190 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Great Fire.
while the weather changed rapidly ; the wind,
accompanied by rain, came in fierce and fitful
gusts, thus adding to the danger and harrowing
interest of the scene, which, from the great size of
the houses, had much in it that was wild and weird.
? About five o?clock,?? says Dr. James Browne, in
his ? Historical Sketch of Edinburgh,? ?the fire
had proceeded so far downwards in the building
occupied by the Coura~rf office, that the upper part
of the front fell inwards with a dreadful crash, the
concussion driving the flames into the middle of
the street. By this time it had communicated with
the houses on the east side of the Old Fish Market
Close, which it burned down in succession ; while
that occupied by Mr. Abraham Thomson, bookbindet,
which had been destroyed a few months
previously by fire and re-built, was crushed in at
one extremity by the fall of the gable. In the Old
Assembly Close it was still more destructive ; the
whole west side, terminating with the .king?s old
Stationery Warehouse, and including the Old Assembly
Hall, then occupied as a warehouse by
Bell and Bradfute, booksellers, being entirely consumed.
These back tenements formed one of the
most massive, and certainly not the least remarkable,
piles of building in the ancient city, and in
former times were inhabited by persons of the
greatest distinction. At this period they presented
a most extraordinary spectacle. A great
part of the southern Zand fell to the ground ; but a
lofty and insulated pile of side wall, broken in the
centre, rested in its fall, so as to form one-half of
an immense pointed arch, and remained for several
days in this inclined position.
?By nine o?clock the steeple of the Tron Church
was discovered to be on fire ; the pyramid became
a mass of flame, the lead of the roof poured over
the masonry in molten streams, and the bell fell
With a crash, as we have narrated, but the church
was chiefly saved by a powerful engine belonging
to the Board of Ordnance. The fire was now
stopped; but the horror and dismay of the people
increased when, at ten that night, a new one broke
forth in the devoted Parliament Square, in the attic
floor of a tenement eleven storeys in height, overlooking
the Cowgate. As this house was far to
windward of the other fire, it was quite impossible
that one could have caused the other-a conclusion
which forced itself upon the minds of all, together
with the startling belief that some desperate incendiaries
had resolved to destroy the city ; while
many went about exclaiming that it was a special
punishment sent from Heaven upon the people for
their sins.?? (Browne, p. 220; Courant of Nov. 18,
1824; &c.)
As the conflagration spread, St. Giles?s and the
Parliament Square resounded with dreadful echoes,
and the scene became more and more appalling,
from the enormous altitude of the buildings; all
efforts of the people were directed to saving the
Parliament House and the Law Courts, and by
five on the morning of Wednesday the scene is
said to have been unspeakably grand and terrific.
Since the English invasion under Hertford in
1544 no such blaze had been seen in the ancient
city. ? Spicular columns of flame shot up majestically
into the atmosphere, which assumed a lurid,
dusky, reddish hue ; dismay, daring, suspense,
fear, sat upon different countenances, intensely
expressive of their various emotions ; the bronzed
faces of the firemen shone momentarily from under
their caps as their heads were raised at each successive
stroke of the engines ; and the very element
by which they attempted to extinguish the conflagration
seemed itself a stream of liquid fire. The
County Hall at one time appeared like a palace of
light ; and the venerable steeple of St. Giles?s reared
itself amid the bright flames like a spectre awakened
to behold the fall and ruin of the devoted city.?
Among those who particularly distinguished themselves
on this terrible occasion were the Lord President,
Charles Hope of Granton ; the Lord Justice
Clerk, Boyle of Shewalton ; the Lord Advocate,
Sir Williani Rae of St. Catherine?s ; the Solicitor-
General, John Hope; the Dean of Faculty ; and
Mr. (afterwards Lord) Cockburn, the well-known
memorialist of his own times.
The Lord Advocate would seem to have been
the most active, and worked for some time at one
of the engines playing on the central tenement at
the head of the Old Assembly Close, thus exerting
himself to save the house in which he first saw the
light. All distinction of rank being lost now in
one common and generous anxiety, one of Sir
Wiiliam?s fellow-labourers at the engine gave him a
hearty slap on the back, exclaiming, at the same
time, ? Wee1 dune, my lord !I?
On the morning of Wednesday, though showers
of sleet and hail fell, the fire continued to rage with
fury in Conn?s Close, to which it had been communicated
by flying embers ; but there the ravages
of this unprecedented and calamitous conflagration
ended. The extent of the mischief done exceeded
all former example. Fronting the High Street
there were destroyed four tenements of six storeys
each, besides the underground storeys ; in Conn?s
Close, two timber-fronted ? lands,? of great antiquity
; in the Old Assembly Close, four houses of
seven storeys each ; in Borthwick?s Close, six great
tenements ; in the Old Fish Market Close, four of
