325 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Bristo Sheet.
g died; but Scotland was not then, nor for long
after, susjected to the incessant immigration of the
Irish poor, The government of this house was
vested in ninety-six persons, who met quarterly,
and fifteen managers, who met weekly. There
were also a treasurer, chaplain, surgeon, and other
officials.
This unsightly edifice survived the Darien House
for some years, but was eventually removed to
make way for the handsome street in a line with
George IV. Bridge, containing the Edinburgh Rifle
Volunteer Hall, and the hall of the Odd Fellows.
At the acute angle between Forrest Road and
Bristo Street is the New North Free Church,
erected in 1846. It presents Gothic fronts to both
thoroughfares, and, has a massive projecting front
basement, adorned with a small Gothic arcade.
In 1764 we first hear of something like a trade
strike, when a great number of journeyman masons
met in July in Bristo Park (on the open side of
the street, near Lord ROSS?S house), where they
formed a combination ?not to work in the ensuing
week unless their wages were augmented. This,
it seems, they communicated to their masters on
Saturday night, but had no satisfactory answer.
Yestcrday morning they came to work, but finding
no hopes of an augmentation, they all, with one
consent, went oft The same evening the mastermasons
of the city, Canongate, Leith, and suburbs,
met in order to concert what measures may be
proper to be taken in this affair.? (Edin. Adnert.,
They resolved not to increase the wages of the
men, and to take legal advice ?to prevent undue
combinations, which are attended with many bad
effects.? The sequel we have no means of knowing.
The same print quoted records a strike among the
sweeps, or tronmen, in the same park, and elsewhere
adds that ? an old soldier has lately come to town
who sweeps chimneys after the English manner,
which has so disgusted the society cif chimneysweepers
that they refuse to sweep any unless this
man is obliged to leave the town, upon which a
number of them have been put in prison to-day.
They need not be afraid of this old soldier taking
the bread from them, as few chimneys in this place
will admit of a man going through.them.? (Edin.
Adverf., Vol. 111.)
In the Bristo Port, or that portion of the street
so called, stood long the Old George Inn, from
whence the coaches, about 1788, were wont to set
forth for Carlisle and London, three weekly-fare
to the former, AI IOS., to the latter, A3 10s. 6dand
from whence, till nearly the railway era, the
waggons were despatched every lawful day to
Vol. 11.)
London and all parts of England ; ?? also every day
to Greenock, Glasgow, and the west of Scotland.?
Southward of where .this inn stood is now St.
Mary?s Roman Catholic school, formerly a church,
built in 1839. It is a pinnacled Gothic edifice, and
was originally dedicated to St Patrick, but was
superseded in 1856, when the great church in the
Cowgate was secured by the Bishop of Edinburgh.
Lothian Street opens eastward from this point
In a gloomy mZ-de-sac on its northern side is a
circular edifice, named Brighton Chapel, built in
1835, and seated for 1,257 persons. Originally, it
was occupied by a relief congregation. The continuation
of the thoroughfare eastward leads to
College Street, in which we find a large United
Presbyterian church.
In a court off the east side of Bristo Street, a few
yards south from the east end.of Teviot Row, is
another church belonging to the same community,
which superseded the oldest dissenting Presbyterian
church in Edinburgh. In a recently-published
history of this edifice, we are told that early in the
century, ?when the old church was pulled down,
within the heavy canopy of the pulpit ? (the sounding-
board) ?( were found three or four skeletons of
horses? heads, and underneath the pulpit platform
about twenty more. It was conjectured that they
had been placed there from some notion that the
acoustics of the place would be improved.?
The church was built in 1802, at a cost of
&,o84, and was enlarged afterwards, at a further
cost of A1,515, and interiorly renovated in 1872
for A~,300. It is a neat and very spacious edifice,
and was long famous for the ministry of the Rev.
Dr. James Peddie, who was ordained as a pastor of
that congregation on the 3rd April, 1783. On his
election, a large body of the sitters withdrew, and
formed themselves into the Associate Congregation
of Rose Street, of which the Rev. Dr. Hall
subsequently became minister ; but the Bristo
Street congregation rapidly recruited its numbers
under the pastoral labours of Dr. Peddie, and from
that time has been in a most flourishing condition.
In 1778, when six years of age, Sir Walter Scott
attended the school of Mr. Johu Luckmore, in
Hamilton?s Entry, off Bristo Street, a worthy preceptor,
who was much esteemed by his father, the
old Writer to the Signet, with whom he was for
many years a weekly guest. The school-house,
though considerably dilapidated, still exists, and
is occupied as a blacksmith?s shop. It is a small
cottage-like building with a red-tiled roof, situated
on the right-hand side of the court called Hamilton?s
Entry, No. 36, Bristo Street. As to the identity of
the edifice there can be no doubt, as it was
? CLARINDA.? 327 Bristo Strht.]
pointed out by Sir Walter himself to the late Dr.
