9d OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Castle HX
one going plump down a vent they set up a shout
of joy. Sir David laughed, and entreated the
father of the lads ?? not to be too angry ; he and
his brother,? he added with some emotion, ?when
CANNON BALL IN WALL OF nowE IN CASTLE KILL.
living here at the same age, had indulged in precisely
the same amusement, the chimneys then, as
now, being so provokingly open to attacks, that
there was no resisting the temptation.? From
the Bairds of Newbyth the house passed to the
Browns of Greenbank, and from them, Brown?s
Close, where the modern entrance to it is situated,
On the same side of the street Webster?s Close
served to indicate the site of the house of Dr.
Alexander Webster, appointed in 1737 to the
Tolbooth church.. In his day one of the most
popular men in the city, he was celebrated for his
wit and socid qualities, and amusing stories are
still told of his fondness for claret With the a s
sistance of Dr. Wallace he matured his favourite
scheme of a perpetual fund for the relief of
widows and children of the clergy of the Scottish
Church; and when, in 1745, Edinburgh was in
possession of the Jacobite clans, he displayed a
striking proof of his fearless character by employing
all his eloquence and influence to retain the
people in their loyalty to the house of Hanover.
He had some pretension to the character of a poet,
2nd an amatory piece of his has been said to rival
-the effusions of Catullus. It was written in allusion
to his mamage with Mary Erskine. There is
one wonderfully impassioned verse, in which, after
describing a process of the imagination, by which
?he comes to think his innamarata a creature of more
. derives its name.
than mortal purity, he says that at length he clasps
her to his bosom and discovers that she is but a
woman after all !
?? When I see thee, I love thee, but hearing adore,
I wonder and think you a woman no more,
Till mad with admiring, I cannot contain,
And, kissing those lips, find you woman again ! ?
He died in January, 1784.
Eastward of this point stands a very handsome
old tenement of great size and breadth, presenting
a front of polished ashlar to the street, surmounted
by dormer windows. Over the main entrance to
Boswell?s Court (so named from a doctor who resided
there about the close of the last century)
there is a shield, and one of those pious legends
so peculiar to most old houses in Scottish burghs.
0. LORD. IN. THE. IS. AL. MI. TRAIST. Andthis
edifice uncorroborated tradition asserts to have
been the mansion of the. Earls of Bothwell.
A tall narrow tenement immediately to the west
of the Assembly Hall forms the last ancient building
on the south side of the street. It was built in
1740, by hfowbray of Castlewan, on the site of ?
a venerable mansion belonging to the Countess
Dowager of Hyndford (Elizabeth daughter of
John Earl of Lauderdale), and from him it passed,
about 1747, into the possession of William Earl of
Dumfries, who served in the Scots Greys and Scots
Guards, who was an aide de camp at the battle of
Dettingen, and who succeeded his mother, Penelope,
countess in her own right, and afterwards, by the
death of his brother, as Earl of Stair. He was succeeded
in it by his widow, who, within exactly a
year and day of his death, married the Hon.
Alexander Gordon (son of the Earl of Aberdeen),
who, on his appointment to the bench in 1784,
assumed the title of Lord Rockville.
He was the last man of rank who inhabited this
stately uld mansion ; but the narrow alley which
gives?access to the court behind bore the name
of Rockville Close. Within it, and towards the
west there towered a tall substantial edifice once
the residence of the Countess of Hyndford, and
sold by her, in 1740, to Henry Bothwell of Glencome,
last Lord Holyroodhouse, who died at his
mansion in the Canongate in 1755.
The corner of the street is now terminated by
the magnificent hall built in 1842.3, at the cost
of &16,000 for the accommodation of the General
Assembly, which sits here annually in May, presided
over by a Commissioner, who is always a
Scottish nobleman, and resides in Holyrood Palace,
where he holds royal state, and gives levCes in the
gallery of the kings of Scotland. The octagonal
