160 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. 1st. Andrew Street,
rewarded by the freedom of the city, which was
conferred on him by the magistrates.
The house he occupied in St. Andrew?s Lane
was a small one, and he had an old and very
particular lady as a neighbour on the upper
floor. She was frequently disturbed by the hasty
and impetuous way in which he rang his bell, and
often remonstrated with him thereon, but without
avail, which led to much ill-feeling between them.
At length, on receiving a very imperative and
them by example in buckling on his sword again,
as in his youth he had been a lieutenant in the
army. In 1787 he retired on account of his
health to Dryburgh Abbey, but returning to Edinburgh
again, occupied the house 131 George Street,
and died in 1829.
In St. Andrew Street lived, and died in 1809, in his
sixty-eighth year, Major-General Alexander Mackay,
who in 1803 commanded the forces in Scotland,
and was thirty years upon the staff there. He was
QUEEN STREET.
petulant message one day, insisting that he should
summon his servants in a different manner, great was
the old lady?s alarm to hear the loud explosion of a
heavy pistol in Arnot?s house ! But he was simply
-as he said-complying with her request by
firing instead of ringing for his shaving water.
In 1784 St. Andrew Street was the residence of
David, Earl of Buchan, who in 1766 had been
Secretary to the British Embassy in Spain, and who
formed the Scottish Society of Antiquaries in 1780.
Though much engaged in literary and antiquarian
pursuits, he was not an indifferent spectator of the
stirring events of the time, and when invasion was
threatened, he not only used his pen to create
uniqn among his countrymen, bct essayed to rouse I
usually named ? Old Buckram,? from the stiffness of
his gait, for he ? walked as if he had swallowed a
halbert, and his long queue, powdered hair, and
cocked hat, were characteristic of a thoroughbred
soldier of the olden time.?
Sir James Gibson Craig, W.S., of Riccarton,
occupied No. 8 North St. Andrew Street in 1830.
Proceeding westward, at the north-west corner
of South St. David Street we find the house of
David Hume, whither he came after quitting his
old favourite abode in Janies?s Court. The supenntendence
of the erection of this house, in 1770, was
a source of great amusement to the historian and
philosopher, and, says Chambers, a story is related
in more than one way regarding the manner ?4
