206 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Ainslie Place.
To the philosopher we have already referred in
our account of Lothian Hut, in the Horse Wynd.
In 1792 he published the first volume of the
?Philosophy of the Human Mind,? and in the
following year he read before the Royal Society of
Edinburgh his account of the life and writings of
Adam Smith.; and his other works are too wellknown
to need enumeration here. On the death
of his wife, in 1787, he married Helen D?Arcy
Cranstoun, daughter of the Hon. George Cranstoun,
who, it is said, was his equal in intellect, if
superior in blood. She was the sister of the
Countess Purgstall (the subject of Basil Hall?s
? Schloss Hainfeldt ?) and of Lord Corehouse, the
tiiend of Sir Walter Scott.
Though the least beautiful of a family iq which
beauty is hereditary, she had (according to the
Quarter& Review, No. 133) the best essence of
beauty, expression, a bright eye beaming with intelligence,
a manner the most distinguished, yet
soft, feminine, and singularly winning. On her illfavoured
Professor she doted with a love-match
devotion; to his studies and night lucubrations
she sacrificed her health and rest; she was his
amanuensis and corrector at a time when he was
singularly fortunate in his pupils, who never forgot
the charm of her presence, the instruction they
won, and the society they enjoyed, in the house of
Dugald Stewart Among these were the Lords
Dudley, Lansdowne, Palmerston, Kinnaird, and
Ashburton. In all his after-life he maintained a
good fellowship with them, and, in 1806, obtained
the sinecure office of Gazefie writer for Scotland,
with A600 per annum.
Her talent, wit, and beautymade the wife of the
Professor one of the most attractive women in the
city. ?( No wonder, therefore,? says the Quarfero,
?that her saloons were the resort of all that was
the best of Edinburgh, the house to which strangers
most eagerly sought introduction. In her Lord
Dudley found indeed a friend, she was to him in
the place of a mother. His respect for her was
unbounded, and continued to the close; often
have we seen him, when she was stricken in years,
seated near her for whole evenings, clasping her
hand in both of his. Into her faithful ear he
poured his hopes and his fears, and unbosomed his
inner soul ; and with her he maintained a constant
correspondence to the last.?
Her marriage with the Professor came about in a
singular manner. When Miss Cranstoun, she had
written a poem, which was accidentally shown by
her cousin, the Earl of Lothian, to Dugald Stewart,
then his private tutor, and unknown to fame ; and
?he was so enraptured with it, and so warm in his
commendations, that the authoress and her critic
fell in love by a species of second-sight, before their
first interview, and in due time were made one.
Dugald Stewart died at his house in Ainslie
Place, on Wednesday, the 11th June, 1828, after a
short but painful illness, when in the seventy-fifth
year of his age, having been born in the old College
of Edinburgh in 1753, when his father was professor
of mathematics. His long life had been
devoted to literature and science. He had acquired
a vast amount of information, profound as it was
exact, and possessed the faculty of memory in a
singular degree. As a public teacher he was
fluent, animated, and impressive, with great dignity
and grace in his manner.
He was buried in the Canongate churchyard.
The funeral procession proceeded as a private one
from Ainslie Place at, three in the afternoon ; but
on reaching the head of the North Bridge it was
joined by the Senatus Academicus in their gowns
(preceded by the mace bearer) two and two, the
junior members in front, the Rev. Principal Baird
in the rear, together with the Lord Provost, magistrates
and council, with their officers and regalia.
He left a widow and two children, a son and
daughter, the former of whom, Lieutenant-Colonel
Matthew Stewart, published an able pamphlet on
Indian affairs. His widow, who holds a high
place among writers of Scottish song, survived him
ten years, dying in July, 1838.
The Very Rev. Edward Bannerman Ramsay,
LL.D. and F.R.S.E., a genial writer on several
subjects, but chiefly known for his ? Reminiscences
of Scottish Life and Character,? was long the occupant
of No. 23. He was the fourth son of Sir
Alexander Ramsay, Bart., of Balmaine, in Kincardineshire,
and was a graduate of St. John?s College,
Cambridge. His degree of LL.D. was given him
by the University of Edinburgh, on the installation
of Mr. Gladstone as Lord Rector in 1859. He
held English orders, and for seven years had been
a curate in Somersetshire. His last and most
successful contribution to literature was derived
from his long knowledge of Scottish character. He
was for many years Dean of the Episcopal Church
in Scotland, and as a Churchman he always advocated
moderate opinions, both in ritual and doctrine.
He died on the 27th December, 1872, in
the seventy-ninth year of hi5 age.
In the summer of 1879 amemorial to his memory
was erected at the west end of Princes Street,
eastward of St. John?s Church, wherein he so long
officiated. It is a cross of Shap granite, twenty-six
feet in height, having a width of eight feet six
inches from end to end of the arms. At the height
.
