, 229, 230

St Anthony's Chapel, 125
Preceptory, 271

St Bernard's Well, 209, 261-2

St Catherine's Convent, 178

St Clairs of the Isles and of Roslin,
48, 90, 191

St Colme Street, 233, 236

St Cuthbert's Church, 134, 199,
200-3

St Cuthbert's Graveyard, 203

St Cuthbert's Loan, 198

St David Street, 232, 234

St Giles Church, 29-33, 56, 89

St Giles, Grange of, 184

St Giles, image of, 14

St Giles Street, 57

St George's Church, 208, 231

St James' Square, 209, 211

St John the Baptist's Chapel, 178

St John's Episcopal Church, 202

St John's Cross, 100

St John's Hill, 98, 132

St John's Street, 100

St Leonard's, 128-9, r32, 133

St Margaret, 72, 117, 244

St Margaret's Chapel, 80

St Margaret's Loch and Well,
125

St Margaret's Locomotive Works,
126

St Margaret's Spring, 13, 74

St Mary-in-the-Fields, 136, 140

St Mary of Placentia, Convent of,

132

St Mary's Cathedral, 250-1
St Mary's Church, Leith, 271
St Mary's Parish Church, 240
St Mary's Wynd or Street, 97, 132
St Ninian's Church, Leith, 275
St Ninian's Row, 9, 21, 130, 221
St Roque's Chapel, 184-5
St Stephen's Church, 240-1
St Thomas' Church, Leith, 275
St Thomas' Hospital, 108
St Triduana's Well, 126, 280
Salamander Land, 49
Salisbury Crags, 9, 124
"Samson's Ribs," 128
Sanctuary of Holyrood, 98, 109-1 n
Saughton House, 253

and Hall, 259
Sciennes, the, 134, 154, 178
Scotsman offices, 19, 54
Scott, David, 263
Scott, General, of Balcomie, 239
Scott, Sir Gilbert, 250
Scott, Sir Walter, 7, 36, 48, 57, 148,
165, 174, 177, 191, 215, 232,
235, 236, 248, 252, 281
and Princes Street Gardens, 15
associations with Parliament

Lobby, 51

with Bank Street, 59
with the Netherbow, 87
with St John Street, 100
with the Radical Road, 129
with Dumbiedykes, 133
with George Square, 151
with Grey friars Church, 158
with Craigmillar, 180
with Blackford and Braid Hills,

181-3

with George Street, 233
with Ravelston, 248

296

Index

Scott, Sir Walter, associations with Smollett, Tobias, 36, 101

Edinburgh Academy, 264
with Leith, 275-6

in the Advocates' Library, 53

and Regalia, 79

at Duddingston, 128

birthplace of, 137

at High School, 138

and Brown Square, 147

in Bristo and George Square,
ISO, 151

meeting with Burns, 173

at Grange House, 187

first love of, 159, 233

in North Castle Street, 233
Scott Monument, the, 217-18
Seafield, Lord Chancellor, 102
Seaforth Highlanders, 127
Semple family, 68
Seton, Lady Janet, 178
Seton, Mary, 186
Shakespeare Square, 6, 10
Shakespeare, William, in
Shandwick Place, 248
Sharpe, Archbishop, 90, 92
Sheephead Inn, Duddingston, 128
Sheriff-Court Buildings, 59, 135
Sibbald, Sir Robert, 12
Signet Library, 52
Silvermills, 214, 242
Simon Square, 175
Simpson, Sir J. Y., 212, 218, 235,

262, 266

Sinclair, Catherine, 236
Sinclair, Sir John, of Ulbster, 236
Six-Foot Club, 21, 191
Skene of Rubislaw, 15, 233
Slateford village, 258
Smellie, William, 54
Smith, Adam, 63, 104, 173
Smith, Alexander, 266
Smith, Sydney, 152, 234

