farswade.] CAPTAIN PHILIP LOCKHART. 357
was shot, and the other two performed the like
to his body ;?then they were shot, and laid together,
without a coffin, in a pit digged for the purpose.
Which tragical scene being thus finished, Mr.
Nairne and Mr. Lockhart were decently buried.??
(? Letter to a friend in the king?s camp,? Perth,
Count Lockhart was succeeded by his son
1 7 1 5 )
turesqueness and romance to any in Scotland.
The river seems all the way to be merrily frdicsome,
and rushing along a shelving gradient, now hiding
itself behind rocks and weeping wood, and making
sudden, but always mirthful, transitions in its
moods.?
A few ancient and many modem mansions and
villas stud the banks of the glen above the ancient
ROSLIN CHAPEL :-INTERIOR. (A/& a Phtograph 6y G. W. Wiison & Co.)
Charles. In the early years of the present century,
Dryden was the property of George Mercer, a son
of Mercer of Pittuchar, in Perthshire.
In this quarter, on the north bank of the Esk, are
the church and village of Lasswade, amid scenery
remarkable for its varied beauty. The bed of the
Esk lies through a deep, singularly romantic, long,
and bold ravine, always steep, sometimes perpendicular
and overhanging, and everywhere covered
with the richest copsewood. ?? Recesses, contractions,
irregularities, rapid and circling sinuosities,
combine with the remarkably varied surface of its
sides, to render its scenery equal in mingled picvillage
of Lasswade, whose bridge spans the river,
and the name of which Chalmers, in his ??Caledonia,??
believes to be derived from a ?? well-watered
pasturage of common use, or Zaeswc, in Saxon a
common, and iueyde, a meadow.? In an old Dutch
map it is spelt Lesserwade, supposed to mean the
opposite of Legenvood-the smaller wood in contrast
to some greater one.
The parish of Melville was added to that of
Lasswade in 1633.
In the time of James 111. the ancient Church of
Lasswade was, by the Pope?s authority, detached
from St. Salvador?s College at St Andrews, to
.
-
which it belonged, and annexed to Restalrig. It
stood on high ground, where its ancient square
belfry tower, four storeys in height, was a very
conspicuous object among a group of old trees,
long after the church itself bad passed away, till
it was blown down by a storm in November, 1866.
The effigy of a knight, with hands clasped, in a
full suit of armour, lay amid the foundations of the
old church as lately as 1855.
Tradition avers the tower had been occasionally
Great quantities of fruit, vegetables, and daily
produce are furnished by Lasswade for the city
markets. Save where some primitive rocks rise
up in the Pentland quarter of the parish, the whole
of its area lies upon the various secondary formations,
including sandstone, clays of several kinds,
and a great number of distinct coal-seams, with
their strata of limestone.
On the western side of the Esk the metals stand
much on edge, having a dip of 6 5 O in some
the manse previously in 1.789,
In the burying-ground are interred the first Lord
Melville and his successors.
Lasswade has long been celebrated for the excellence
of its oatmeal, the reputation of which,
through Lord Melville, reached George 111. and
Queen Charlotte, whose family were breakfasted
upon it during childhood, the meal being duly
? sent to the royal household by a miller of the
village, named Mutter.
surmounted its west gable. The vault, or tomb,
hundred and seventy feet.
On the eastern side of the Esk the metals have
a dip so small-amounting to only I in 7 or 8
-that the coal seams, in contradistinction to the
edge-coals, as they are called on the west side,
have obtained the name of ?flat broad coals.?
One of the mines on the boundary of Liberton
was ignited by accident about the year 1770, and
for upwards of twenty years resisted fiercely every
effort made to extinguish its fire. Besides furable
coal seams are twenty-five in number, an8
