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
. .
