I91 OLD AKD NEW EDINBURGH. [IFeriot Row.
lady weak poems, which were noticed by Lockhart
in the Quarterly Rmim, and to the paper he a p
pended in one copy, which was sent to the senator,
the following distich, by way of epitaph :-
U Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter,
Who broke the laws of God and man and metre.?
The joke chiefly lay in Robertson being led to suppose
that the lines were in the entire edition, much
to his annoyance and indignation ; but Lockhart
penned elsewhere the following good wishes concerning
him :-
? Oh! Petrus, Pedro, Peter, which you will,
Long, long thy radiant destiny fulfil.
Bright be thy wit, and bright the golden ore
Paid down in fees for thy deep legal lore ;
Bright be that claret, brisk be thy champagne,
Thy whisky-punch, a vast exhaustless main,
With thee disporting on its joyous shore,
Of that glad spirit quaffing ever more ;
Keen be thy stomach, potent thy digestion,
And long thy lectures on ? the general question ;?
While young and old swell out the general strain,
We ne?er shall look upon his like again.?
Lockhart wrote many rhyming epitaphs upon him,
and is reported to have written, ? Peter Robertson
is ?a man,? to use his own favourite quotation,
?cast in Nature?s amplest mould.? He is admitted
to be the greatest corporation lawyer at, the
Scotch bar, and he is a vast poet as well as a great
lawyer.?
Lord Robertson, who lived in No. 32 Drummond
Place, died in 1855, in his sixty-second
year.
No. 38 was for years the abode of Adam Black,
more than once referred to elsewhere as publisher,
M.P., and Lord Provost of the city, who died on
the 24th January, 1874.
Forming a species of terrace facing the Queen
Street Gardens from the north, are Abercrombie
Place and Heriot Row-the first named from the
hero of the Egyptian campaign, and the latter from
the founder of the famous hospital on ground belonging
to which it is erected. The western portion
of the Row, after it was built, was long disfigured
by the obstinacy of Lord Wemyss, who declined to
remove a high stone wall which enclosed on the
north and east the garden that lay before his house
in Queen Street.
Sir John Connel, Advocate and Procurator for
the Church, author of a ?Treatise on Parochial
Law and Tithes,? apd who figures among Kay?s
Portraits as one of the ?Twelve Advocates,?
James Pillans, LL.D., Professor of Humanity in
the University 1820-63, and Sir James Riddel,
Bart., of Ardnaniurchan and Sunart, lived respectively
in Nos. 16, 22, and 30, Abercrombie Place;
while on the west side of Nelson Street, which
opens off it to the north, resided, after 1829, Miss
Susan Edmondston Ferrier, authoress of ? Marriage,?
? Inheritance,? and ? Destiny,? one who
may with truth be called the Zast of the literary
galaxy which adorned Edinburgh when Scott wrote,
Jeffrey criticised, and the wit of Wilson flowed into
the Nodes. She was the friend and confidant of
Scott. She survived him more than twenty years,
as she died in 1854.
In the house numbered as 6 Heriot Row,
Henry Mackenzie, the author. of the 6? Man of
Feeling,? spent the last years of his long life, surviving
all the intimates of his youth, including
Robertson, Hume, Fergusson, and &dam Smith ;
and there he died. on the 14th of January, in the
year 1831, after having been confined to his room
for a considerable period by the general decay
attending old age. He was then in his eightysixth
year.
No. 44 in the same Row is remarkable as
having been for some years the residence of the
Rev. Archibald Alison, ?to whom we have already
referred; in the same house with him lived his
sons, Professor Alison, and Archibald the future
historian of Europe and first baronet of the name.
The latter was born in the year 1792, at the
parsonage house of Kenley,in Shropshire. The Rev.
Archibald Alison (who was a cadet of the Alisons,
of New Hall, in Angus) before becoming incunibent
of the Cowgate Chapel, in 1800, had been
a prebendary of Sarum, rector of Roddington,
and vicar of High Ercal; and his wife was
Dorothea Gregory, grand-daughter of the fourteenth
Lord Forbes of that ilk, a lady whose family
for two centuries has been eminent in mathematics
and the exact sciences.
His sermons were published by Constable in
1817, twenty-seven years subsequent to his work
on ?Taste,? and, according to the Literary
Magazine for that year and other critical periodicals,
since the first publication of Blair?s discourses
there were no sermons so popular in Scotland as
those of Mr. Alison. He enforced virtue and
piety upon the sanction of the Gospels, without
ehtering into those peculiar grounds and conditions
of salvation which constitute the sectarian theories
of religion, regarding his hearers or readers as
having already arrived at that state of knowledge
and understanding when, ? having the principles
of the doctrine of Christ, they should go on unto
perfection.?
