Fanester?s Wynd.] THE ?MIRROR? CLUB. rzr
i ?The Diurnal of Occurrents? records, that in
1566, John Sinclair, Bishop of Brechin, Dean of
Restalrig, and Lord President of the College of
Justice, died in Forrester?s Wynd, in the house of
James Mossman, probably the same man who was a
goldsmith in Edinburgh at that time, and whose
father, also Jarnes Mossrnan, enclosed with the
present four arches the crown of Scotland, by
order of James V., when Henry VIII. closed
the crown of England. In consequence of the
houses being set on fire by the *Castle guns under
Kirkaldy, in 1572, it was ordered that all the
thatched houses between Beith?s J7ynd and St.
Giles?s should be unroofed, and that all stacks of
heather should be carried away from the streets
Fleshmarket Close ; but oftener, perhaps, in Lucky
Dunbar?s, a house situated in an alley that led
between Liberton?s Wynd and that of Forrester?s
Wynd. This Club commenced its publication of
the Mirror in January, 1729, and terminated it in
May, 1780. It was a folio sheet, published weekly
at three-halfpence. The *Lounger, to which Lord
Craig contributed largely, was commenced, by the
staff of the Mirror, on the 6th ot February, 1785,
and continued weekly till the 6th of January, 1787.
paid to their morals, behaviour, and every branch
of education.?
In this quarter Turk?s Close, Carthrae?s, Forrester?s,
and Beith?s Wynds, all stood on the slope
between Liberton?s Wynd and St. Giles?s Church ;
but every stone of these had been swept away many
years before the great breach made by the new
bridge was projected. Forrester?s Wynd occurs so
often in local annals that it must have been a place
of some consideration.
JOHN DOWIE?S TAVERN. (Fs~m fk Engraving in How?$ YearBwk.?)
Among the members of this literary Club were Mr.
Alexander Abercrombie, afterwards Lord Abercrombie
; Lord Bannatyne ; Mr. George Home,
Clerk of Session ; Gordon of Newhall ; and a Mr.
George Ogilvie ; among their correspondents were
Lord Hailes, Mr. Baron Hurne, Dr. Beattie, and
many other eminent literary men of the time ; but
of the IOI papers of the Lounger, fifty-seven are
the production of Henry Mackenzie, including his
general review of Burns?s poems, already referred to.
In Liberton?s Wynd, we find from the Ediduygh
Advertiser of 1783, that the Misses Preston,
daughters of the late minister of Narkinch, had a
boarding school for young ladies, whose parents
?may depend that the greatest attention will be
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