OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. (South Bridge. 378
then paid for the dean?s gown. This Hugh Blair was
the grandson of the eminent Covenanting clergyman
Robert Blair, who accompanied the Scottish army
into England in 1640, and assisted at the negotiations
which led to the Peace of Ripon; and he
was the grandfather of his namesake, author of the
famous Sermons and ficttires on 3dZes-fiitres.
One of the earliest movements of any importance
in the history of the company was its acquisition
.of a hall. Bailie Robert Blackwood, who was master
in 169i, found a large mansion in the Congate, belonging
to Robert Macgill, Viscount Oxenford, the
price of which would be about IZ,OOO merks, or
A670 sterling ; and this house the company purrhased
with subscriptions. It was a large quadrangle,
surrounding a courtyard, and in a portion
.of it several persons of rank and position had apartments,
including the widow of the temble old
?persecutor,? Sir Thomas Dalyell of Binns. It
contained one large apartment, that was adopted
as a hall, which one of the company, Alexander
Brand, a bailie of the city-who had a manufactory
for stamping Spanish leather with gold, then used
for the decoration of rooms, before paper-hangings
were known-liberally offered to decorate, and
only to charge what was due over and above his
own contribution of A150 Scots. ?? Ten years afterwards,
when accounts came to be settled with the
then Sir Alexander Brand, it appeared that a
hundred and nineteen skins of gold leather with a
black ground had been used, at a total expense of
A253 Scots, including the manufacturer?s contribution.
There was also much concernment about a
piece of waste ground behind; but the happy
thought occurred of converting it into a bowlinggreen
for the use of the members in the first place,
.and the public in the second. Many years afterwards
we find Allan Ramsay making Horatian
.allusions to this place of recreation, telling us
that now in winter, douce folk were no longer
seen using the biassed bowls on Thomson?s Green
(Thornson being a subsequent tenant). It is not
unworthy of notice,? continues Dr. Chambers,
?that from the low state of the arts in Scotland,
the bowls required for this green had to be
brought from abroad. It is gravely reported to
the company on the 6th of March, 1693, that the
bowls are ?upon the sea homeward.? Ten pairs
cost &6 4s. 3d. Scots.?
Brand got himself into trouble in 1697 for
making what were called ? donations ? to the Pnvy
Council. In 1693, he, together with Sir Thomas
Kennedy of Kirkhill, Provost in 1685, and 6ir
William Binning, Provost in 1676, had contracted
with the national Government for a supply of 5,000
,
stand of arms at a pound each ; but when abroad
for their purchase, he alleged that the arms could
not be got under twenty-six shillings a stand. To
obtain payment of the extra sum (tf;1,500), the
two knights bribed the Earls of Linlithgow and
Breadalbane by a gift of 250 guineas. Hence, when
the affair was discovered, the then contractors, ?fox
the compound fault of contriving bribery and de.
faming the nobles in question,? were cast in heavy
fines-Kennedy, in A800, Binning in A300, and
Brand in A500, ? and to be imprisoned till payment
was made.?
It is long since the company?s connection with the
Cowgate ceased, and even the house they occupied
there has passed away, being removed to make
room for a pier of George IV.?s Bridge; and in
that quarter no memorial of the company now
remains but the name of Merchant Street, applied
to a petty line of buildings behind the Cowgate ;
but the company has still a title to ground rents in
that part of the city.
Rich members died, leaving bequests to the
company for the relief of decayed brethren ; but
so wealthy and prosperous was the body, that
when a legacy of A;3,5oo was left to them in 1693
by Patrick Aikinhead, a Scottish merchant of Dantzig,
they had not a single member in need of monetary
aid ; and soon after, the company became engaged
in the erection of a hospital for the education
of the daughters of the less prosperous members, on
the ground now occupied by the Industrial Museum.
Though originally designed by Mrs. Mary Erskine,
a scion of the House of Mar, the principal expense
of the institution fell on the company, and the
governors were made a body corporate by an Act
of Parliament in 1707.
In 1723, a merchant named George Watson,
who, in 1696, had commenced life as a clerk with
Sir John Dick, died and left the company AI 2,000
sterling for children of the other sex, and enabled
them to found the hospital which still bears his
name.
After the Union, long years followed ere national
enterprise or industry found a fair field for action,
and produced the results that created the Edinburgh
of to-day ; and it was not till the reign of
George 111. that her merchants, like those elsewhere,
had ceased in any degree to depend upon
prohibitions and the exclusive rights of dealing
in merchandise.
In the eighteenth century a considerable aristocratic
element was infused into mercantile life in
Edinburgh. ?To take the leading firms,? says
Chambers, ?among the silk mercers: Of John
Hope and Company, the said John Hope was a
THE SCHOOL OF ARE. 379 South Bridge.]
called Adam Square. In those days the ground
in front of these was an open space, measuring
about 250 feet one way by zoo the other, nearly
to Robertson?s Close in the Cowgate, which was
concealed by double rows of trees.