Great King Street, a broad and stately thoroughfare
that extends from Drummond Place to the
Great King Street1 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 195
Royal Circus, was built in 1820, and in the following
year it was proposed to erect at the west
end of it an equestrian statue to the memory of
George III., for which subscription lists had been
opened, but the project was never carried out.
In Great King Street have resided, respectively
in Nos. 3, 16, and 72, three men who are of mark
and fame-Sir Robert Christison, Sir William
Hamilton, and Sir William Allan.
When the future baronet occupied No. 3, he
was Doctor Christison, and Professor of medical
jurisprudence. Born in June, 1797, and son of the
late Alexander Christison, Professor of Humanity
in the University of Edinburgh, he became a student
there in 1811, and passed with brilliance through
the literary and medical curriculum, and after
graduating in 1819, he proceeded to London and
Paris, where, under the celebrated M. Orfila, he
applied himself to the study of toxicology, the
department of medical science in which he became
so deservedly famous.
Soon after his return home to Scotland he commenced
practice in his native capital, and in 1822
was appointed Professor of Medical Jurisprudence
in the University, and was promoted in 1832 to
the chair of materia medica. He contributed
various articles to medical journals on professional
subjects, and wrote several books, among others
an exhaustive ? Treatise on Poisons,? still recognised
as a standard work on that subject, and of
more than European reputation.
At the famous trial of Palmer, in 1856, Dr.
Christison went to London, and gave such valuable
evidence that Lord Campbell cornplimented him
on the occasion, and the ability he displayed was
universally recognised and applauded. He was
twice President of the Royal College of Physicians,
Edinburgh-the first time being in 1846-and was
appointed Ordinary Physician to the Queen for
Scotland. He received the degree of D.C.L. from
Oxford in 1866, was created a baronet in 1871~ and
was made LL.D. of Edinburgh Universityin 1872.
He resigned his chair in 18.77, and died in 188%
In No. 16 lived and died Sir William Hamilton,
Bart., of Preston and Fingalton, Professor of Logic
and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh
from 1836 to 1856, and Fellow of the Scottish
Society of Antiquaries. He had previously resided
in Manor Place. He was called to the Scottish bar
in 1815, at the same time with Duncan McNeill,
the future Sir Archibald Alison, John Wilson, and
others, and in 1816 assumed the baronetcy as
twenty-fourth male representative of Sir John Fitz-
Gilbert de Hamilton, who was the second son of
Sir Gilbert, who came into Scotland in the time of
Alexander III., and from whom the whole family
of Hamilton are descended. The baronetcy is in
remainder to heirs male general, but was not assumed
from the death of the second baronet
in 1701 till 1806. It was a creation of 1673.
With his brother Thomas lie became one of the
earliest contributors to the columns of Blucku~oad?s
MRgazine.
Besides ?? Cyril Thornton,? one of the best military
novels in the language, Thomas Hamilton
was author of ?LAnnals of the Peninsular Campaign?
and of ? Men and Manners in America?
In ? Peter?s Letters? heis describedas ?afine-looking
young officer, whom the peace has left at liberty
to amuse himself in a more pleasant way than he
was accustomed to, so long as Lord Wellington
kept the field. He has a noble, grand, Spaniardlooking
head, and a tall giaceful person, which he
swings about in a style of knowingness that might
pass muster even in the eye of old Potts. The
expression of his features is so very sombre that
I should never have guessed him to be a playful
writer (indeed, how could I have guessed such
a person to be a writer at all?). Yet such is
the case. Unless I am totally misinformed, he is
the author of a thousand beautiful jeux $esprit
both in prose and verse, which I shall point out
to you more particularly when we meet.? He
had served in the 29th Regiment of Foot during
the long war with France, and died in his fiftythird
year, in 1842,
In April, 1820, when the chair of moral
philosophy in the University of Edinburgh fell
vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Browne, the
successor of Dugald Stewart, Sir William Hamilton
became a candidate together with Johr:
Wilson. Others were mentioned as possible competitors,
among them Sir James Macintosh and
Mr. Malthus, but it soon became apparent that
the struggle-one which had few parallels even in
the past history of that University-lay between
the two first-named. ? Sir William was a Whig ;
Wilson was a Tory of the most unpardonable
description,? says Mrs. Gordon in her ?Memou,?
and the Whig side was strenuously supported in
the columns of the Srotsnian-?and privately,? she
adds, ?in every circle where the name of Blackl~
lood was a name of abomination and of fear.?
But eventually, in the year of Dr. Browne?s death,
Wilson was appointed to the vacant chair, and
among the first to come to hear, and applaud to
the echo, his earliest lectures, was Sir William
Hamilton.
In 1829 t k latter married his cousin, Miss
Marshall, daughter of hlr. Hubert Marshall, and