Robert Chambers. In 1792 Mr. Luckmore was
appointed one of the four English masters of the
High School on the city?s establishment, and continued
to hold that office till his death, in 181 I. Sir
Walter Scott, on leaving his school in Hamilton?s
Entry, was placed under the domestic tutelage of
Mr. James French, who prepared him to join Mr.
Luke Fraser?s second class at the High School,
in October, 1779.
Another interesting locality in Bristo Street, at its
junction with the Potterrow, was long known as the
General?s Entry, No. 58, thoughhow it exists but
in name. This was a desolate-looking court of
ancient buildings. The south and east sides of the
quadrangle were formed by somewhat ornate edifices.
The crowstepped gable at the south-east
angle bore an antique sun-dial, with the quaint
legendand
beyond this was a row of circular-headed
dormer windows, in the richly decorated style of
James VI, One of these bore a shield, charged
with a monkey and three mullets-in-chief, surrounded
by elaborate scroll-work of the same reign
and bearing the initials J.D.
Unvarying tradition has assigned this mansion to
General Monk as a residence while commanding
in Scotland, but there is not much probability to
support it. The house was furnished with numerous
out-shots and projections, dark, broad, and
bulky stacks of chimneys, reared in unusual places,
all blackened by age and encrusted by the smoke
of centuries. It is said to have been built by Six
James Dalrymple, afterwards first Viscount Stair,
one of the Breda Cammissioners, and who continued
his practice at the bar with great reputation afte1
the battles of Dunbar and Worcester.
That he was a particular favourite with General
Monk, and even with Cromwell, to whom the
former recommended him as the fittest person foi
the bench in 1657, is well known; and under such
circumstances, it may be supposed ?that Monk
would be his frequent visitor when he came from
his quarters at Dalkeith to the capital. Tradition
has assigned the house as the permanent residence
in those days of the Commander of the Forces in
Scotland. But there is sufficient proof that it was
the town abode of the Stair family, till, like the
rest of the Scottish nobility, they abandoned Edinburgh,
after the Treaty of Union. ? I t is not
unlikely,? says Wilson, ?? that the present name oj
the old court is derived from the more recen!
residence there of John, second Earl of Stair, wha
served during the protracted campaigns of the
? WE SHALL DIE ALL ; ?
Duke of Marlborough, and was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant-general after. the bloody victory
of Malplaquet. He shared in the fall of the great
duke, and retired from Court until the accession of
George I., during which interval it is probable that
the family mansion in the Potterrow formed the
frequent abode of the disgraced favourite.?
But Generalk Entry is perhaps now most
intimately associated with one of Burns?s heroines,
Mrs. McLehose, the romantic Clarinda of the notorious
correspondence, in which the poet figured
as Sylvander. He was introduced to her in the
house of a Miss Nimmo, on the first floor of an
old tenement on the north side of Alison Square.
A little parlour, a bed-room, and kitchen, accord.
ding to Chambers, constituted the accommodation
of Mrs. Agnes McLehose, ?now the residence of
two, if not three, families in the extreme of humble
life.?
In December, 1787, Burns met at a tea-party
this lady, then a married woman of great beauty,
about his own age, and who, with her two children,
had been deserted by a worthless husband. She
had wit, could use her pen, had read ? Werther?
and his sorrows, was sociable and fl.irty, and possessed
a voluptuous lovelines% if we may judge by
the silhouette of her in Scott Douglas?s edition of
thepoet?s works. She and Burns took afancy to each
other on the instant. She invited him to tea, but he
offered a visit instead. An accident confined him
for about a month to his room, and this led to the
famous Clarinda and Sylvander correspondence.
At about the fifth or sixth exchange of their letters
she wrote: ? I t is really curious, so much fun
passing hetween two persons who saw each other
only once.?
During the few months of his fascination for this
fair one in General?s Entry, Bums showed more of
his real self, perhaps, than can be traced in other
parts of his published correspondence. In his first
letter to her after his marriage, he says, in reply to
her sentimental reproaches, ?? When you call over
the scenes that have passed between us, you will
survey the conduct of an honest man struggling
successfully with temptations the most powerful
that ever beset humanity, and preserving untainted
honour in situations where the severest virtue
would have forgiven a fall.? But had Clarinda
been less accessible, she might habze discovered
eventually that much of the poet?s warmth *as
fanciful and melodramatic. From their correspondence
it would appear that she was in expectation
of Bums visiting her again in Alison
Square in 1788.
She was the cousin-german of Lord Craig, who,
