PREFACE.
THE Work now brought .to a close, under the title of MEMORIALOSF EDINBURIGN HTH E
In the gratification
of a taste for the pictaresque.relics of the past, with which the old Scottish capital
abounds, a considerable number of sketches and drawings accumulated, which acquired a
value altogether apart from any claim to artistic merit, when the subjects of many of
them disappeared in the course of the radical changes wrought of late years on the Old
Town. Believing that the interest which these monuments of former ages are calculated
to excite commands the sympathy of a numerous and increasing class, I was induced to
prepare a selection of the drawings for engraving, and to draw up a slight descriptive
narrative to accompany them ;- but the absence’ of desirable information in other works
on the subject, and the accumulation of a good deal of curious material, led to a total
change of plan, the result of,which is now before the reader.
’ OLDENT IME,w as begun years ago, not with the pen, but the pencil.
On referring to the works already published on the antiquities of Edinburgh, none of
them seemed to embrace the object in view. ’ Maitland’s history presents a huge accumulation
of valuable, and generally accurate, but nearly undigested materials ; while Amot
furnishes a lively and piquant rvacirnento of his .predecessor’s labours, embellished With
occasional illustrations derived from hie own researches ; but, with one or two slight
exceptions, neither of them have attempted to describe what they were themsehea
cognisant of. Both of the historians of Edinburgh seem, indeed, to have racked, that
invaluable’ faculty of the topographer, styled by phrenologists locality, and the consequence
is, that we are treated with a large canvas, composed in the historic vein of high art,
when probably most readers would much’ rather have preferred a cabinet picture -of the
Dutch cichool. In striking contrast taeither of these, are Mr Robert Chambers’u delightful
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