In one of these houses there resided for many
years, and died on the 28th July, 1828, Dr. Andrew
Duncan, First Physician to His Majesty for Scotland;
and an eminent citizen in his day, so much
so that his funeral was a public one. ?The custom
of visiting Arthur?s Seat early on the morning
of the 1st of May is, or rather was, observed with
great enthusiasm by the inhabitants of Edinburgh,?
says the editor of ? Kay?s Portraits.? ? Dr.
younger son of Hope of Rankeillour, in Fife. Of
Stewart and Lindsay, the former was the son of
Charles Stewart of Ballechin, and the latter a
younger son of Lindsay of Wormiston. Among the
leading drapers : In the firm of Lindsay and Douglas,
the former was a younger son of Lindsay of Eaglescairnie,
and the latter of Douglas of Garvaldfoot.
Of Dundas, Inglis, and Callender, the first was a son
of Dundas of Fingarth, in Stirlingshire, the family
from which the Earl of Zetland and Baron Amesbury
are descended ; the second was a younger
son of Sir John Inglis of Cramond, and succeeded
to that baronetage, which, it may be remarked,
took its rise in an Edinburgh merchant of the
seventeenth century. Another eminent clothdealiog
firm, Hamilton and Dalrymple, comprehended
John Dalrymple, a younger brother of the wellknown
Lord Hailes and a grandson of the first
Lord Stair. He was at one time Master of the
Merchant Company. In a fourth firm, Stewart,
Wallace, and Stoddart, the leading partner was a
.son of Stewart of Dunearn.?
The Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce and
Manufactures is an offshoot of the old Merchant
Company in 1786, and consists of a chairman and
deputy,with about thirty directors and other officers,
and has led the van in patronising and promoting
liberal measures in trade and commerce generally.
The schools of the Edinburgh Merchant Company
are among the most prominent institutions
of the city at this day.
More than twenty years behre the erection of the
South Bridge, the celebrated Mr. Robert Adam, of
Maryburgh in Fifeshire, from whose designs many of
the principal edifices in Edinburgh were formed, and
who was appointed architect to the king in 1762,
built, on that piece of ground whereon the south-west
end of the Bridge Street abutted, two very large
and handsome houses, each with large bow-windows,
which, being well recessed back, and having the
College buildinas on the south, formed what was
at an expense within {is reach; and the idea was
the more favourably entertained because such a
scheme was already in full operation at Anderson?s
Institution in Glasgow, and the foundation of the
Edinburgh School of Art in the winter of 1821
was the immediate result.
With Mr. Horner many gentlemen well-known
in the city cordially co-operated ; among these were
Sir David Brewster, Principal of the University,
Dr. Brunton, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Murray, Professor
Pillans, Mr. Playfair, architect, Mr. Robert
Bryson, and Mr. James Mylne, brassfounder.
To enable young tradesmen to become acquainted
with the principles or chemistry and
Duncan was one of the most regular in his devotion
to the Queen of May during the long period of
fifty years, and to the very last he performed his
wonted pilgrimage with all the spirit, if not the
agility, of his younger years On the 1st of May,
1826, two years before his death, although aged
eighty-two, he paid his annual visit, and on the
summit of the hill read a few lines of an address to
Alexander Duke of Gordon, the oldest peer then
alive.? The Doctor was the originator of the Caledonian
Horticultural Society, and the first projector
of a lunatic asylum in Edinburgh
Latterly the houses of Adam were occupied by
the Edinburgh Young Men?s Christian Association,
and the Watt Institution and School of Arts,
which was founded by Mr. Leonard Horner,
F.R.S., a native, and for many years a citizen, of
Edinburgh, the son of Mr. John .Horner, of Messrs.
Inglis and Horner, merchants, at the Cross. The
latter years of his useful life were spent in London,
where he died in 1864, but he always visited Edinburgh
from time to time, and evinced the deepest
interest in its welfare. In 1843 he published the
memoirs and correspondence of his younger brother,
the gifted Francis Horner (the friend of Lansdowne,
Jeffrey, and Brougham), who died at Pisa,
yet won a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey.
To an accidental conversation in 1821, in the
shop of Mr. Bryson, a watchmaker, the origin of
the school has been traced. Mr. Horner asked
whether the young men brought to Mr. Bryson?s
trade received any mathematical education, and
the latter replied that, ?it was seldom, if ever,
the case, and that daily experience showed the
want of this instruction; but that the expense
and usual hours of teaching mathematical classes
put it out of the power of working tradesmen to
obtain such education.? The suggestion then
occurred to Mr. Horner to devise a plan by which
such branches of science as would benefit the
mechanic might be taught at convenient hours and
. .
