340 OLD AND ?NEW EDINBURGH. [George Square.
Centenary celebration in 1872 was a ?? Contract
between James Brown, architect in Edinburgh, and
Walter Scott, W.S., to feu and bui!d a dnellinghouse,
with cellars, coach-house, &c., on the west
side of the great square, called George Square
(No. 25), at the annual feu of &s 14s.~ the first
payment to commence on Whit Sundayl 1773. Six
pages, each signed WaZfeer Scoft.?
In this house, then, with its back windows overlooking
the Meadow Walk, beneath its happy
my infirmity (his lameness) as she lifted me
coarsely and carelessly over the flinty steps which
my brother traversed with a shout and bound. I
remember the suppressed bitterness of the moment,
and, conscious of my own infirmity, the envy with
which I regarded the elastic steps of my more
happily-formed brethren.?
In No. 25 Scott received, from private tutors,
the first rudiments of education ; and he mentions
that ?our next neighbour, Lady Cumming, sent
THE BLIND ASYLUM (FORMERLY THE HOUSE OF DR. JOSEPH BLACK), NICOLSON STREET, 1820. (AficrStom.)
parental roof, were spent the bright young years
of Scott, who there grew up to manhood under the
eye of his good mother. Among his papers, after
death, there was found a piece of verse, penned in
a boyish hand, endorsed in that of his mother,
? My WaZter?sJfrst lines.?
?My father?s house in George Square,? says
Scott, ?continued to be my most established place
of residence (after my return from Prestonpans in
1776) till my marriage in 1797.?
Writing of an incidentof his childhood, he says:-
?? Every step of the way (the Meadow Walk, behind
George Square) has for me something of an early
remembrance. There is the stile at which I
recollect a cross child?s maid upbraiding me with
to beg that the boys might not be all flogged at the
same hour, as though she had no doubt the punishment
was deserved, yet the noise was dreadful !?
There, too, he had that long illness which confined
him to bed, and during which the boy, though
full of worldly common sense, was able to indulge
in romantic and poetical longings after a mediad
age of his own creation, and stored his mind with
those treasures of poesy and romance which he
afterwards turned to such wondrous account.
During the weary weeks of that long illness he
was often enabled to see the vista of the Meadow
Walk by a combination of mirrors so arranged that
while lying in bed he could witness the troops marching
out to exercise in the Links, or any other