"Society," 147, 154, 172

Solemn League and Covenant, 38,

47-8, 53, 59, 159
Solicitors' Library, 52, 135
South Bridge, 45, 173-4
South Gray's or Mint Close, 88
Spence, Bishop, of Aberdeen, 131
Spence, " Lucky," 107
Spendthrift Club, 21
Spottiswood, Archbishop, 92
Stair, Countess-Dowager of, 62
Steell, Sir J., sculptor, 218, 231
Stenhousemill, 259
Stevenlaw's Close, 46
Stevenson, R. L., 150, 212, 222,
226

in Parliament Lobby, 50-1

at the University, 144

on Greyfriars Churchyard, 157

at Swanston, 190

on Princes Street, 207

in Heriot Row, 241

on Water of Leith, 255

on Colinton, 257-8

birthplace, 265
Stewart, Dugald, 225, 242
Stewart, of Goodtrees, 56
Stewart, Sir William, murder of, 90
Stewart's College, 247
Stewart's oyster shop, 42, 48
Stinking Stile, the, 34
Stockbridge, 263
" Stoppit Stravaig," the, 107
Strichen's Close, 88, 93
Stuart, Miss Belches, Scott's first

love, 159, 233

Surgeons' Hall, 139, 145, 175
Swanston, 191
Sym, Robert (Timothy Tickler),

151, 209
Syme, James, the surgeon, 236

297

Index

Symson, Andro, 136
Synod Hall, 199

TAIT8 MAGAZINE, 21$

Tanfield Hall, 212, 265

Tanner's Close, 168

Taylor, the Water Poet, 25

Templar Lands, 169

Tennis Court, the, at Holyrood,

no

Teviot Place, 153
Thackeray, 243, 249
Theatre Royal, Old, 7
Thistle Chapel, St Giles, 31, 34

Holyrood, 115
Thomson, Dr Andrew, 249
Thomson, James, of Duddingston

128

Thomson, James, the poet, 210
Thorneybauk, 196
Tinwald, Lord Justice-Clerk, 44
Tipperlin village, 189
Todrick's Close, 90
Tolbooth, 27, 28, 34, 58
Tolbooth, the New, 35
Tollcross, 196
Town Guards, 27, 38-39
Town Walls, see Flodden Wall
Town Wells, 27
Trades Maidens Hospital, 147
Training College for Teachers

(Moray House), 102
Treaty of Union, 23, 102
Trinity, 278
Trinity College Church, 6, n, 91,

H7, 123, 130-32
Tron, the, 38
Tron Corner, 45
Tron Kirk, 46
Trotter family, 161, 191
Trunk's Close, 91
Tweeddale Court, 89

Tytler, Patrick Fraser, 249

UNITED FREE CHURCH ASSEMBLY

HALL, 69
University, the, 142-46

new buildings of, 153, 154
Usher Hall, 200

, VALLEYFIELD STREET, 196
Vennel, the, 165-6
Victoria, Queen, 116, 218, 265
Victoria Street, 62, 166

WALKER STREET, 249

Wallace, of Craigie, Lady, 88

Wallace, Sir William, 74
, Warrender family, 187-8

Warriston Close, 55-6

Warriston House and Cemetery, 266

Warriston, Johnston of, 55

Wardie, 278

Water Gate or Yett, 3, 97, 99, 107,
109

Water House, 69

Water Lane, 214

Water of Leith, 208, 240, 245, 254-67

Water of Leith village, 213, 261

Waterloo Place, 216

Watson, George, painter, 238

Wauchope, General, 179
, Waverley Station, 1 6, 204

Wellhouse Tower, 13, 66, 74, 75

Wellington's statue, 218

" Wells o'Wearie," 128

West Bow, 48, 60-2, 166

West Kirk, see St Cuthbert's

West Port, 166-7

West Princes Street Station and
Hotel, 198

Wester Portsburgh, 167

White Hart Inn, 170

White Horse Close, 106-8
298

Index

White Horse Inn, 97, 132 Wilson, Sir Daniel, cited, 102, 188

Whitefield in Edinburgh, 6 Wilson, Professor John, see North,

Whitefoord House, 105 Christopher

Whitehouse Loan, 187 Windy Gowl, 127

Wild M 'Craws, 127 Wordsworths, the, in Edinburgh, 170

Wilkie, Sir David, 176 World's End Close, 91

William the Lion, 73 Wright's Houses, 194-5

William of Orange, 161, 202

Williams, "Grecian," 105 YORK, Cardinal, 79

Williamson, Rev. Dr David (Dainty York Place, 237

Davie), 202 Younger's Brewery, 105

299

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