34 EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
description. It has not yet been hackneyed by familiarity, and has sti11 all
the freshness of youth, while worthy from its utility, vastness, and variety to
rank in importadce with the time-honoured edifice beside it. The statue to
Watt the engineer, on the opposite building, marks the new School of Arts,
beside which is the Phrenological Museum. Close at hand was North College
Street, and here, at the head of College Wynd, Sir Walter Scott was born, in
a house Iong since taken down, the site of which is now crossed by Chambers
Strec It stood cl se
COLLEGE WYND.
D the near building on the rig11 of the Engraving. P i
along with this we may mention George Square, perhaps the most silent
square in the whole city, but which speaks eloquently nevertheless when we
remember that No. 25 was the house of Walter Scott, W.S., the father of Sir
Walter, and that here the great noveIist spent his studious boyhood, and had
that, early illness which, allowing him as it did the liberty of unlimited reading,
was perhaps even more than his raids to Liddesdaie the making of him.
(The house is that on the extreme right of the picture.) No. 20 was the
house of Robert Syme, better known as Timothy Tickler. We well remember
often seeing this venerable gentleman, then,between seventy and eighty years
of age, nearly seven feet high, straight as a statue, with hair white as snow,
cheek a rosebud, keen eye, aquiline nose, and military bearing, pacing
leisurely along the Meadows or the Square a little before the dinner hour
He was Professor Wilson's uncle by the mother's side, and lived till he had
reached his ninety-fourth year. Of the speeches attributed to him in the
