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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. IV

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The Cowgate.] LADY GALLOWAY. Z S 7 Although the name of this wynd is as old as the middle of the seventeeth century, none of the buildings in it latterly were older than the middle of the eighteenth. They had all been removed by those who were anxious for the benefit of such fine air as its surroundings afforded, for in the map of 1647 the Yicus Epuorzrm is shown as having to the westward gardens in plenitude, divided by four long hedgerows, and closed on the south by the became remarkable for piety, mingled with great stateliness and pride; and she is thus referred to in the Ridotto of Holyrood, partly written by her sister-in-law, Lady Bruce of Kinloss :-- ?And there was Bob Murray, though married, alas ! Yet still rivalling Johnstone in beauty and grace. And there was my lady, well known by her airs, Who ne?er goes to revel but after her prayers.? The Bob herein referred to was Sir Robert crenelated wall of the city, and it terminated by a bend eastward at the Potterrow Port. Respectable members of the bar were always glad to have a flat in some of the tall edifices on the east side of the wynd. About the middle of it, on the west side, was a distinct mansion called Galloway House, having a large Fcdiment, and ornamented on the top by stone vases. This residence was built by Alexander, sixth Earl of Galloway, one of the Lords of Police, who died in 1773. His countess Catharine, daughter of John Earl of Dundonald, colonel of the Scottish Horse Guards, was mother of Captain George Stewart, who fell at Ticonderoga. She had been a beauty in her youth, and formed the subject of one of Hamilton of Bangour?s poetical tributes, and in her old age 81 Murray of Clermont. Among all the precise granddames of her time in Edinburgh, Lady Galloway was noted for her pre-eminent pomp and formality, and would order out her coach with six horses, if but to pay a visit to a friend at the corner of the wpd, or to Lord hfinto, whose house was a few yards westward of it. ? It was alleged that when the countess made calls, the leaders were sometimes at the door she was going to when she was stepping into the camage at her own door. This may be called a tour de force illustration of the nearness of friends to each other in Old Edinburgh.? New College Wynd, which strikes from the eastern part of Chambers Street, runs first IIO feet northward, then 180 feet westward, and then northward again in the line of the Iower part of the
Volume 4 Page 257
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