High Street.] U?ARRISTON?S CLOSE. 223
the floors as a picture gallery or exhibition, a new
leature in the Edinburgh of the seventeenth century,
and long before any such idea had been
conceived in France, England, or any other
country. Some of his best works were in possession
of the late Andrew Bell, engraver, the originator
of the ?? Encyclopzdia Britannica,? who married
his granddaughter. ?For some years after the
Revolution,? says Pinkerton, ? he was the only
painter in Scotland, and had a very great run of
business. This brought him into a hasty and
.incorrect manner.? So
here, in the Advocates? -* ~ Close, in the dull and
anorose Edinburgh of
the seventeenth cendury,
was the fashionable
lounge of the dilettanti,
.the resort of rank and
beauty-a quarter from
which the haut ton of the
,present day would shrink
with aversion.
He died at Prestonpans
in the year 1730,
in his eighty-fifth year,
after having witnessed
as startling a series of
political changes as ever
occurred in a long lifetime.
Taking the ancient
.alleys seriatim, Roxburghe
Close comes
next, numbered as 341,
High Street, and. so
- -_
-- = --_= -- -+-
next we come to in descending the north side of
the street, remains only in name, the houses on
both sides being entirely new, and its old steep
descent broken at intervals by convenient flights
of steps; but until r868 it was nearly unchanged
froin its ancient state, some relics of which still
remain.
It had handsome fronts of carefully-polished
ashlar, with richly-decorated doorways with pious
legends on their lintels, to exclude witches, fairies,
and all manner of evil ; there were ornate dormer
named, it may COnfi- HOUSE OF LORD ADVOCATE STEWART, AT THE FOOT
dently be supposed OF ADVOCATES? CLOSE, w e s ~ SIDE.
(though it cannot be
proved as a fact) from having contained the town
residence of some ancient Earl of Roxburghe.
All its ancient features have disappeared, save a
door built up with a handsome cut legend in
raised Roman letters :-?WHATEVER ME BEFALL
I THANK THE LORD OF ALL. J. M., 1586.? This
is said to have been the dwelling-place of the
Roxburghe family, but by tradition only. If true,
it takes the antiquary back to the year in which
.Sir Walter Kerr of Cessford (ancestor of the Dukes
.of Roxburghe), ? baron of Auld-Roxburghe, the
.castle thereof and the lands of Auldtonbum, &c.,?
died at a great age, the last survivor, perhaps, of
the affray in which Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch
gerished at Edinburgh.
Warriston?s Close (anciently called Bruce?s), the
windows on the roofs
with steep crow-stepped
gables, black with the
smoke and storms of
centuries.
MIHI . SEMPER. DEUS.
1583,? was the legend
which first caught the
eye above a door of a
tenement on the west ?
side, long occupied bj
James Murray, Lord
Philiphaugh, raised to
the bench November Ist,
1689, without having
any predecessor, being
0n.e of the set of judges
nominated after the Re- ,
volution. After being
chosen member of Parliament
for Selkirk in
1681, he had become
an object of special
jealousy to the Scottish
Cavalier Government.
He was imprisoned in
1684, and under terror
? QUI . ERrr . ILLE .
of being tortured in the iron boots, before the
Privy Council in the high Chamber below the
Parliament House, he gave evidence against those
who were concerned in the Rye House Plot.
Lord Philiphaugh had the character of being an
upright judge, but the men of his time never forgot
or forgave the weakness that made him stoop to
save his life, though many of them might no doubt
have acted in the same way, the Scottish Privy
Council of that time being a species of Star
Chamber that did not stand on trifles.
Farther down the close was another edifice, the
lintel of which like some others that were in the
same locality, has been with great good taste
rebuilt, as a lintel, into the extensive printing and
publishing premises of the Messrs. Chambers, a
