264 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
before them with licht torches,? on which Powrie,
as if consciencestricken, exclaimed to Wilson,
? Jesu ! Pate ! What na gate is this we are ganging
?
About 1780-9 the cardinal?s house was the
residence of Bishop Abernethy Drummond, whom
we have ,noticed as the theological opponent of
Bishop Hay, and hither he must have brought his
I trow it be not gude.?
wife, -the -heiress of
Hawthornden. This
divine occupied a high
place in the society of
his time, and was particularly
active in obtaining
the repeal of
the penal statbtes
against his church in
Scotland. Latterly the
house was divided, like
all its neighbours, into
a multitude of small
lodgings, where squalid
poor folks-chiefly Irish
-pined on parochial
allowance, and slept on
beds of straw mingled
with rags-?the terrible
exponent of our peculiar
phasis of civilisation.?
But very different was
the aspect of society
at the time when the
Edinburgh Gazette of
19th April, 1703, put
forth the following advertisement
:-
?There is a boarding-
school to be set up
in Blackfriars Wynd, in
/------
the 1st of August, 1877, the total expenditure was
A442,621 18s. 6d. ; receipts, A265,599 18s. gd. j
the unrecovered outlay, A177,ozz os. gd. ; and
the amount to the credit of the sinking fund account,
g6,752 14s. Iod.
Blackfriars Wynd was among the places ? improved;?
the east side was swept away and replaced
by buildings in the old Scottish style, one
CARDINAL BEATON?S nousE.
Robinson?s Land, upon the west side of the Wynd,
near the middle thereof, in the first door of the
stair leading to the said land, against the latter end
of May, or first of June next, when young ladies
and gentlemen may have all sorts of breeding that
is to be had in any part of Britain, and great care
taken of their conversation.?
Nearly all that we have described here has
been swept away by the trustees of the Edinburgh
Improvement Act, and the ancient Wynd is now
designated Blackfriars Street. By that Act, passed
in 1867, a tax was imposed, not exceeding fourpence
:n the pound, for a period of twenty years, and the
trustees were authorised to borrow, on the security
of that assessment, a total sum of g;35o,ooo. At
of which is the Ediuburgh
Industrial School,
instituted in July, 1847;
but, by a somewhat
shartsighted policy perhaps,
the west was left
untouched,andthe footway
there was found to
be so far below the
level of the street as
to necessitate its being
fenced off from
the camage-way by an
open railing, thus imparting
an incomplete
aspect to the thoroughfare.
Between these
old houses on the west
an extensive area was
thrown open betwyeen
Cant?s and Dickson?s
Closes, thus greatly enhancing
the value of
the sites, but at the
sacrifice of much that
belonged to the past
and the picturesque.
The United Industrial
School in Blackfriars
Street exhibits in
a manner perhaps unexampled,
the successful
application and development of that great
problem, a comprehensive unsectarian system of
national education. To those to whom its name
may be scarcely known it must appear that there
is surely something striking in the character of a
ragged school among whose founders were such
men as the Earls of Minto and Elgin, Lords
Dunfermline, Murray, and Jeffrey, Sir William G.
Craig, Adam Black, and William Chambers.
In 1847 Dr. Guthrie first drew attention to the
condition of the juvenile beggars of Edinburgh,
and his noble proposal to establish a ragged school
to be supported by ? Christians of all denominations
and parties,? was eagerly taken up. The lines
upon which the suggestion was practically carried
