L UCKENBOOTHS AND PARLIAMENT CLOSE. I97
Bow, . . the buildings on each side of the way being all of squared stone, five,
six, and seven stories high.” When I came first into the High Street,” says another
traveller, writing more than a century after him, ‘‘ I thought I had never seen anything
of the kind more magn3cent.” Gradually, however, the traveller learned, from his
civic entertainers, to mingle suggestions of improvement with his admiration. ‘‘ You
have seen,” says Topham, writing from Edinburgh in 1776, “the famous street at
Lisle, la Rue Royale, leading to the port of Tournay, which is said to be the finest in
Europe, but which, I can assure you, is not to be compared either in length or breadth
to the High Street at Edinburgh.” He adds, however, ‘‘ would they be at the expense
of removing some buildings which obstruct the view, nothing could be conceived .
more magnificent.’’ ’ Similar remarks might be quoted from later travellers ; we shall
only add that of our greatest living landscape painter, k n e r , expressed since the removal
of the Luckenbooths, that ‘‘ the old High Street of Edinburgh was only surpassed in
Europe by that of Oxford” Imposing as the effect of the High Street still is,-
although scarcely a year passes without the loss of some one or other of its ancient and
characteristic features,-we doubt if its broad and unencumbered thoroughfare will ever
again meet with the praise that it received from travellers who had to pass through the
narrow defile of the Purses, or thread their way along by the still more straitened
Krames that clung on to the old church walls. So far as picturesque effect is concerned,
this improvement very much resembles a reform effected of late years in Salisbury
Cathedral. An ancient screen which divided the Lady Chapel from the choir had long
been an eyesore to certain men of taste, who found in the glimpses of the little chapel
that they caught beyond, far too much left to their imagination. It was accordingly
demolished, under the direction of Mr Jamea Wyatt, when, to their surprise, much of the
rich effect of the chapel vanished along with the screen, and they began to think that it
might have been a part of the original designer’s intention to conceal the plain shafts of
the pillars, while their capitals, and the rich groinings of the roof, alone appeared. We
strongly suspect our city reformers fancied that every bit of the old church which the
Luckenbooths concealed was to disclose features as rich as the fine Gothic crown they
saw towering over the chimney-tops.’
The ancient buildings that occupied the middle of the High Street, between the
Tolbooth and the Cross, formed a range of irregular and picturesque lands, nearly all
with timber fronts and lofty peaked gables projecting into the street. Through one of
these, an alley, sometimes called the Old-Kirk Style, led from the head of Advocates’
Close to the old north porch of St Giles’s Church, obliterated in the remodelling of that
venerable edifice. This ancient alley is alluded to by the name it generally received
to the last in Dunbar’s Address to the Merchants of Edinburgh, written about the year
Letters from the North of Scotland, 1754.
Topham’s Lettem, p. 8. There is an amusing tendency in many-minds to regard every near object aa obstructing
the &U, without the least consideration of what liea beyond it. We heard lately of an English lady, who, on her arrival
in Edinburgh, took up her abode in fashionable lodgings at the west end of Princea Street. On B friend inquiring how
she liked the proapect from her window, she replied, that the view would really be very fine, were it not for that great
castle standing in the way I
The chief ornament of Edinburgh is St Giles’s Church, a magnificent Gothic pile, the beauties of which are almost
wholly concealed by the Louses in ita near neighbourhood, particularly the Luckenbooths, which, it is expted, will
shortly be pulled down.”-Campbell’s Journey, 1802, rol. 5. p. 125.
a
