162 OLD AED NEW EDINBURGH. [Hanover Street.
in yhich David Hume died the Bible Society oi
Edinburgh was many years afterwards constituted,
and held its first sitting.
In the early part of the present century, No. 19
was the house of Miss Murray of Kincairnie, in
Perthshire, a family now extinct.
In 1826 we find Sir Walter Scott, when ruin
had come upon? him, located in No. 6, Mrs.
Brown?s lodgings, in a third-rate house of St.
David Street, whither he came after Lady Scott?s
death at Abbotsford, on the 15th of May in thatto
him-most nielancholy year of debt and sorrow,
and set himself calmly down to the stupendous
task of reducing, by his own unaided exertions, the
enormous monetary responsibilities he had taken
upon himself.
Lockhqt tells us that a week before Captain
Basil Hall?s visit at No. 6, Sir Walter had suf
ficiently mastered himself to resume his literary
tasks, and was working with determined resolution
at his ?Life of Napoleon,? while bestowing
an occasional day to the ?Chronicles of the
Canongate ?? whenever he got before the press with
his historical MS., or felt the want of the only
repose Be ever cared for-simply a change oi
labour.
No. 27,
now a shop, was the house of Neilson of Millbank,
and in No. 33, now altered and sub-divided, dwell
Lord Meadowbank, prior to I 7gqknown when at the
bar as Allan Maconochie. He left several children,
one of whom, Alexander, also won a seat on the
bench as Lord Meadowbank, in 18x9. No. 39, at
the corner of George Street, w2s the house ol
Majoribanks of Marjoribanks and that ilk.
No. 54, now a shop, was the residence of Si1
John Graham Dalyell when at the bar, to which
he was admitted in 1797. He was the second son
of Sir Robert Dalyell, Bart., of Binns, in Linlithgowshire,
and in early life distinguished himself by the
publication of various works illustrative of the
history and poetry of his native country, particularly
?Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century,??
?? Bannatyne Memorials,? ?? Annals of the Religious
Houses in Scotland,? Szc. He was vice-president
of the Antiquarian Society, and though heir-presumptive
to the baronetcy in his family, received
in 1837 the honour of knighthood, by letters patent
under the Great Seal, for his attainments in literature.
A few doors farther down the street is now the
humble and unpretentious-looking office of that
most useful institution, the Edinburgh Association
for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and
maintained, like every other charitable institution
in the city, by private contributions.
Hanover Street was built about 1786.
In South Hanover Street, No. 14-f old the
City of Glasgow Bank-is now the new hall of the
Merchant Company, containing many portraits of
old merchant burgesses on its walls, and some
views of the city in ancient times which are not
without interest. Elsewhere we have given the
history of this body, whose new hall was inaugurated
on July 9, 1879, and found to be well adapted
for the purposes of the company.
The large hall, formerly the bank telling-room,
cleared of all the desks and other fixtures, now
shows a grand apartment in the style of the Italian
Renaissance, lighted by a cupola rising from eight
Corinthian ? pillars, with corresponding pilasters
abutting from the wall, which is covered by
portraits. The space available here is forty-seven
feet by thirty-two, exclusive of a large recess.
Other parts of the building afford ample accommodation
for carrying on the business of the ancient
company and for the several trusts connected
therewith. The old manageis room is now used
by the board of management, and those on the
ground floor have been fitted up for clerks. The
premises were procured for ~17,000.
All the business of the Merchant Company is
now conducted under one roof, instead of being
carried on partly in .the Old Town and partly in
the New, with the safes for the security of papers
of the various trusts located, thirdly, in Queen
Street.
By the year 1795 a great part of Frederick
Street was completed, and Castle Street was
beginning to be formed. The first named thoroughfare
had many aristocratic residents, particularly
widowed ladies-some of them homely yet stately
old matrons of the Scottish school, about whom
Lord Cockburn, &c., has written so gracefully and
so graphically-to wit, Mrs. Hunter of Haigsfield
in No. I, now a steamboat-office; Mrs. Steele of
Gadgirth, No. 13; Mrs. Gardner of Mount Charles,
No. 20 ; Mrs. Stewart of Isle, No. 43 ; Mrs. Bruce
of Powfoulis, No. 52 ; and Lady Campbell of
Ardkinglas in No. 58, widow of Sir Alexander, last
of the male line of Ardkinglas, who died in 1810,-
and whose estates went to the next-heir of entail,
Colonel James Callender, of the 69th Regiment,
who thereupon assumed the name of Campbell,
and published two volumes of ?Memoirs? in 1832,
but which, for cogent reasons, were suppressed by
his son-in-law, the late Sir James Graham of
Netherby. His wife, Lady Elizabeth Callender,
died at Craigforth in 1797.