G d Stuart St~et.1 PROFESSOR AYTOUN. 207
of sixteen feet there spring curves which bend
round into the arms, while between those arms and
the upright shaft are carried four arcs, having a
diameter of six feet.
On each of its main faces the cross is divided
into panels, in which are inserted bronze basreliefs,
worked out, like the whole design, from
drawings by R. Anderson, A.R.S.A. Those occupying
the head and arms of the cross represent the
various stages of our Lord?s Passion, the Resurrection
and the Ascension; in another series of six,
placed thus on either side of the shaft, are set forth
the acts of charity, while the large panels in the
base are filled in with sculptured ornament of the
fine twelfth-century type, taken from Jedburgh
abbey.
Three senators of the College of Justice have
had their abodes in Ainslie Place-Lord Barcaple,
raised to the bench in 1862, Lord Cowan, a judge
of 1851, and George Cranstoun, Lord Corehouse,
the brother of Mrs. Dugald Stewart, who resided
in No. 12. This admirable judge was the son of
the Hon. George Cranstoun of Longwarton, and
Miss Brisbane of that ilk. He was originally intended
for the army, but passed as advocate in
1793, and was Dean of Faculty in 1823, and
succeeded to the bench on the death of Lord
Hermand, three years after. He was the author
of the famous Court of Session jeu rFespn2, known
as ?The Diamond Beetle Case,? an amusing and
not overdrawn caricature of the judicial style, manners,
and language, of the judges of a bygone
time.
He took his judicial title from the old ruined
castle of Corehouse, near the Clyde, where he had
built a mansion in the English style. He was an
excellent Greek scholar, and as such was a great
favourite with old Lord Monboddo, who used to
declare that Cranstoun was the only scholar in
all Scotland,? the scholars in his opinion being all
on the south side of the Tweed.
He w& long famed for being the beau-ideal of
a judge; placid and calm, he listened to even
the longest debates with patience, and was an
able lawyer, especially in feudal questions, and
his opinions were always received with the most
profound respect.
Great Stuart Street leads from Ainslie Place
into Randolph Crescent,which faces the Queensfeny
Road, and has in it3 gardens some of the fine old
trees which in former times adorned the Earl of
Moray?s park.
In No. 16 of the former street lived and died,
after his removal from No. I, Inverleith Terrace, the
genial and. patriotic author of the Lays of t h e
.
Scottish Cavaliers,? a Scottish humourist of a very
high class. William Edmondstoune Aytoun, Professor
of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh,
was born in 1813, of a fine old Fifeshire family,
and in the course of his education at one of the
seminaries of his native capital, he became dis
tinguished among his contemporaries for his powers
of Latin and English composition, and won a prize
for a poem on ?( Judith.? In his eighteenth year
he published a volume entitled Poland and other
Poems,? which attracted little attention ; but after
he was called to the bar, in 1840, he became one
of the standing wits of the Law Courts, yet, save
as a counsel in criminal cases, he did not acquire
forensic celebrity as an advocate.
Five years afterwards he was presented to the
chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University,
and became a leading contributor to
Blackwoofls Magazine, in which his famous LL Lays,?
that have run through so many editions, first
appeared. Besides these, he was the author of
many brilliant pieces in the Book of Ballads,? by
Bon Gaultier, a name under which he and Sir
Theodore Martin, then a solicitor in Edinburgh,
contributed to various periodicals.
In April, 1849, he married Jane Emily Wilson,
the youngest daughter of Christopher North,? in
whose class he had been as a student in his early
years, a delicate and pretty little woman, who predeceased
him. In the summer of 1853 he delivered
a series of lectures on ?Poetry and Dramatic
Literature,? in Willis?s Rooms, to such large and
fashionable audiences as London alone can produce
; and to his pen is ascribed the mock-heroic
tragedy of Firrnilian,? designed to ridicule, as it
did, the rising poets of ?? The Spasmodic School.?
With all his brilliance as a humourist, Aytoun was
unsuccessful as a novelist, and his epic poem
?Bothaell,? written in 16 Great Stuart Street, did
not bring him any accession of fame.
In his latter years, few writers on the Conservative
side rendered more effective service to their
party than Professor Aytoun, whom, in 1852, Lord
Derby rewarded With the offices of Sheriff and
Vice-Admiral of Orkney.
Among the many interesting people who frequented
the house of the author of ?The Lays?
few were more striking than an old lady of
strong Jacobite sentiments, even in this prosaic
age, Miss Clementina Stirling Graham, of Duntrune,
well worthy of notice here, remarkable for her
historical connections as for her great age, as she
died in her ninety-fifth year, at Duntrune, in 1877.
Born in the Seagate of Dundee, in 1782, she was
the daughter of Stirling of Pittendreich, Forfar
