OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [George Street. I42
ever heard speak on such topics. The shrewdness
and decision of the man can, however, stand
in need of no testimony beyond what his own
conduct has afforded-above all, in the establishment
of his Aagazine (the conception of which,
I am assured, was entirely his own), and the sub.
sequent energy with which he has supported it
through every variety of good and evil fortune.?
Like other highly successful periodicals, BZackwoodls
Magazine has paid the penalty of its greatness,
for many serial publications have been pro
jected upon its plan and scope, without its in
herent originality and vigour.
William Blackwood published the principal works
of Wilson, Lockhart, Hogg, Galt, Moir, and othei
distinguished contributors to the magazine, as we1
as several productions of Sir Walter Scott. Hc
was twice a magistrate of his native city, and ir
that capacity took a prominent part in its affairs
He died on the 16th of September, 1834, in hi:
fifty-eighth year.
? Four months of suffering, in part intense,? sayr
the Mugazine for October, 1837, ? exhausted bj
slow degrees all his physical energies, but left hi:
temper calm and unruffled, and his intellect entira
and vigorous to the last. He had thus what nc
good man will consider as a slight privilege : thai
of contemplating the approach of death with tha
clearness and full strength of his mind and faculties
and of instructing those around him by the solemr
precefit and memorable example, by what mean:
humanity alone, conscious of its own fnilty, car
sustain that prospect with humble serenity.?
This is evidently from the pen of John Wilson
in whose relations with the magazine this deatk
made no change.
William Blackwood left a widow, seven sons
and two daughters; the former carried on-anc
their grandsons still carry on-the business in tha
old establishment in George Street, which, sincc
Constable passed away, has been the great literarj
centre of Edinburgh.
No. 49, the house of Wilkie of Foulden, i:
now a great music saloon; and No. 75, nog
the County Fire and other public offices, has a pe
culiar interest, as there lived and died the mothei
of Sir Walter Scott-Anne Rutherford, daughter o
Dr. John Rutherford, a woman who, the biographei
of her illustrious son tells us, was possessed o
superior natural talents, with a good taste foi
music and poetry and great conversational powers
In her youth she is said to have been acquainted
with Allan Kamsay, Beattie, Blacklock, and man)
other Scottish men of letters in the last century
and independently of the influence which her own
talents and acquirements may have given her in
training the opening mind of the future novelis4
it is obvious that he must have been much indebted
to her in early life for the select and intellectual
literary society of which her near relations were
the ornaments-for she was the daughter of a
professor and the sister of a professor, both of
the University of Edinburgh.
Her demise, on the 24th of December, 1819, is
simply recorded thus in the obituary :-? At her
house in George Street, Edinburgh, Mrs. Anne
Rutherford, widow of the late Walter Scott, Writer
to the Signet.?
? She seemed to take a very affectionate farewell
of me, which was the day before yesterday,? says
Scott, in a letter to his brother, in the 70th regiment,
dated nand December; ?and, as she was
much agitated Dr. Keith advised I should not see
her again, unless she seemed to desire it, which she
has not hitherto done. She sleeps constantly, and
will probably be so removed. Our family sends
love to yours.
? Yours most affectionately,
? WALTER SCOTT.?
No. 78 was, in 1811, the house of Sir John
Hay of Srnithfield and Hayston, Baronet, banker,
who married Mary, daughter of James, sixteenth
Lord Forbes. He had succeeded to the title in
the preceding year, on the death of his father,
Sir James, and is thus referred to in the scarce
? Memoirs of a Banking House,? by Sir William
Forbe?s of Pitsligo, Bart. :-
?Three years afterwards we made a further
change in the administration by the admission of
my brother-in-law, Mr. John Hay, as a partner.
In the year 1774, at my request, Sir Rebert Hemes
had agreed that he should go to Spain, and serve
an apprenticeship in his house at Barcelona,
where he continued till spring, 1776, when he
returned to London, and was received by Sir
Robert into his house in the City-from which, by
that time, our separation had taken place-and
where, as well as in the banking house in St.
James?s Street, he acted as a clerk till summer,
1778, when he came to Edinburgh, and entered
our country house also, on the footing of a confidential
clerk, during three years. Having thus
had an ample experience of his abilities and merit
as a man of business, on whom we might repose
the most implicit confidence, a new contract ot
co-partnery was formed, to commence from the 1st
of January, 1782, in which Mr. Hay was assumed
as a partner, and the shares stood as follow: Sir
William Forbes, nineteen, Mr. Hunter Blair, nine
Ceorge Street.] MRS. MURRAY OF HENDERLAND. f 43
teen, Mr. Bartlett, six, Mr. Hay, four-in all, fortyeight
shares.? From that time he grew in wealth
and fame with the establishment, which is now
merged in the Joint-stock Union Bank of Scotland.
