The Water of Leith.] WALTER ROSS, W.S. 73
now at Abbotsford, where Sir Walter Scott took
them in 1824. This tower was divided into two
apartments, an upper and a lower ; the entrance to
the former was by an outside stair, and was used
as a summer-house. On the roof was a wellpainted
subject from the heathen mythology, and
the whole details of the apartment were very handsome.
On the 11th of March, 1789, Mr. ROSS, who
was Registrar of Distillery Licences in Scotland,
of St. Bernard?s. The bower is on the spot where
two lovers were killed by the falling of a sand-bank
upon them.?
For several years after his death the upper part
of the tower was occupied by the person who
acted as night-watchman in this quarter, while the
lower was used as a stable, In 1818, with reference
to future building operations, the remains of
Mr. Ross were taken up, and re-interred in the
West Church burying-ground. The extension of
THE WATER OF LEITH, 1825. (A/%-? Edank.)
and was a man distinguished for talent, humour,
and suavity of manner, dropped down in a fit,
and suddenly expired. He would seem to have
had some prevision of such a fate, as by his
particular request his body was kept eight days,
and was interred near his tower with the coffin-lid
open.
?? Yesterday, at one o?clock,?? says the Edinburgh
Advertiser for March zoth, 1789, ? the remains of
the late Mr. Walter Ross were, agreeable to his
own desire, interred in a bower laid out by himself
for that purpose, and encircled with myrtle, near
the beautiful and romantic tower which he had
been at so much trouble and expense in getting
erected, on the most elevated part of his grounds
106
Anne Street, in 1825, caused the removal of his.
tower to be necessary. It was accordingly demolished,
and most of the sculptures were carted
away as rubbish.
In the ?? Traditions of Edinburgh,? we are told
that after he had finished his pleasure-grounds,
Mr. Ross was much enraged by nightly trespassers,
and advertised spring-guns and man-traps without
avail. At last he conceived the idea of procuring
a human leg from the Royal Infirmary, and
dressing it up with a stocking, shoe, and .buckle,
sent it through the town, borne aloft by the crier,
proclaiming that ? it had been found last night in
Mr. Walter Ross?s policy at Stockbridge, and
offering to restore it to the disconsolate owner.??
74 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Water of Leith.
After this, no one attempted to break into his
grounds.
No. 29, Anne Street, was for years the residence
of ?? Christopher North,? before his removal to
No. 6, Gloucester Place. ? Towards the end of the
winter of 1819,?? says Mrs. Gordon, in her memoir
of him, ?? my father, with his wife and children, five
in number, left his mother?s house, 53, Queen
Street, and set up his household gods in a small
and somewhat inconvenient house in Anne Street.
This little street, which forms the culminating
point of the suburb of Stockbridge, was at that
time quite out of fown, and is still a secluded
place, overshadowed by the tall houses of Eton
Terrace and Clarendon Crescent. In withdrawing
from the more fashionable part of Edinburgh, they
did not, however, exclude themselves from the
pleasures of social intercourse with the world. In
Anne Street they found a pleasant little community,
that made residence there far from distasteful. The
seclusion of the locality made it then-as it still
seeins to Se-rather a favourite quarter with literary
men and artists.?
While here, in the following year, her father
was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh ; while here he wrote his
pathetic ?? Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,?
and many of his finest contributions to BZackzewod?s
Magazine. . Here it was that many a pleasant
literary and artistic reunion took place under his
hospitable roof, with such men as Sir William
Hamilton; Captain Hamilton of the 29th Regiment,
his brother, and author of ? Cyril Thornton,? &c. ;
Galt, Hogg, and J. G. Lockhart; Sir Henry Raeburn,
the future Sir William Allan, R.A., and the
future Sir John Watson Gordon, P.R.S.A., who resided
successively in Nos. 17 and 27, Anne Street ;
De Quincey, and others. In 1829 the latter made
a very prptracted stay at Anne Street, and Mrs.
Gordon thus describes the daily routine of the
famous opium-eater there :-
?An ounce of laudanum per diem prostrated
animal life in the early part of the day. It was no
unfrequent sight to find him in his room lying upon
the rug in front of the fire, his head resting upon
a book, with his arms crossed over his breast, in
profound slumber. For several hours he would lie
in this state, till the torpor passed away. The time
when he was most brilliant was generally towards
the early morning hours; and then, more than
once, in order to show him 06 my father arranged
his supper parties, so that, sitting till three or four
in the morning, he brought Mr. De Quincey to that
point at which, in charm and power of conversation,
he was so truly wonderful?
His invariable diet was coffee, boiled rice, and
milk, with a slice of mutton from the loin, and
owing to his perpetual dyspepsia, he had a daily
audience with the cook, who had a great awe of
him. De Quincey died at Edinburgh on the 8th
of December, 1859.
In No. 41, Anne Street, the house of his father
(Captain Tulloch, of the 7th Royal Veteran Battalion),
lived, all the earlier years of his life, Colonel
Alexander Tulloch, that officer whose sagacity,
energy, and decision of character, were so admirably
evinced by the manner in which he instituted
and prosecuted an inquiry into the blunders and
commissariat disorders connected with our campaign
in the Crimea.
NO. 42, Anne Street was, in 1825, the property
of Howiason Crawfurd, of Crawfurdland and Braehead,
who performed the feudal homage with the
basin to George IV. in ISZZ, and concerning whose
family the old ? Statistical Accounts ? in I 7 92 says :
-:?It is a singular circumstance in regard to the
Crawfurdland family that its present representative
is the twenty-first lineally descended from the
original stock, without the intervention of even a
second brother.??
Robert Chambers, LL.D., who, before he had
risen to wealth and position, had lived at one time
in No. 4, India Place (now No. 4, Albert Place),
Stockbridge, dwelt for some years in the central
block on the east side of Anne Street, from whence
he removed to Doune Terrace.
James Ballantyne, Scott?s printer, possessed a
house in Anne Street, which he sold for &ioo at
the time of the famous bankruptcy.
One of the leading features in this locality is St.
Bernard?s Well, of which we find a notice in the
Edinburgh Advertiser for April 27th, 1764, which
states :--?As many people have got benefit from
using of the water of St. Bernard?s Well in the
neighbourhood of this city, there has been such
demand for lodgings this season that there is not
so much as one room to be had either at the Water
of Leith or its neighbourhood.? .
In the council-room of Heriot?s Hospital there
is an exquisitely carved mantelpiece, having a circular
compartment, ?enclosing a painting, which
represents a tradition of the hospital, that three of
its boys, while playing on the bank of the Leith,
discovered the mineral spring now bearing the
name of St. Bernard?s Well.
This was some time before the year 1760, as
the Scots Magazine for that year speaks of the
mineral well ? lately discovered between the Water
of Leith and Stockbridge, which is said to be equal
in quality to any of the most famous in Britain.?
