exasperated people.
In the days of its declension, the Darien House
was abandoned to the uses of a lunatic asylum for
the paupers of the adjoining workhouse. South of
it stood a square edifice, which was latterly used for
the same purpose. In the early part of the
eighteenth century this was the mansion house of
a wealthy quaker, named Buntin (or Bontein), whose
THE CHARITY WORKHOUSE, 1820. (Afrrr SfOrCr)
occupied by several blocks of new buildings, in
making the excavations for which the labourers
found that nearly the whole area had been an
ancient and forgotten cemetery, the bones and
coffins in which lay at an average depth of six feet
below the surface.
The first Merchant Maiden Hospital was built
in 1707, on the east side of Bristo Street ; and in
Mally." To see her leave the meeting-house in
the Pleasance, all the bucks and gay fellows of
the city were wont to crowd ; but from her father's
house, at Bristo (in its last years a dispensary), she
eloped with Mr. Craig, the minister of Currie, in
the churchyard of which her tombstone still
remains.
To this latter house, as a Bedlam, a peculiarly
melancholy interest attached, as it was there
that Robert Fergusson, the iil-fated poet, died a
raving lunatic in his twenty-fourth year, in 1774,
after a contusion received by a fall down-stairs; and
when his last hours came, his piteous shrieks for his
"mother" often rang out upon the night. This
house was removed,about the same time as the
living in Denham's Land, in the same thoroughfare.
This peer was one who carried the follies
and fantastic vices of the age to such an extravagant
length as led people to doubt his sanity. During
the lifetime of his father, Earl Archibald, he had
been frequently a debtor in the Tolbooth, and on
the 28th January, 1726, was incarcerated there for
" deforcement, not, and spulzie."
In 1739 there occurs in the public journals a
singular advertisement, issued by this ornament to
the Scottish peerage, relative to the elopement of
one Polly Rich, who had been engaged by him for
a year. She is described as being about eighteen
five feet six inches high, '' fine-shap'd, blue-ey'd,
with black hair or nut-brown; all her linnen or
