30 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
Dr. James Momson of Glasgow, and others of simiIar mark and likelihood,
used to hang upon his lips like bees on mountain flowers,-and
SURGEONS’ mu,.
there were a wild beauty and fragrance in his utterances! Passing from
Nicolson Square through a pend, we come upon the Potterrow. Here
stood a U.P. Church, where for a lengthened time preached Dr. John
Ritchie, already referred to, whose sobriquet was VoIuntary John, a man of
rare powers of humour, great readiness of speech, and marvellous activity,
who moved through all Scotland like a meteor for several years advocating
the Voluntary cause, and returned regularly on Saturday night to address his
flock on the Sunday, as fresh and full as if he had never stirred from home.
And not far from this we light on memorials of two much better known men
of genius, Robert Burns and Thomas Campbell. On the east pavement of
Potterrow Robert Bums used to pace, and look upward to a window in the
west of the street, where lived Clarinda, his then goddess (interior and exterior
views of whose house in General’s Entry: now taken down, are shown in the
accompanying engravings). We don’t much admire this episode in the history
of the Scottish Bard. His feeling to Mrs. Maclehose was neither love nor
1 General’s Entry derives its name from General Monk, who inhabited a house, now extinct,
in the south-western corner.
