382 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Gregfriars Church.
encroaching on one not fit to be touched ! The
whole presents a scene equally nauseous and unwholesome.
How soon this spot will be so surcharged
with animal juices and oils, that, becoming
one mass of corruption, its noxious steams will
burst forth with the prey of a pestilence, we shall
not pretend to determine ; but we will venture to
say, the effects of this burying-ground would ere
now have been severely felt, were it not that, besides
the coldness of the climate, they have been checked
by the acidity of the coal smoke and the height of
the winds, which in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh
blow with extraordinary violence.?
h o t wrote fully a hundred years ago, but since
his time the interments in the Greyfriars went on
till within a recent period.
George Buchanan was buried here in 1582,
under a through-stone, which gradually sank into
the earth and disappeared. The site, distinctly
known in 1701, is now barely remembered by tradition
as being on the north slope of the churchyard;
but a monument in the ground, to the great
Latin scholar and Scottish historian, was erected
by the late great bibliopole, David Laing, so many
years Librarian of the Signet Library, at his own
expense. An essential feature in the memorial is a
head of Buchanan in bronze, from the best likeness
of him extant. The design was furnished by D.
W. Stevenson, A.R.S.A.
Taking some of the interments at, random, here
is the grave of George Heriot (father of the founder
of the adjacent hospital), who died in 1610; of
George Jameson, the Scottish Vandyke, who died
in 1644; and of Alexander Henderson, 1646, the
great covenanting divine, and leading delegate from
Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, and the
principal author of the Assembly?s Catechism. His
ashes lie under a square pedestal tomb, erected
by his nephew, and surmounted by a carved urn.
There are long inscriptions on the four sides.
John Milne?s tomb, 1667, Royal Master Mason
@y sixth descent), erected by his nephew, .Robert
Milne, also Royal Master Mason, and builder of
the modem portions of Holyrood House, records
in rhyme how-
? John Milne, who maketh the fourth John,
And, by descent from father unto son,
Sixth Master Mason to a royal race
Of seven successive kings, sleeps in this place.?
It is a handsome tomb, with columns and a
pediment, and immediately adjoins the eastern or
Candlemaker Row entrance, in the formation of
which some old mural tombs were removed;
among them that of Alexander Millar, Master
Tailor to James VI., dated 1616--Xiit Pnkcz$s et
Civium Zucfu decotafus, as it bore.
A flat stone which, by 1816, was much sunk in
the earth, dated 1613, covered the grave of Dr.
John Nasmyth, of the family of Posso, surgeon of
the king of France?s troop of Scottish Guards, who
died in London, but whose remains had been sent
to the Greyfriars by order of James VI.
The tomb of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh-
the celebrated lawyer, and founder of the
Advocates? Library, and who, as a persecutor, was so
ahhorred by the people that his spirit was supposed
to haunt the place where he lies-is a handsome
and ornqte octagon temple, with eight pillars, a
cornice, and a dome, on the southern side of the
ground, and its traditional terrors we have already
referred to. But other interments than his have
taken place here. One notably in 1814, when
the widow of Lieutenant Roderick Mackenzie of
Linessie was, at her own desire, laid there, ?in
the tomb of the celebrated Sir George Mackenzie,
who was at the head of the Lochslin family, and
to whom, by the mother?s side, she was nearly
related.? (GenfZeman?s Mng., 1814.)
Near it is the somewhat remarkable tomb of
William Little, whilom Provost of Edinburgh in
1591. He was Laird of Over Liberton, and the
tomb was erected by his great-grandchild in 1683.
His kinsman, Clement Little, Advocate and Commissary
of Edinburgh, whose meagre library formed
the nucleus of that of the university, is also buried
here. It is a mausoleum, composed of a recumbent
female figure, with a pillar-supported canopy above
her, on which stand four female figures at the
several corners. The popular story is that the
lady was poisoned by her four daughters, whose
statues were placed over her in eternal remembrance
of their wickedness; but the effigies are in
reality those of Justice, Charity, Faith, &c., favourite
emblematical characters in that age when the
monument was erected; and the object in placing
them there was merely ornamental.
Here are interred Archibald Pitcairn, the poet,
1713, under a rectangular slab on four pillars, with
an inscription by his friend Ruddiman, near the
north entry of the ground; Colin MacLaurin, the
mathematician, 1746; and William Ged, the inventor
of stereotype printing.
Here was worthy and gentle Allan Ramsay committed
to the grave in 1758, and the just and u p
right Lord President Duncan Forbes of Culloden,
elevenyears before that time. Another famous Lord
President, Robert Blair of Avontoun, was laid here
in 1811.
Here, too, lie the two famous Monros, father and
