274 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [High Street.
THE mansion of the Earls of Iiyndford immediately
adjoined that of the Earls of Selkirk, and the
two edifices were thrown into one to form a
Catholic chopel house, but the former gave its name
to Hyndford's Close. " This was a Scottish peergallant
Lieutenant-Colonel John Campbell, of the
Black Watch, whose memorable defence of Mangalore
from May, 1783, to January, 1784, arrested
the terrible career of Tippoo Sahib, and shed a
glory over the British campaign in Mysore. The
colonel died of exhaustion at Bombay soon after.
Upon leaving Elphinstone Court, his father resided
latterly in George Square, where he died in
June, 1801.
Midway up South Gray's Close, a tall turreted
mansion, with a tolerably good garden long attached
to it, and having an entrance from Hyndford's Close,
was the town residence of the Earls of Selkirkthere,
at least in 1742, resided Dunbar, fourth
Earl (eldest son of Basil Hamilton, of Baldoon),
who resumed the name of Douglas on his succeeding
to the honours of Selkirk. He married a
grand-daughter of Thomas, Earl of Haddington,
and had ten children, one of whom, Lord Daer, on
attaining manhood, became, at the commencement
of the French Revolution, an adherent of that
movement and a "Friend of the People;" and
deeming the article of the Union with England, on
which was founded the exclusion of the eldest sons
of Scottish peers from representing their native
country in Parlianient, and from voting at elections
there, injurious, insulting, and incorrectly
interpreted, he determined to try the question;
but decisions were given against him in the Court
of Session and House of Lords. He pre-deceased
his father, who died in 1799.
The next occupant of that old house was Dr.
Daniel Rutherford, professor of botany, and said
to be the first discoverer or inventor of gas. For
his thesis, on taking his degreesf M.D. at the
university of Edinburgh in 1772, he 'chose a
chemical subject, De Aere Mihifim, which, from
the originality of its views, obtained the highest
encomiums from Dr. Black. In this dissertation he
demonstrated, though without explaining its properties,
" the existence of a peculiar air, or new
age:" says Robert Chambers, " not without its
glories-witness particularly the third earl, who
acted as ambassador in succession to Prussia, to
Russia, and to Vienna. It is now extinct ; its
byoutme, its pictures, including portraits of Maria
gaseous fluid, to wliich some eminent modern
philosophers have given the name of azote, and
others of nitrogen."
That Dr. Rutherford first discovered this gas is
now generally admitted; ahd, as Bower remarks
in his " History of the University of Edinburgh,"
the reputation of his discovery being speedily
spread through Europe, his character as a chemist
of the first eminence was firmly established. He
died suddenly. on the 15th of December, 1819,
in his seventy-first year, and it was soniewhat remarkable
that one of his sisters died two days after
him, on the 17th, and another, the excellent mother
of Sir Walter Scott, within seven days of the latter,
viz., on the 24th of the same month, and that none
of the three knew of the death of the other, so
cumbrous were the postal arrangements of those
days. " Sir Walter Scott, who," says Robert Chambers,
'*being a nephew of that gentleman, was often
in the house in his young days, communicated to
me a curious circumstance connected with it. It
appears that the house immediately adjacent was
not furnished with a stair wide enough to allow ot
a coffin being camed down in decent fashion. It
had, therefore, what the Scottish law calls a servitude
upon Dr. Rutherford's house, conferring the
perpetual liberty of bringing the deceased inmates
through a passage into that house, and down ifs
stair into the lane," thus affording another curious
example of how confined and narrow were the
abodes of the ancient citizens. It was latterly the
priest's house of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic
church, and was beautifully restored by the late
Dr. Marshall, but is now demolished.
In Edgar's 'map of Edinburgh in 1765 the
whole space between the Earl of Selkirk's house
on the west and St. hfary's Wynd on the east, and
between the Marquis of Tweeddale's house on the
north,'nearly to the Cowgate Port on the south, is
shown as a fine open space, pleasantly 'planted
with rows of trees and shrubbery.
