The water of Leith.] GEORGE RANKINE LUKE 81
memoir of him was prefixed by Dr. Leonhard
Schmitz to his last work, which was published six
years after his death, which occurred in his seventyfourth
year, at No. 21, St. Bernard?s Crescent, on
the 9th of July, 1859.
Academy, everywhere bearing off more prizes than
any of his contemporaries. Leaving the last in
1853, he w?ent to the University of Glasgow, and
at the close of the first session, when in his. seventeenth
year, he carried off the two gold medals
ST. STEPHEN?S CHURCH.
Our list of Stockbridge notabilities would be
incomplete were we to omit the name of one
whose fame, had he been spared, might have
been very glorious : young George Rankine Luke,
a Snell Exhibitioner at Baliol College, and one of
the most brilliant students at Oxford. Born in
Brunswick Street, in March, 1836, the son of Mr.
Tames Luke, a master baker, he passed speedily
through the ranks of the Hamilton Place Academy,
the Circus Place School, and the Edinburgh
107
for the senior Latin and Greek, three prizes for
Greek and Latin composition, the prize for the
Latin Blackstone, and the Muirhead prize. The
close of the second year saw him win the medal
for the Greek Blackstone, the highest classical
honour the University offers, Professor Lushington?s
final Greek prize, another for Logic, and for
Composition four others.
In 1855, as a Snell Exhibitioner at Oxford, he
, rapidly gained the Gaisford prizes for Greek prose
82 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Water of Leith.
and verse, the Ireland Scholarship, and a studentship
at Christ Church; but in the midst of his
youth and fame he was suddenly taken away, in a
manner that was a source of deep regret in Scotland
and England alike. He perished by drowning,
when a boat was upset on the Isis, on the 3rd of
March, 1862, when he was in his twenty-sixth
year.
?Oxford has lost one of her most promising
students,? said the London Revim, with reference
to this calamity. ? A. career of such almost uniform
brilliance has seldom been equalled, and never
been surpassed, by any one among the many distinguished
young men who have gone from Scotland
to an English university. Indeed, we only do
him justice when we say that Mr. Luke was one of
?the most remarkable students that ever went to
Oxford. Many leading boys have gone up from
the great English public schools, where they have
been trained with untiring attention, under the careful
eye of the ablest and most experienced teachers
of the day, and they have more than fully rewarded
their masters for the care bestowed upon them ;
but no one has shone out so conspicuously above
his compeers as Mr. Luke has done among those
who have been educated in the comparative obscurity
of a Scotch school and university, where,
owing to the system pursued at these seminaries, a
boy is left almost entirely to himself, and to his own
spontaneous exertions.? This young man, whose
brief career shed such honour on his family and
his native place, was as distinguished for kindness
of heart, probity, and every moral worth, as for
his swift classical attainments.
There are several painters of note now living,
famous alike in the annals of Scottish and British
art, who have made Stockbridge their home and the
scene of their labours. There some of them have
spent their youth, and received the rudiments of
their education, whose names we can but give
-viz., Norman Macbeth, RSA ; Robert Henderson,
R.S.A. ; James Faed, the painter and engraver ;
Thomas Faed, R.A. ; Robert Macbeth ; Alexander
Leggett ; John Proctor, the cartoonist ; and W. L.
Richardson, AAA.
Comely Bank estate, which lies north of Stockbridge,
was the property of Sir William Fettes, Bart.,
Lord Provost of the city, of whom we have given
a memoir, with an accpnt of his trust disposition,
in the chapter on Charlotte Square. On the gentle
slope of Comely Bank, the Fettes College forms a
conspicuous object from almost every point, but
chiefly from the Dean Bridge Road. This grand
edifice was planned and executed by David Bryce,
R.S.A., at the cost of about ~150,000, and is renarkable
for the almost endless diversity and
slegance of its details. The greatest wealth of
;hese is to be found in the centre, a prevailing idea
:worked out into numerous forms, in corbels, gur-
;oils, and mouldings) being that of griffns con-
Lending. Its towers are massive, lofty, and ornate.
;he whole style of architecture being the most florid
:xample of the old Scottish Baronial. The chapel,
which occupies the centre of the structure, is a
most beautiful building, with its due accompaniment
of pinnacles and buttresses, ornamented with
statues on corbels or in canopied niches. -4
tinely-carved stone rail encloses the terrace, which
is surrounded by spacious shrubberies
The building was founded in June, 1863, and
formally opened in October, 1870. The number
of boys to be admitted on the foundation, and
maintained and educated in the college at the expense
of the endowment, was not at any time to
exceed fifty-a nuniber absurdly small to occupy
so vast a palace, for such it is. For the accommodation
of non-foundationers, spacious boardinghouses
have been erected in the grounds, and in
connection with the college, under the superintendence
of the teachers.
Craigleith adjoins Comely Bank on the westward,
and was an old estate, in which Momson the
Younger, of Prestongrange, was entailed 1731.
Here we find the great quarry, from which the
greatest portion of the Kew Town has been built,
covering an area of twelve acres, which is more
than zoo feet deep, and has been worked for
many years When first opened, it was rented for
about 6 5 0 per annum; but between 1820 and
1826 it yielded about A5,51o per annum.
Here, in 1823, there was excavated a stone of
such dimensions and weight, says the Edin6uTh
WeekCyJoumaZ for November of that year, as to
be without parallel in ancient or modern times.
In length it was upwards of 136 feet, averaging
twenty feet in breadth, and its computed weight was
15,000 tons. It was a longitudinal cut from a
stratum of very fine lime rock. The greater part
of it was conveyed to the Calton Hill, where it
now forms the architrave of the National Monument,
and the rest was sent by sea to Buckingham
Palace.
Three large fossil coniferous trees have been
found here, deep down in the heart of the freestone
rock. One of these, discovered about 1830,
excited much the attention of geologists as to
whether it was not standing with root uppermost ;
but after a time it was found to be in its natural
position,
A little to the north of the quarry stands the
