PI0 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Melville Street
pr0mot.e the pleasant intercourse of. those who
practise art either professionally or privately ; to
increase facilities for the study and observation of
art, and to obtain more general attention to its
claims.
The association is composed of artists, professional
and amateur, and has exhibitions of paintings,
sculpture, and water-colour drawings, at intervals
during the year, without being antagonistic
in any way to the Royal Scottish Academy.
Lectures are here delivered on art, and the entire
institute is managed by a chairman and executive
council,
In No. 6 Shandwick Place Sir Walter Scott
resided from 1828 to 1830, when he relinquished
his office as clerk of session in the July of the
latter year. This was his Zasf permanent residence
in Edinburgh, where on two future occasions,
however, he resided temporarily. On the 31st of
January, 1831, he came to town from Abbotsford
for the purpose of executing his last will, and on
that occasion he took up his abode at the house of
his bookseller, in Athole Crescent, where he resided
for nine days. At that time No. 6 was the
residence of Mr. Jobson.
No. 11, now a hotel, was for about twenty years
the residence of Lieutenant-General Francis Dundas,
son of the second President Dundas, and
brother of the Lord Chief Baron Dundas. He was
long a colonel in the old Scots Brigade of immortal
memory, in the Dutch service, and which afterwards
came into the British in 1795, when his regiment was
numbered as the 94th of the line. In 1802-3 he was
Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. During the
brief peace of Amiens, in accordance with his instructions
to evacuate the colony, he embarked his
troops on board the British squadron, but on the
same evening, having fortunately received counter
orders, he re-landed the troops and re-captured the
colony, which has ever since belonged to Britain.
In I 809 he was colonel of the 7 I st Highlanders,
and ten years after was Governor of Dumbarton
Castle. He died at Shandwick Place on the 4th
of January, 1824 after a long and painful illness,
?which he supported With the patience of a Christian
and the fortitude of a soldier.?
. At the east end of Shandwick Place is St
George?s Free Church, a handsome and massive
Palladian edifice, built for the congregation of the
celebrated Dr. Candlish, after a design by David
Bryce, RSA, seated for about 1,250 persons, and
erected at a cost, including;t;13,600 for the site, 01
~31,000.
In No. 3 Walker Street, the short thoroughfare
between Coates Crescent and Melville Street, Su
.
Walter Scott resided with his daughter during the
winter of 1826-7, prior to his removal to Shandwick
Place.
Melville Street, which runs parallel with the
latter on the north, at about two hundred yards
distance, is a spacious thoroughfare symmetrically
and beautifully edificed; and is adorned in its
centre, at a rectangular expansion, with a pedestrian
bronze statute of the second Viscount Melville,
ably executed by Steel, on a stone pedestal ; it was
erected in 1557.
This street contains houses which were occupied
by two eminent divines, the Rev. David Welsh and
the Rev. Andrew Thomson, already referred to in
the account of St George?s parish church. In No.
36, Patrick Fraser Tytler, F.R.S.E., the eminent
Scottish historian, resided for many years, and
penned several of his works. He was the youngest
son of Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee,
and thus came of a race distinguished in Scottish
literature. Patrick was called to the bar in 1813,
and six years after published, at Edinburgh, a ?? Life
of the Admirable Crichton,? and in 1826, a ?Life
of WicliK? His able and laborious ? History of
Scotland? first appeared in 1828, and at once won
him fame, for its accuracy, brilliance, and purity
of style ; but his writings did not render him independent,
as he. died, when advanced in lie, in
receipt of an honorary pension from the Civil List.
In Manor Place, at the west end of Melville
Street, lived Mrs. Grant of Laggan, the well-known
authoress of ?? Letters from the Mountains,? and
whose house was, in her time, the resort of
select literav parties ; of whom Professor Wilson
was always one. She had for some time previous
resided in the Old Kirk Brae House. In 1825 an
application was made on her behalf to George IV.
for a pension, which was signed by Scott, Jeffrey,
Mackenzie-? The Man of Feeling ?-and other influential
persons in Edinburgh, and in consequence
she received an annual pension of LIOO from the
Civil Establishment of Scotland.
This, with the emoluments of her literary works,
and liberal bequests by deceased friends, made
easy and independent her latter days, and she died
in Manor Place, on the 7th of November, 1838,
aged 84.
It was not until 1868 that this street was edificed
on its west side partially, Westward and northward
of it a splendid new extension of the city spreads,
erected subsequently to that year, comprising property
now worth nearly&~,ooo,ooo.
This street is named from the adjacent mansion
house of the Walkers of Coates, and is on the property
of the latter name. Lyingimmediately west
