J0ppa.l BRUNSTANE HOUSE. I49
side of the streets when the cavalcade was to pass,
and through this flesh and blood corpus (sic), as it
were, all the mind of the city followed, in longdrawn
procession half a mile in length, The
Stone Mason of Cromarfy.? The whole thing was
national, as distinct from popular. To make the
day complete, Nature herself spread over it the
robe of innocency, but, as it were, of dabbled
innocency, snow and thaw together, You saw, of
course, the result of the post-mortem examination,
which showed a brain past responsibility-a temble
example of what mental work caused, even to such
a physical giant as Hugh Miller. The last time I
incredible number of volumes that threw light on
Scottish archzeology, but kindly rendered invaluable
assistance to other workers in the same useful field.
Joppa, a modern village, the name of which does
not appear in Kincaid?s ?Gazetteer of Midlothian ?
in 1787? or his map of 1794, is now incorporated
with Portobello on the east, and a mineral well once
gave it importance to invalids. Near it are salt
works, well known as Joppa Pans. Robert Jamieson,
Professor of Natural History in the University
of Edinburgh, to the chair of which he was a p
pointed in 1804, was long resident in this place, and
he is referred to in the famous ?Chaldee MS.?as dia
PORTOBELLO, 1838. iAflcr W. 8. &oft.)
saw him I felt suspicious that his mind was shaken,
for tottering nervousness in so vast a form (for he
really looked quite colossal) seemed more than
ordinary mauziaise honte, and he complained much
of his broken health? (ciLife and Letters of
Sydney Dobell.?) As has been mentioned in a
previous chapter, he was buried in the Grange
cemetery.
In No. 12, James Street, Portobello, the eminent
antiquary, David Laing, LL.D., who for forty years
acted as librarian to the Signet Library, closed his
long, laborious, and blameless life on the 18th of
October, 1878, in his eighty-sixth year. He formed
oneof the last surviving links between our own
time and literary coteries of sixty years ago. We
have elsewhere referred to him, and to that career
in which he not only edited personally an almost
He was born in Cromarty in 1802.
wise man which had come out of Joppa, where the
ships are ; one that had sojourned in far countries,?
Brunstane Bum, which flows into the Firth at
Magdalene Bridge, forms a kind of boundary in this
quarter, and the bridge takes its name from an
ancient chapel, dedicated to W. Mary Magdalene,
which once stood in the ground of New Hailes,
and which was a subordinate chaplaincy of the
church of St. Michael, at Inveresk, and, with others,
was granted by James VI. to his Chancellor, Lord
Thirlstane, progenitor of the Earls of Lauderdale.
Before quitting this quarter it is impossible to
omit a reference to the great quadrangular oldfashioned
manor-house of Brunstane, which was
sometimes of old called Gilbertoun, and which is
approached by a massive little picturesque bridge,
of such vast antiquity that it is supposed to be
