Towns > Edinburgh > 1867-1870 - New Edinburgh, Leith, and county (business) directory > 1869-1870

XXIV
Edinburgh
GUIDE.
Edinburgh
stood there, after various fortunes, till about half
a century ago, — a dark-frowning, dismal pile, of
five or six storeys, with, at length, a two storeyed
wing looking up the street, the roof of which
formed the scatt'old for public executions. At its
original erection, it appears to have been some-
thing of a town-house and x^laceof exchange, if not
a senate-hall and court of justice ; but it erelong
(legenerated into a cage for criminals, and a place,
literally, of skulls. Down from it all the way
between the church and the north side of the
street, forming in its totality the part of the town
called the Luckenbooths, extended an exceedingly
narrow range of comijaratively slender erections,
"between which and the church was a la,ne of shops
called the Krames. A stone building of greater
width, erelong terminated this range at its eastern
extremity, looked down the street, the ground iioor
of which, down some eight or ten steps, was lat-
terly occupied by the only button-maker then in
Edinburgh ; and the middle street floor, up some
two or three steps, by " honest " Allan Eamsay,
who worthily kept shop here under the effigies of
Drummond of Hawthornden, and "rare old
Ben " Jonson ; and, at length, by Creech, the pub-
lisher of the works of Adam Smith and Hume, and
the poems of Burns. All roimd the church, booths
were by and by erected ; but those on and towards
the south, forming the northern side of the Parlia-
ment Close, could only be occupied by bookbinders,
goldsmiths, jewellers, or watchmakers, all of whom
not only for most part lived, with large families
often, upon the premises, but Avrouglit with their
own hands at their work, which, without keeinng
stock in store, they executed to order. In this
region, facing the church on the south-west, stood,
in the days of James VI. , the workshop of George
Heriot ; and here, with apparatus still extant, he
plied his honourable calling, within a space only
seven feet square, yet in which he could give
audience to Majesty, and, Majesty being witness,
hum a bond the king had given him for £2000.
Within the limits we have indicated, the city
continiied to confine itself all through the reigns
of James I. and the Charleses. Only in the
ilays of Charles II., when his brother, the Duke
of York, resided in Holyrood, were suggestions
made for extending the royalty northward ; but
it was not till well on in the reign of George
III., that the suggestions were vigorously taken
up and carried into execution. Thus, for two
or three hundred years after the city became
the acknowledged capital of the kingdom, were
the citizens content with the ancient barriers :
and yet the apiaearance presented, with its tall
piles, three main spires, grand castle rock, and
the striking contour of its situation and envi-
ronment, was a singularly imposing one. >Such
was the city as it seemed to M}^ Lord Protector
when he was honourably escorted into Edinburgh,
on the 4th of (J)ctober 1048 ; such it was as known
ill transitu twice over to humanely-devout, rough,
old Samuel Johnson, and, nearly through life, to
his contemporary, the clear-minded, candid, and
intrepid, all but European, David Hume, who,
Avith him, had been "the whole man of this new
time ; " and so too it looked to Oliver Goldsmith
when attending classes in the University ; to
Kobert Burns, also, and the young eyes of Walter
Scott.
In its antique form, the city was afocus of memories,
flear to all Scotchmen, and nothing wonderful was
it that patriotic citizens, in whose eyes the integrity
of the civic life was deemed as sacred as, if not more
so than, that of the individual, should have hesi-
t;tted to accept innovations sure to rupture old
ties, dissolve the most hallowed associations and
revolutionise tlie manners of the whole community.
Accordingly, when Provost Drummond, after a
world of efiort, succeeded with the imblic, and pro-
ceeded, 21st October 17G3, to lay the foundation
stone of the North Bridge, it was rather by repre-
senting to them the excellent roadway it would
open up to Leith than as a means of extension to
the city, that he gained his point and obtained the
sanction of his fellow-citizens. But it was not till
1767 that an Act of Parliament was obtained for ex-
tending the royalty, ' ' over the fields to northward ;"
and it was 1772 before, at a cost of £18,000, the
structure was finished as a public highway. Pend-
ing the nine years which elapsed between the
foundation and the completion, a number of citi-
zens, disgusted with the delay, began to build a new
town on the south, jjartly within and partly beyond
tlie confines of the royalty. Thus originated Brown
Square, Argyle Square, Adam Square, and George
Square, with streets adjoining ; and the new town
thus created, both retarded the extension of the
city northward, and constituted a new, separate,
and independent focus of social life, an imjierium
in imperio of tastes and fashions, based on a wider
culture and a more aesthetic ideal.
It was the year 1767 before the first house in the
New Town on the north was erected. Neverthe-
less, by 1780, one-third of the original programme
was finished, and almost all that remained of it by
the end of the century. Simultaneously v/ith this
extension on the north, the city began suddenly to
shoot out southwards, and in the year 178.5, a
breach was made on the south side of the High
Street, and a bridge-way of twenty-two arches
founded, continuing tlie road along the North
Bridge straight south over the Cowgate. This
street, which was called the South Bridge, of which
all the arches are now hidden save one, soon be-
came, what it still is, one of the most active busi-
ness quarters of the city ; and immediatelj' on its
completion in 1789, tlie foundations were laid, at
its southern extremity, of the massive structure
ajJisropriated to the use of our ancient and world-
famous University.
The New Town, of whicli we have noted the be-
ginnings, is, as it has stood therefor the last thirty
or forty years, the outcome of three, more or less,
successive outbursts of architectural enthusiasm,
two of which are on the same plan, after the idea of
]\Ir Craig, a nephew of the poet Thomson : namely, a
central spacious street, extending east and west, ter-
minating, at each extremity, in open spaces, square or
circular ; two parallel terrace-streets, one facing the
north, and the other the south, of equal extension,
with two others of narrower dimensions between,
also XDarallel ; and the whole intersected at right
angles by streets of orthodox width, forming, with
the former, masses of building iai the shape of oblong
parallelograms. Traces of the same idea appear in
subsequent extensions, modified according to situa-
tion, though now, especially in the extreme
suburbs, less of the marshalling principle appears,
and whole acres, or square miles even, are covered,
and being covered, with villas, in every shape and
form as it may ijlease the whim or fancy of archi-
tect or owner to construct them.
And now, at length, a city is realised, which, for
grandly picturesque beauty, interesting associa-
tions, and nobly romantic situation, has hardly a
rival among the cities of either ancient or moderii
times. Approached from any quarter, it never
fails to strike a stranger with impressions of a
character altogether novel ; while the heights
within and around, as well as the streets and
valleys, by night as by day, present aspects which