74 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
tional powers and pleasing manners are still remembered by a few of the
oldest denizens of the Scottish Metropolis. For a good many years Whiteford
House has been occupied by a large typefounding establishment, its
present tenants being the ‘ Marr Typefounding Company,’ formerly in New
Street j while the owner of the property is Mrs. Gosnell ( d e Sinclair), now
residing in London.
On the same side of the Canongate as Whiteford House, but much
higher up, is ‘ Seton’s Close,’ now numbered 267. ‘ Seton’s Land’ is mentioned
in a song embraced in a manuscript collection compiled about 1760,
and printed in the second volume of Chambers’s Traditions of Edzkbu~h,
where it is stated that there was another house in the now extinct Libberton’s
Wynd, distinguished by the name of ‘ Seton’s Land.’ The song celebrates
the charms of a certain ‘ bonnie Mally Lee,’ and the couplet which refers to
‘Seton’s Land’ runs as follows :-
‘ Frae Setun’s Land a Countess fair looked owre a window hie,
And pined to see the genty shape of bonnfe Mally Lee.’
Although the city of Edinburgh no longer contains any lapidarian record
of the family of Seton,-to say nothing of Pinkie in the neighbourhood of
Musselburgh,-we have only to cross the eastern border of the county, in
order to find several important indications of their former renown. The site
of the oid Palace of Seton, ‘ one of the glories of the Lothians,’ is occupied
by an uninteresting modern mansion in the English Baronial style, for which
we are indebted to a certain ‘barbarous Celt,’ by whom the earlier edifice
was most wantonly demolished about the year 1790. ‘Round about it, in
the shape of old walls and abutments, venerable trees and an ancient orchard,
are the scattered remains of the departed Palace ; but there remains one object
truly warthy of representing the ancient magnificence of the spot, in the ruins
of the Collegiate Church endowed by the House of Seton, which they proudly
placed, in the fulness of their patronising and protecting power, within the
cincture of their Palace walls.’ . , . ‘ Scotland owes many of her architectural
ornaments to the munificent taste of the family of Seton. They built Seton
Church, and the Palace adjoining it, which has now disappeared. They
built, according to their family historian, the old bridge of Musselburgh,
which tradition makes a Roman work. That peculiar and beautiful structure,
Winton House, was erected as a mansion for the head of the family. Lastly,
Alexander Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, who added the ornamental parts to
