328 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGH.
dington’s mansion as having been the residence of the French embassy in the reign of
Queen Mary, had assigned to this antique fabric the name of ‘‘ The French Ambassador’s
Chapel,” which we have retained in the accompanying engraving, in the absence of any
more distinctive title. An ornamental pediment, which surmounted its western wing, was
decorated with the heads of the Twelve Apostles, rudely sculptured along the outer cornice ;
and on the top a figure was seated astride, with the legs extended on either side of the
cornice. It is supposed to have been designed as a representation of our Saviour, but the
upper part of the figure had long been broken away. This pediment, as well as the sculptured
lintel of the main doorway, and other ornamental portions of the edifice, were removed
to Coat’s House, and are now built into different parts of the north wing of that old mansion.
But the sculpture which surmounted the entrance of this curious building was no less
worthy of notice than its singular pediment; for, while the one was adorned with the
sacred emblems of the Apostles and the figure of our Saviour, the other exhibited no less
mysterious and horrible a guardian than a Warwolf. It was, in truth, with its motto,
SPERAVETI h E N I - n o unmeet representative of Bunyan’s Wicket Gate, with a hideous
monster at the door, enough to frighten poor Mercy into a swoon, and nothing but Christian
charity and Apostolic graces within ; though the latter, it must be confessed, did not
include that of beauty. U I shall end here four-footed beasts,” says Nisbet, ‘‘ only mentioning
one of a monstrous form carried with us. Its body is like a wolf, having four feet
with long toes and a tail; it is headed like a man;-called in our books a warwolfpassant,-
and three stars in chief argent; which are also to be seen cut upon a stone above an old
entry of a house in the Cowgate in Edinburgh, above the foot of Libberton’s Wynd, which
belonged formerly to the name of Dickison, which name seems to be from the Dicksons by
the stars which they carry.”’ Who the owner of these rare armorial bearings was does
not now appear from the titles, but the style of ornament that prevailed on the building
renders it exceedingly probable that it formed the residence of some of the eminent ecclesiastical
dignitaries with which the Cowgate once abounded. The destruction of the venerable
alley, Libberton’s Wynd, that formed the chief thoroughfare to the High Street
from this part of the Cowgate, involved in its ruin an old tenement situated behind the
curious building described above, which possessed peculiar claims to interest as the birthplace
of Henry Mackenzie, “ The Man of Feeling.’’ It was pointed out by himself as
the place of his nativity, at a public meeting which he attended late in life. He resided
at a later period, with his own wife and family, in his father’s house, on one of the floors of
WLeZZan’s Land, a lofty tenement which forms the last in the range of houses on the north
side of the street, where it joins the Grassmarket. This building acquires peculiar interest
from the associations we now connect with another of its tenants. Towards the middle
of last century, the first floor was occupied by a respectable clergyman’s widow, Mrs Syme,
a sister of Principal Robertson, who maintained an establishment there for the accommodation
of a few boarders in this genteel and eZigi6Ze quarter of the town. At that time
Henry Brougham, Esq. of Brougham Hall, arrived in Edinburgh, and took up his quarters
under Mrs Syme’s roof. He had wandered northward to seek, in change of scene,
some alIeviation of grief consequent on the death of his betrothed mistress. It chanced,
Nisbet’s Heraldry, voL i. p. 335. The shield, however, so far differs from Nisbet’s description, that it bears a
creaccnt betwtcn tuw stara in chief.