In Numbers 34 and 42 respectively resided
Ronald McDonald of Staffa, and Cunningham of
Baberton, and in the common stair, No. 35, there
castle Street.] NUMBER THIRTY-NINE CASTLE STREET. 163
lived for a time James Grant of Corrimony,
advocate, who had his town house in Mylne?s
Court, Lawnmarket, in 1783. This gentleman, the
representative of an old Inverness-shire family,
was born in 1743, in the house of Commony in
Urquhart, his mother being Jean Ogilvie, of the
family of Findlater. His father, Alexander Grant,
was induced by Lord Lovat to join Prince Charles,
and taking part in the battle of Culloden, was
wouiided in the thigh. The cave at Corrimony in
which he hid after the battle, is still pointed out to
tourists. His son was called to the bar in 1767,
and at the time of his death, in 1835, he was the
oldest member of the Faculty of Advocates. Being
early distinguished for his liberal principles, he
numbered among his friends the Hon. Henry
Erskine, Sir James Macintosh, Francis Jeffrey, and
many others eminent for position or attainments;
In 1785 he published his ?? Essays on the Origin of
Society,? Src j in 1813, ?Thoughts on the Origin
and Descent of the Gael,? &c: works which, illustrated
as they are by researches into ancient Greek,
Latin, and Celtic literature, show him to have been
a man of erudition, and are valuable contributions
to the early history of the Celtic races.
The next thoroughfare is Castle Street, so called
from its proximity to the fortress. As the houses
spread westward they gradually improved in external
finish and internal decoration. By the French
Revolutionary war, according to the author of
?Old Houses in Edinburgh,? writing in 1824, an
immense accession of inhabitants of a better class
were thrown into.the growing city, All the earlier
buildings of the new town were rubble-work, nnd
so simple were the ideas of the people at that
time, ? that main doors (now so important) were
not at all thought of, and many of the houses in
Princes Street had only common stairs entering
from the Mews Lane behind. But within the last
twenty years a very different taste has arisen, and
the dignity of a front door has become almost
indispensable. The later buildings are, with few
exceptions, of the finest ashlar-work, erected on a
scale of magnificence said to be unequalled ; yet,
it cannot be denied that here and there common
stairs-a nuisance that seems to cling to the very
nature of Edinburgh-have crept in. However,
even that objection has in most cases been got
over by an ingenious contrivance, which renders
them accessible only to the occupants of the various
flats,? it., the crank communicating from eabh,
with the general entrance-door below-a feature
altogether peculiar to Edinburgh and puzzling to
all strangers.
No. I Castle Street, now an hotel, was in 1811
he house of the first Lord Meadowbank, already
.ererred to, who died in 1816. At the same time
:he adjoining front door was occupied by the Hon.
Miss Napier (daughter of Francis; seventh Lord
Napier), who died unmarried in 18zc~. No. 16
,vas the house of Skene of Rubislaw, the bosom
iiend of Sir Walter Scott, and the last survivor of
$e six particdar friends to whom he dedicated
:he respective cantos of ? Marmion.? He possessed
the Bible used by Charles I. on the scaffold, and
which is described by Mr. Roach Smith in his
? Collectanea Antiqua.? Latterly Mr. Skene took
up his residence at Oxford. pis house is now
legal offices.
About 1810 Lady Pringle of Stitchel occupied
No. 20, at the corner of Rose Street. She was the
daughter of Norman Macleod of Macleod, and
widow of Sir James Pringle, Bar!., a lieutenantcolonel
in the army, who died in 1809. At the
opposite corner lived Mrs. Fraser of Strichen; and
No. 27, now all sub-divided, was the residence of
Robert Reed, architect to the king. No. 37, in
1830, was the house of Sir Duncan Cameron, Bart.,
of Fassifem, brother of the gallant Colonel Cameron
who fell at Quatre Bras, and won a baronetcy for
his family. And now we come to the most important
house in New Edinburgh, No. 39, on the east side
of the northern half of the street, in which
Sir Walter Scott resided for twenty-six years prior
to 1826, and in which the most brilliant of his
works were written and he spent his happiest years,
?from the prime of life to its decline.? He considered
himself, and was considered by those about
him, as amassing a large fortune ; the annual profits
of his novels alone had not been less than A;IO,OOO
for several years. His den, or study, there is thus
described by Lockhart :-? It had a single Venetian
window, opening on a patch of turf not much
Larger than itself, and the aspect of the place was
sombrous. . . . A dozen volumes or so, needful
for immediate purposes of reference, were placed
close by him on a small movable form. All the
rest were in their proper niches, and wherever a
volume had been lent its room was occupied by a
wooden block of the same size, having a card with
the name of the borrower and date of the lending
tacked on its front . . . The only table wasa
massive piece of furniture which he had constructed
on the model of one at Rokeby, with a desk and all
its appurtenances on either side, that an arnanuensis
might work opposite to him when he chose, with
small tiers of drawers reaching all round to the
floor. The top displayed a goodly array of session
papers, and on the desk below were, besides the
MS. at which he was working, proof-sheets and so
