I 88 OLD ANI) NEW EDINBURGH. [York Place
His lordship was so fond of card-playing that
he was wont to say, laughingly, ?Cards are my
profession-the law my amusement.? He died
at Powrie, in Forfarshire, on the 19th of October,
18IL
In 1795 Sir Henry Raeburn built the large house
No. 32, the upper part of which had been lighted
from the roof and fitted up as a gallery for exhibiting
pictures, while. the lower was divided into convenient
painting rooms, but his residence was then
at Stockbridge.
Mr. Alexander Osborne, a commissioner of the
Board of Customs, resided in No. 40 for niany
years, and died there. He was of great stature,
and was the right-hand man of the Grenadiers of
the First Regiment of Royal Edinburgh Volunteers,
proverbially a battalion of tall men, and his personal
appearance was long familiar in the streets of
the city. In bulk he was remarkable as well as in
stature, his legs in particular being nearly as large
in circumference as the body of an ordinary person,
The editor of Kay mentions that shortly after the
volunteers had been embodied, Lord Melville preseqted
his gigantic countryman to George III.,
who on witnessing such a herculean specimen of
his loyal defenders in Scotland, was somewhat
excited and curious. ??-4re all the Edinburgh
volunteers like you?? he asked, Osborne mistaking
the jocular construction of the question,
and supposing it referred to their status in society,
replied, ?They are so, please your Majesty.?
?? Astonishing !? exclaimed the King, lifting up his
hands in wonder.
In his youth he is said to have had a prodigious
appetite, being able to consume nine pounds of
steak at a meal. His father, who died at Aberdeen,
comptroller of the Customs in 1785, is said ta
have beena man of even more colossal proportions.
Mr. Osborne lived long in Richmond Street
prior to removing to York Place, where he died in
his 74th year.
During the early years of this century Lady Sinclair
of Murkle occupied No. 61, and at the same
time No. 47 was the residence of Alexandex
Nasmyth, landscape painter, father of Peter, who
won himself the name of ? the English Hobbima,JJ
and who, in fact, was the father of the Scottish school
of landscape painting. In his youth, the pupil of
Allan Ramsay, and afterwards of the best artists in
Rome and England, he returned to his native city,
Edinburgh, where he had been born in 1758 ; and
to his friendship with Bums the world is indebted
for the only authentic portrait which exists of our
national poet His compositions were chaste and
elegant, and his industry unceasing ; thus he numbered
among his early employers the chief of the
Scottish nobZesse. Most of the living landscape
painters of Scotland, and many of the dead ones,
have sprung from the school of Nasmyth, who, in
his extreme age, became an honorary member of
the then new Scottish Academy.
The firmness of his intellect, and the freshness of
his fancy continued uninterrupted to the end of his
labours; his last work was the touching little
picture called ? Going Home ;I? and he died soon
after at Edinburgh in the eighty-third year of his
age, in 1840. He married a daughter of Sir James
Foulis, Bart., of Colinton and that ilk, by whom he
had a large family, all more or less inheriting the
genius of their father, particularly his son Peter,
who predeceased him at London in 1831, aged
forty-five years.
On the north side of York Place is St. Paul?s
Episcopal church, built in that style of Gothic
which prevailed in the time of Henry VI. of England,
and of which the best specimen may be seen
in King?s College, Cambridge. The building consists
of a nave with four octagon towers at the
angles, with north and south aisles. The pulpit is
at the east end, and immediately before the communion-
table. The organ is at the west end, and
above the main entrance, which faces York Lanea
remnant of Broughton Loan. In the north-west
angle of the edifice is the vestry, The length of
the church is about 123 feet by 73 feet, external
measurement. The nave is 109 feet 9 inches in
length by 26 feet broad, and 46 feet in height; and
the aisles are 79 feet long by zg feet in height.
The ceiling of the nave is a flat Gothic arch,
covered with ornamental tracery, as are also the
ceilings of the aisles. The great eastern window
is beautifully filled in with stained glass by Egginton
of Birmingham. This handsome church-in its
time the best example of Gothic erected in Edinburgh
since the Reformation-was built from a design
by Archibald Elliot, and doesconsiderablecredit
to the taste and geqius of that eminent architect.
It was begun in February, 1816, and finished in
June, 1818, for the use of the congregation which
had previously occupied the great church in the
Cowgate, and who contributed ~ 1 2 , o o o for its
erection. The well-known Archibald Alison, author
of (? Essays on Taste,? and father of the historian
of Europe, long officiated here. He was the son
of a magistrate of the city of Edinburgh, where he
was born in 1757, but graduated at Oxford; and
on the invitation of Sir William Forbes and others,
in 1800, became senior incumbent of the Cowgate
chapel. After the removal of the congregation to
*
York Place.] REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON. 189
