Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time

All Books Kay's Originals Vol. 1 Kay's Originals Vol. 2 Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time Edinburgh Past and Present Old and New Edinburgh Vol. I Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II Old and New Edinburgh Vol. III Old and New Edinburgh Vol. IV Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI

Go to: « Kay's Originals Vol. 1 « Kay's Originals Vol. 2 Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time Cover Title Pages Contents List of Illustrations Preface Part 1: Historical Associations Part 1 Ch 1: Earliest Traditions Part 1 Ch 2: From The Accession of The Stuarts to the Death of James III Part 1 Ch 3: From the Accession of James IV to the Battle of Flodden Part 1 Ch 4: From the Battle of Flodden to the Death of James V Part 1 Ch 5: From the Death of James V to the Abdication of Queen Mary Part 1 Ch 6: From the Accession of James VI to the Restoration of Charles II Part 1 Ch 7: Historical Incidents after the Restoration Part 2: Local Antiquities and Traditions Part 2 Ch 1: The Castle Part 2 Ch 2: King's Stables, Castle Barns, and Castle Hill Part 2 Ch 3: The Lawnmarket Part 2 Ch 4: The Tolbooth, Luckenbooths, and Parliament Close Part 2 Ch 5: The High Street Part 2 Ch 6: The High Street and Nether Bow Part 2 Ch 7: The Canongate and Abbey Sanctuary Part 2 Ch 8: St Leonard's, St Mary's Wynd, and The Cowgate Part 2 Ch 9: The West Bow and Suburbs Part 2 Ch 10: Leith, and The New Town Part 2 Ch 11: Ecclesiastical Antiquities Appendix » Edinburgh Past and Present » Old and New Edinburgh Vol. I » Old and New Edinburgh Vol. II » Old and New Edinburgh Vol. III » Old and New Edinburgh Vol. IV » Old and New Edinburgh Vol. V » Old and New Edinburgh Vol. VI

I 62 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH. and when in the company of the ablest men in this country, his whole desigu was to show them how little he thought of them.”’ It is told of Johnson, that being on one occasion in a company where Hume was present, a mutual friend offered to introduce him to the philosopher, when the intolerant moralist roared out, “No, sir!” It is not therefore without reason that Mr Burton questions if Johnson would have been able to “sleep 0’ nights,” had he learned that he had been entrapped into the arch-infidel’s very mansion ! ’ In Hume’s day the North Loch lay directly below the windows of his house, with gardens extending to its margin, aud a fine open country beyond, diversified with woodland and moor, where now the modern streets of the Scottish capital cover a space vastly exceeding its whole ancient boundaries for many centuries. Hume appears to have derived great pleasure from the magnificent prospect which his elevated residence secured to him ; yet although he writes to Dr Robertson in 1759, ((1h ave the strangest reluctance to change places,” he was, nevertheless, one of the earliest to emigrate beyond the North Loch. In 1770 he commenced building his new house, which was the -first erected in South St David Street, and in which he died. The old dwelling, however, was not immediately abandoned to the plebeian population ; Boswell, as we have seen, succeeded him, and he was followed in its occupancy by the Lady Wallace, Dowager, relict of Sir Thomas Wallace of Cragie.’ The floor below Hume’s house was the property of Andrew Macdowal, Esq., advocate, author of the “ Institutional Law of Scotland,” a ponderous mass of legal learning in three folio volumes. On his elevation to the bench in 1755, under the title of Lord Bankton, his lordship,-in order to adapt the flat in the Lawnmarket to his increased dignity and rank,-purchased the one below it, on a level with the court, and united the two by an elegant internal stair of carved mahogany, which has since been displaced by a more homely substitute, on the conversion of the old judge’s dwelling into a printing office. Immediately to the east of the lofty range of buildings fronting James’s Court, houses of an early date, and of considerable variety of character, again occur. The fist of these, represented at‘the head of the chapter, is a tall and narrow stone land, of a marked character, and highly adorned, according to the style prevailing at the close of the sixteenth century. The house belonged of old to Sir Robert Bannatyne, chaplain, and after passing through several hands, was purchased in 1631 by Thomas Gladstone, merchant burgess, who appears to have built the present stone front. On a shield below the crow-steps of the west 1 Topham’s Letters, London, 1776, p. 139. a We kpve adhered ia thia to the biographer of Hume, who assigns the same house to both. It is certain that Hume had a ten& of the name of Boswell ; and as the house below waa a large residence, consisting of two flats, the probability of Boswell occupying the single flat seems confirmed by the fact that he “regretted sincerely that he had not also a room for Mr Scott,” afterwards Lord Stowell, who had accompanied the doctor from Newcastle to the White Horse Inn, Edinburgb. “ Boswell,” he writea, “ has very handsome and spacious rooms, lever with the ground at one side of the house, and on the other four stories high,”+ remark only explicable, on this idea, by supposing him to refer to the peculiar character of the building, as deacribed above. ’ 80 late aa 1771, his brother, Joseph Hume, Esq. of Ninewells, occupied a fashionable residence in the Mth flat of an old house that stood at the junction of the Lawnmarket with Melbourne Place. The following notice of the residence of Lady Ninewells, the grandmother, a8 we presume, of Hume, occum in a series of accounts of B judicial sale of property in Parliament Close, in the year 1680 :-“ The house presently possest be the Lady Ninewells, being the fourth storie above the entrie from the long transa of the tenement upon the east aide of the kirk-heugh, consisting of four fire rowmea, with ane sellar, at a yearly rent of ane hundred fourtie and four pounds Scotts.” Dr fohnaon’s evidence, however, contradicts this.

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