234 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
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the evil passions indulged in by many, Hamilton
draws the contrast thus :-
U Unlike, 0 Eglintoun ! thy happy breast,
Calm and serene, enjoys the heavenly guest ;
From the tumultuous rule of passions freed,
Pure in thy thought and spotless in thy deed ;
In virtues rich, in goodness unconfined,
Thou shin?st a fair example to thy kind ;
Sincere and equal to thy neighbour?s name,
How switl to praise ! how guiltless to defame !
Bold in thy presence bashfulness appears,
And backward merit loses all its fears.
Supremely blest by Heaven-Heaven?s richest grace
Confest is thine, an early blooming race ;
Whose pleasing smiles shall guardian wisdom arm,
Divine instruction ! taught of thee to charm ;
What transports shall they to thy soul impart
(The conscious transports of a parent?s heart),
When thou behold?st them of each grace possest,
And sighing youths imploring to be blest ;
After thy image formed, with charms like thine,
Or in the visit, or the dance to shine!
Thrice happy who succeed their mother?s praise,
The lovely Eglintounes of other days.?
Save Lady Frances, all her daughters were well
married; but her eldest son, Earl Alexander, was
her especial favourite. In his youth, she said, she
preserved the goodness of his nature by keeping
his mind pure and untainted, and giving him just
ideas of moral life. She is said never to have
refused him a request but once. On the accession
of George 111. to the throne, the young earl was
appointed one of the lords of the bedchamber.
Proud of his stately mother and of her noble figure,
he begged that she would walk in the procession
zt his Majesty?s coronation ; but the Countess-a
true Jacobite-excused herself, that she was too
old to wear robes now. His melancholy death at
the hands of Mungo Campbell, in 1769, well nigh
overwhelmed her. Indeed, she never entirely recovered
from the shock of seeing her beloved son
borne home mortally wounded.
During Dr. Johnson?s visit to her, it came out that
she was mamed before he was born ; upon which
she smartly and graciously said to him that she
might have been his mother, and now adopted him ;
and at parting she embraced him, a mark of affection
and condescension which made a lasting impression
upon the mind of the great literary bear. In 1780
she died at Auchans, at the age of ninety-one, preserving
to the last her grandeur of mien and her marvellous
purity of complexion, a mystery to all the
women of her time, and the secret of which was said
to be that she periodically bathed her face with sow?s
milk/ ?? I have seen a portrait,? says Chambers,
?(taken in her eighty-first year, in which it is observable
that her skin is of exquisite delicacy and
tint. Altogether the Countess was a woman of
ten thousand! . . . . One last trait maynow
be recorded : in her ladyship?s bedroom was hung
a portrait of her sovereign de jure, the ill-starred
Charles Edward, so situated as to be the first object
which met her sight on awaking in the morning.?
With the state leve?es of the old Earl of Leven
as High Commissioner at Fortune?s tavern the
ancient glories of the Stamp Office Close faded
away; but an unwonted spectacle was exhibited at
the head thereof in 1812-a public execution.
On the night of the 31st December, 1811, a
band of young artisans and idlers, most of them
under twenty years of age, but so numerous and
so well organised as to set the regular police of the
city at defiance, sallied forth, about eleven o?clock,
into the streets, then crowded as usual at that
festive season, and proceeded with bludgeons to
knock down and rob every person of decent appearance
who fell in their way-the least symptom
on the part of the victims to resist, or protect their
property, proving only a provocation to fresh outrages.
These desperadoes had full possession of
the streets till two in the morning, for the police,
who at that period were wretchedly insufficient,
w-ere rquted and dispersed from the commencement
of the murderous riot.
One watchman, who did his duty in a resolute
manner, was killed on the spot ; a great number of
persons were robbed, and a greater number dangerously,
some mortally, wounded. When the
police recovered from their surprise, assisted by
several gentlemen, a number of the rioters were
arrested, some with stolen articles in their possession,
and the chief ringleaders were soon after
discovered and taken into custody.
Four were tried and convicted; and three of
these young lads were sentenced to be hanged.
The magistrates had them executed on the zznd
of April, 181 2, on a gallows erected at the head of
the Stamp Office Close, in order to mark more
impressively the detestation of their crimes, and
because that place had been the chief scene of the
bloodshed during the riot.
A small work entitled ?? Notes of Conversations,?
with these young desperadoes, was afterwards published
by the Reverend W. Innes.
In 1821 the Stamp Office was removed from
this close to the new buildings erected at Waterloo
Place.