Si John Hay died in 1830, in his seventy-fifth
year.
No. 86 was the house of his nephew, Sir
William Forbes, Bart., who succeeded to the title
on the death of the eminent banker in 1806, and
who married the sole daughter and heiress of Sir
John Stuart of Fettercairn, whose arms were thus
quartered with his ovn.
In May, 1810, Lord Jeffrey-then at the bar as a
practising advocate-took up his dwelling in No.
92, and it was while there resident that, in consequence
of some generous and friendly criticism in
the Rdinburgh Reviaer, pleasant relations were
established between him and Professor Wilson,
which, says the daughter of the latter, ?led to a
still closer intimacy, and which, though unhappily
interrupted by subsequent events, was renewed in
after years, when the bitterness of old controversies
had yielded to the hallowing influences of time.?
Lord Jeffrey resided here for seventeen years.
In the second storey of No. 108 Sir Walter Scott
dwelt in 1797, when actively engaged in his German
translations and forming the Edinburgh Volunteer
Light Horse, of which he was in that year, to
his great gratification, made quartermaster. Two
doors farther on was the house of the Countess of
Balcarres, the venerable dowager of Earl Alexander,
who died in 1768. She was Anne, daughter of
Sir Robert Dalrymple of Castleton.
No. 116, now formed into shops, was long the
residence of Archibald Colquhoun of Killermont,
Lord Advocate of Scotland in 1807. He was
Archibald Campbell of Clathick, but assumed the
name of Colquhoun on succeeding to the estate of
Killermont. He came to the bar in the same
year, 1768, or about the same time as his friends
Lord Craig and the Hon. Henry Erskine. He
succeeded Lord Frederick Campbell as Lord
Clerk Register in 1816. His mind and talents
were said to have been of a very superior order ;
he was a sound lawyer, an eloquent pleader, and
his independent fortune and proud reserve induced
him to avoid general business, while in his Parliamentary
duties as member for Dumbarton he was
unremitting and efficient.
The Edinburgh Association of Science and Arts
now occupies the former residence of the Butters
of Pitlochry, No. ?17. It is an institution formed
in 1869, and its title is sufficiently explanatory of
its objects.
An interesting lady of the old school abode long
He died in 1820.
in No. I 22-Mrs. Murray of Henderland. She was
resident there from the early part of the present
century. The late Dr. Robert Chambers tells us
he was introduced to her by Dr. Chalmers, and found
her memories of the past went back to the first
years of the reign of George 111. Her husband,
Alexander Murray, had been, he states, Lord
North?s Solicitor-General for Scotland. His name
appears in 1775 on the list, between those of
Henry Dundas and Islay Campbell of Succoth.
?? I found the venerable lady seated at a window
of her drawing-room in George Street, with her
daughter, Miss Murray, taking the care of her
which her extreme age required, and with some
help from this lady we had a conversation of about
an hour.? She was born before the Porteous Mob,
and well remembering the ?45, was now close on
her hundredth year.
She spoke with affection and reverence of her
mother?s brother, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ;
?and when I adverted,? says Chambers, ? to the
long pamphlet written against him by Athenian
Stuart, at the conclusion of the Douglas cause, she
said that, to her knowledge, he neyer read it, such
being his practice in respect to ail attacks made
upon him, lest they should disturb his equanimity
in judgment. As the old lady was on intimate terms
with Boswell, and had seen Johnson on his visit to
Edinburgh-as she was the sister-in-law of Allan
Ramsay, the painter, and had lived in the most
cultivated society of Scotland all her life-there
were ample materials for conversation with her ;
but her small strength made this shorter and slower
than I could have wished. When we came upon
the poet Ramsay, she seemed to have caught new
vigour from the subject ; she spoke with animation
of the child-parties she had attended in his house
on the Castle Hill during a course of ten years
befoie his death-an event which happened in 1757.
He was ? charming,? she said ; he entered so heartily
into the plays of the children. He, in particular,
gained their hearts by making houses for their
dolls. How pleasant it was to learn that our great
pastoral poet was a man who, in his private capacity,
loved to sweeten the daily life of his fellow-creatures,
and particularly of the young ! At a warning from
Miss Murray I had to tear myself away from this
delightful and never-to-be-forgotten interview.?
From this we may suppose that the worthy publisher
never saw the venerable occupant of No. 123
again.
No. 123, on the opposite side, was the residence
of the well-known Sir John Watson Gordon,
President of the Royal Scottish Academy, who
died June Ist, 1863, and to whom reference has
