erect and alert carriage, together with some oldfashioned
peculiarities of costume, which made her
one of the most noted street figures of her time.
The editor of ?The Book of Days? says that
he is enabled to recall a walk he had one day with
Sir Walter, ending in Constable?s shop, No. 10,
Princes Street, when Lady Clerk was purchasing
some books at a side counter. Sir Walter, passing
through to the stairs by which Mr. Constable?s
room was reached, did not recognise her ladyship,
%rho, catching sight of him as he was about to
PRINCES STREET, LOOKING WEST. (From a Photogmjh ay G. NI. WiZsoti and Co.)
The University Club, to. the westward, was
erected in 1866-7, from designs by Peddie and
Kinnear, in an ornate Italian style, with Grecian
decoration, at the cost of ~14,000, and has ample
accommodation for 650 members. The new Conservative
Club, a nimor edifice, stands a little to
the east of it.
Nos. 129 and 130 are now extensive shop
premises. In 1811 the former was the residence
of Sir Alexander Charles Gibson-Maitland of
Clifton Hall, in Lothian, the first baronet of the
ascend, called out, ? Oh, Sir Walter ! are you really
going to pass me?? He immediately turned to
make his usual cordial Feetings, and apologised
with demurely waggish reference to her odd dress :
?I?m sure, my lady, by this time I might know
your back as well as your face.? ?
No. 104 is now connected with the first attempt
in arcades in Edinburgh. It forms a six-storey
edifice, comprising an hotel, and is an elegant glassroofed
bazaar hall, 105 feet long by 30 feet high.
, It was completed in 1876. In 1830, No. 105
was the residence of the Honourable Baron Clerk
Rattray, It is now a warehouse; and some fifteen
years before that, No. XIO was the residence of
Drummond of Blair Drummond. It is now
Taylor?s Repository. Drummocd of Gairdrum
occupied No. I I 7.
name, who died in 1820; and in No. 136 dwelt
Mr. Henry Siddons of the Theatre Royal.
No. 146 was latterly the Osborne Hotel, which
was nearly destroyed by fire in 1879. In the
following year it was opened as the Scottish
Liberal Club, inaugurated by the Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone, M.P. for Midlothian.
At the extreme west end of the street, and at its
junction with the Lothian Road, stands St. John?s
Episcopal Chapel, erected in 1817, after a design,
in the somewhat feeble modern Gothic of that day,
by William Burn, though modelled from and partially
detailed after St. George?s Chapel at Windsor.
It is an oblong edifice, consisting of a nave and
aisles, I 13 feet long by 62 feet wide, and has at its
western extremity a square pinnacled tower, 120
feet high. The whole cost, at first, about ,f18,ooo.
