348 MEMORIALS OF EDINBURGN.
is on the west side of the square, No. 25, and there the lively and curious boy grew up to
manhood under the kindly surveillance of the good old pair. The little back room still
remains, ‘( That early den,” with the young antiquary’s beginnings of the future Abbotsford
collection, described so piquantly in Lockhart’s life of him, by the pen of a female
friend ; and where Lord Jeffrey found him on his first visit, long years ago, “ surrounded
with dingy books.’’ Though shorn of all the strange relics that young Walter Scott
gathered there, it possesses one valuable memento of the boy. On one of the window
panes his name is still seen, inscribed with.a diamond in a school-boy hand; and other
panes of glass, which contained juvenile verses traced in the same durable manner, have
been removed to augment the treasures of modern collectors. On the east side of George
Square lies Windmill Street, the name of which preserves the record of an earlier period
when a windmill occupied its site, and raised the water from the Borough Loch to supply
the brewers of the Society. The Incorporation of Brewers has long been dissolved, and
the Borough Loch now forms the rich pasturage and the shady walks of the Meadows ;
while along its once marshy margin has since been built Buccleuch Place, where the
exclusive faRhionable5 of the southern district long maintained their own ball-room and
assemblies.
The impossibility of converting this pendicle of the Borough Nuir to any useful purpose
as private property, while it continued in its original state as a Loch, fortunately
prevented its alienation, while nearly every other portion of the valuable tract of land that
once belonged to the borough passed into private hands. At the western extremity of
the Borough Muir, the venerable tower of Merchiston still stands entire, the birth-place
of John Napier, the inventor of the Logarithms, to whom, according to Hume, the title
of a great man is more justly due than to any other whom his country ever produced.
The ancestors of the great Scottish philosopher were intimately connected with Edinburgh.
The three first Napiers of Nerchiston successively filled the office of provost in
the reigns of James 11. and III., and other connections of the family rose to the same
civic dignity. Their illustrious descendant was born at Merchiston Castle in the year
1550, on the eve of memorable changes whereof even the reserved and modest student
had to bear his share. The old fortalice of Merchiston, reared at an easy distance from
the Scottish capital, lay in the very field of strife. Round its walls the Douglas wars raged
for years, and the most striking incidents of the philosopher’s early life intermingle with
the carnage of that merciless feud. On the 2d of April 1572, he was betrothed to Elizabeth,
daughter of Sir James Stirling of Keir, and on the 5th of the following month,
“ The cumpany of Edinburgh pad furth and seigit Merchingstoun ; quha wan all the
pairtis thairof except the dungeoun, in the quhilk wes certane suddartis in Leith; the
hail1 houssis wes spoulzeit and brunt, to haue amokit the men of the dungeoun out ; but
the cuntrie seand the fyre, raise with the pover of Leith and put the men of Edinburgh
thairfra without slauchter, bot syndrie hurt.” The keep of Merchiston formed, indeed, the
key of the south approach to the capital, so that whoever triumphed it became the butt of
their opponents’ enmity. It lay near enough to be bombarded from the Castle walls by
Sir William Kirkaldy, though a cousin of its owner, because ~omoef the king’s men held
it for a time, and intercepted the provisions coming to the town. Again and again were the
1 Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 295.
