I20 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Pr?nees Street.
New Town, they are surprised at its being so badly
lighted and watched at night. The half of the
North Bridge next the Old Town is well lighted,
while the half next the New remains in total darkness.
London and Westminster are lighted all the
year through.? Among the improvements in the
same year, we read of two hackneycoach stands
being introduced by the magistrates-one at St.
Andrew?s Church and another at the Registei
House ; but sedans were then in constant use, and
did not finally disappear till about 1850.
?In Edinburgh there*is no trade,? wrote a
German traveller-said to be M. Voght, of Hamburg,
in 1795 ; ?but from this circumstance society
is a gainer in point both of intelligence and of
eloquence. . . . . It is but justice to a
place in which I have spent one of the most agreeable
winters of my life to declare, that nowhere
more completely than there have I found realised
my idea of good society, or met with a circle of men
better informed, more amicable, greater lovers of
truth, or of more unexceptionable integrity. During
six months I heard no invectives uttered, no catching
at wit practised, no malignant calumnies invented
or retailed; and I seldom left a company
without some addition to my knowledge or new
incitements to philanthropy. To name and to
describe the persons ? composing this society, and
to introduce them to your readers, is a pleasure
which I cannot deny myself.?
Among those whom he met in the Edinburgh of
that day M. Voght mentions Dugald Stewart,
(? the Bacon of Metaphysics ? ; Fraser Tytler, Lord
Woodhouselee ; Mackenzie, ? The Man of Feeling
; ? Drs. Black, Blair, Munro, and Coventry the
lecturer on agriculture ; Professor Playfair, Dr.
Gregory, and the amiable Sir William Forbes;
Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, and Colonel Dirom,
the historian of Tippoo Sahib, and Sir Alexander
Mackenzie ; adding :-?What makes the society
in Edinburgh particularly attractive is the crowd
of Scotsmen who have been long in the East
and West Indies, and have returned thither-old
officers who have served in the army and navy,
and all of whom in their youth have had the
advantage of academical instruction.?
Lady Sinclair, he tells us, ?(is one of the prettiest
women in all Scotland,? and that Creech, the bookseller,
was one of his ?most valuable acquaintances.?
Among others, he enumerates Sir James
Hall of Dunglass, Lords Eskgrove, Ancrum, and
Fincastle, Professor Rutherford the botanist, Lord
Monboddo, and many more, as those making up the
circle of a delightful and intellectual society in a
city, the population of which, including Leith, was
then only 81,865, of whom 7,206 were in the New
Town.
At the close of the century the first academy
for classical education was opened there by
William Laing, AM., father of Alexander Gordon
Laing, whose name is so mournfully connected
with African discovery. In that establishment Mr.
Ling laboured for thirty-two years, and was one of
the most p3pular teachers of his day.
In 1811 the population of the city and Leith
had increased to 102,987, and exclusive of the
latter it was 82,624. By 1881 the estimated
population was 290,637.
It was in the year 1805 that the Police Act for
the city first came? into operation, when John Tait,
Esq., was appointed Judge of the Court. Prior
to this the gu,udianship of the city had been entirely
in the hands of the old Town Guard, which
was then partially reduced, save a few who were
retained for limitea and special service. The
Commissioners of Police first substituted gas for
oil lamps; and in 1823 the papers announce that
these officials had ?fitted up 341 new gas pillars,
chiefly in the New Town; they are in progress
with other forty-two, and have given orders for
other 245 gas lights, chiefly in the Old Town.
They are to sell the superseded lamp-irons and
globes, from which they may realise about iC;600.?
By that time the last traces of ancient manners
had nearly departed. ?? The old claret-drinkers,?
says a writer in 1824, ?are brought to nothing, and
some of them are under the sod. The court
dresses, in which the nobility and gentry appeared
at the balls and first circles in Edinburgh, together
with their dress swords or rapiers, are all ?haz1c
6t-m~; for there has been introduced a half-dress
-and it ,is a half-dress: nay, some ladies make
theirs less than half; while the swords of the welldressed
men have been dropped for the $sty and
the dashing blades of the present day learn to mZZ,
to fib, and to floor, and to give a facer with their
? mawlies,? and other equally gentleman-like accomplishments.?
Elsewhere he says :-? To prove
the more tenacious adhesion of the Scotch to
French manners and old fashions, I can assert that
for one cocked hat which appeared in the streets of
London within the last forty years, a dozen passed
current in Add Reekie.?
The houses first numbered in Princes Street
were in the south portion, which caused the legal
contention in I 774, and the continuation of which
was so fortunately arrested by the Court of Session,
and there the numbers run from I to 9.
No. 2 was occupied in 1784 by Robertson, ?;a
ladies? hairdresser,? where, as per advertisement,
