Rase Street.] HUG0 ARNOT. ?59
announced that Bailie Creech, of literary celebrity,
was about to lead Miss Burns of Rose Street ?? to
the hymeneal altar.? In hiswrath, Creech threatened
an action against the editor, whose contradiction
made matters worse :-? In a former number we
noticed the intended marriage between Bailie
Creech of Edinburgh and the beautiful Miss Bums
of the same place. We have now the authority of
that gentleman to say that the proposed marriage
is not to take place, matters having been otherwise
arranged, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties
and their respective friends.? After a few years of
unenviable notoriety, says the editor of *? Kay,?
Miss Burns fell into a decline, and died in 1792 at
Roslin, where a stone in the churchyard records
her name and the date of her demise.
In the same year of this squabble we find a
ball advertised in connection with the now unfashionable
locality of Rose Street, thus :-? Mr.
Sealey (teacher of dancing) begs to acquaint his
friends and the public that his ball is iixed for the
20th of March next, and that in order to accommodate
his scholars in the New Town, he proposes
opening a school in Rose Street, Young?s Land,
opposite to the Physicians? Hall, the 24th of that
month, where he intends to teach on Tuesdays
and Fridays from nine in the morning, and the
remainder of the week at his school in Foulis?s
Close, as formerly.? In 1796 we find among
its residents Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh, Knight, of
South Carolina, whose lady ? was safely delivered
of a son on Wednesday morning (16th March) at
her lodgings in Rose Street.?
Sir Samuel was the second son of Sir Egerton
high, His Majesty?s AttorneyGenerd for South
Carolina, and he died at Edinburgh in the ensuing
January. He had a sister, married to the youngest
brother of Sir Thomas Burnet of Leya
This son, born at Edinburgh in 1796, succeeded
in ISIS to the baronetcy, on the death of his uncle,
Sir Egerton, who married Theodosia (relict of
Captain John Donellan), daughter of Sir Edward,
and sister of Sir Theodosius Edward Boughton,
for the murder of whom by poison the captain was
executed at Warwick in 1781,
It was in Dr. John Brown?s Chapel in Rose
Street, that Robert Pollok, the well-known author
of ?The Course of Time,? who was a licentiate of
the United Secession Church, preached his only
sermon, and soon after ordination he was attacked
by that pulmonary disease of which he died in
1827.
In 1810 No. 82 was ?Mrs. Bruce?s fashionable
boarding-school,? and many persons of the greatest
respectability occupied the common stairs, particularly
to the westward ; and in Thistle Street were
many residents of very good position.
Thus No. z was the house, in 1784, of Sir
John Gordon, Bart. ; and Sir Alexander Don, Bart.,
of Newton Don, lived in No. 4, when Lady Don
Dowager resided in No. 53, George Street (he had
been one of the d h u s in France who were seized
when passing through it during the short peace of
1802), and a Mrs. Colonel Ross occupied No. 17,
Under the name of Hill Street this thoroughfare
is continued westward, between Fredenck Street
and Castle Street, all the houses being ?selfcontained.?
The Right Hon. Charles Hope of
Granton, Lord Justice Clerk, had his chambers in
No. 6 (now writers? offices) in ~808 ; Buchanan of
Auchintorlie lived in No. I I, and Clark of Comrie
in No. 9, now also legal offices. In one of the houses
here resided, and was married in 1822, as mentioned
in Bkrckwoad?s Magazine for that year, Charles
Edward Stuart, styled latterly Count d?Albany
(whose son, the Carlist colonel, married a daughter
of the Earl of Errol), and who, with his brother, John
Sobieski Stuarf attracted much attention in the city
and Scotland generally, between that period and
1847, and of whom various accounts have been
given. They gave themselves out as the grandsons
of Charles Edward Stuart, but were said to be
the sons of a Captain Thomas Allan, R.N., and
grandsons of Admiral John Carter Allan, who died
in 1800.
Seven broad and handsome streets, running south
and north, intersect the great parallelogram of the
New Town. It was at the corner of one of those
streets-but which we are not told-that Robert
Burns first saw, in 1787, Mrs. Graham, so celebrated
for her wonderful beauty, and whose husband
commanded in the Castle of Stirling.
From the summit of the ridge, where each of
these streets cross George Street, are commanded
superb views : on one side the old town, and on
the other the northern New Town, and away to the
hills of Fife and Kinross.
According to ? Peter Williamson?s Directory,?
Hugo Arnot, the historian, had taken up his abode
in the Meuse Lane of South St. Andrew Street
in 1784. His own name was Pollock, but he
changed it to Arnot on succeeding to the estate of
Balcormo, in Fifeshire. In his fifteenth year hC
became afflicted with asthma, and through life was
reduced to the attenuation of a skeleton. Admitted
an advocate in 1772, he ever took a deep interest
in all local matters, and published various essays
thereon, and his exertions in promoting the
improvements then in progress in Edinburgh were
which is now the New Town dispensary. c
