Lasswade.] CLERK OF ELDIN. 359
nishing supplies for local consumption and to
other quarters, Lasswade sends about 30,000 tons
of coal to Edinburgh every year.
Auchindinny is a small village situated on the
right bank of the Esk at the boundary with Penicuick,
and is about five-and-a-half miles distant
from Lasswade. It is inhabited by lace and paper
makers.
Scott, in his ballad ? The Gray Brother,? groups
all the localities we have noted with wonderful
effect :-
? I Sweet are the paths, oh passing sweet I
By Esk?s fair streams that run,
Impervious to the sun.
O?er airy steep, through copsewood deep,
? There the rapt poet?s step may rove,
And yield the muse the day ;
There Beauty, led by timid Love,
May shuq the tell-tale ray.
? From that fair dome, where suit is paid
By blast of bugle free,
To Auchindinny?s hazel shade,
And haunted Woodhouselee.
Who knows not Melville?s beechy grove,
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,
And Roslin?s rocky glen,
And classic Hawthornden I
?Yet never path from day to day,
The pilgrim?s footsteps range,
To Burndale?s ruined grange.?
Save but? the solitary way,
South of Lasswade Bridge, on the road to Polton
-an estate which, in the early part of the eighteenth
century, gave the title of Lord Polton to a senator
of the College of Justice, Sir William Calderwood,
called to the bench in I 71 I in succession to Lord
Anstruther-is a house into which a number 01
antique stones were built some years ago. One
of these, a lintel, bears the following date and
legend :-
? 1557. A. A. NOSCE TEIPSVM.
Lasswade has always been a favourite summe1
resort of the citizens of Edinburgh. Sir Walter
Scott spent some of the happiest summers of his
life here, and amid the woodland scenery is supposed
to have found materials for his description
of Gandercleugh, in the Tales of my Land.
lord.?
His house was a delightful retreat, embowered
among wood, and close to the Esk. There he
continued all his favourite studies, and commenced
that work which Erst established his name i-2 litera.
ture, ? The Minstrelsy of the Scottish %order,?
which he published at Edinburgh in 1802, and
_ _ _
dedicated to his friend and chief, Henry Duke of
Buccleuch.
In prosecuting the collection of this work, Sir
Walter made various excursions-? raids ? he used
to call them-from Lasswade into the most remote
recesses of the Border glens, assisted by one or
two other enthusiasts in ballad lore, pre-eminent
among whom was the friend, whose ?untimely fate
he lamented so long, and whose memory he embalmed
in verse-Dr. John Leyden.
De Quincey, the ? English opium-eater,? spent
the last seventeen years of his life in a humble
cottage near Midfield House, on the road from
Lasswade to Hawthornden, and there he prepared
the collected edition. of his works. He died in
Edinburgh on the 8th December, 1859.
On high ground above the village stands Eldin
House (overlooking Eldindean), the residence of
John Clerk, inventor of what was termed in its day,
before the introduction of ironclads and steam rams,
the modern British system of naval tactics. He
was the sixth son of Sir George Clerk of Penicuick,
oneof the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland, and
inherited the estate of Eldin in early life from his
father. Although the longest sail he ever enjoyed
was no farther than to the Isle of Arran, in the Firth
of Clyde, he had from his boyhood a passion for
nautical affairs, and devoted much of his time to
the theory and practice ot naval tactics.
After. communicating to some of his friends the
new suggested system of breaking an enemy?s line
of battle, he visited London in 1780, and conferred
with several eminent men connected with the navy,
among others, Mr. Richard Atkinson, the friend of
the future Lord Kodney, and Sir Charles Douglas,
Rodney?s ?? Captain of the Fleet ? in the mernorable
action of 12th April, 1782, when the latter
was victorious over the Comte de Grasse between
Dominica and Les Saintes, in the West Indies.
Since that time his principle was said to have
been adopted by all our admirals ; and Howe, St.
Vincent, Duncan, and even Nelson, owe to the
Laird of Eldin?s manmuvre their most signal
victories.
In 1782 he had fifty copies of his ?Essay on
Naval Tactics ? printed, for distribution among his
private friends. It was reprinted in 1790, and
second, third, and fourth parts were added in the
seven subsequent years, and eventually, in 1804,
the whole work was re-published anew, with a
preface explaining the origin of his discoveries.
? Although Lord Rodney, as appears by a fragmentary
life of Clerk written by Professor Playfair,
in the ? Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,?
never concealed in conversation his obliga
tioiis to Mr. Clerk as the author of the system, yet
the family of that distinguished admiral, in his
? Memoirs,? maintain that no communication of Mr.
Clerk?s plan was ever made to their relative. Sir
Howard Douglas, too, has come forward in various
publications to claim the merit of the maneuvre
for his father, the late Admiral Sir Charles Douglas.
The origin of the suggestion, however, appears to
rest indisputably with Mr. Clerk, who died May 10,
1812, at an advanced age.?
He was the father of John Clerk, Lord Eldin,
already referred to in earlier portions of this work.
Paper has long been extensively manufactured
at Lasswade.
Springfield, a mile and a half north of the Esk,
is a hamlet, with a population of some hundreds,
who are almost entirely paper-makers. It is situated
in a sylvan dell remarkable for its picturesque beauty.
In 1763 there were only three paper-mills in the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and the quantity of
paper made amounted to only 6,400 reams. There
are now more than twenty mills in the county of
Edinburgh, nine of which are on the North Esk,
and nine on the Water of Leith. The first papermill
was built at Lasswade about I 750 ; and by
1794 the labourers at it received and circulated in
the village L3,ooo per annum. ? Mr. Simpson,
the proprietor of two mills in this parish,? says the
? Statistical Account ? for the latter year, ? has the
merit of being the first manufacturer in this country
who has applied the liquor recommended by Berthollet
in his new method of bleaching for the
purpose of whitening rags.? He erected an apparatus
for the preparation of it, and thus added
greatly to the beauty and quality of the paper he
produced.
