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

Princes Street
GUIDE.
Princes Street
XXV
startle, now by their beauty, now by their still
sublimity, and now by the rich variety and range
of scene. From the Calton Hill alone, which — con-
spicuous for its monuments, and half encircled mid-
way up by a range of almost princely residences —
rises 344 feet, at the eastern extremity of the nor-
thern eminence, a view is obtained of the city
■with its environing heights and gardened suburbs,
and the blue Forth in the far distance, witli the
outflanking Grampians to northward, which even
Naples cannot match ; and as for Princes Street,
dominated as it is on the south by the sombre
heights, steepled streets and castle of the Old
Town, and with gardens between, all, even the far-
thest travelled can say, is, it is a sight and parade-
ground, literally and truly, .lui, ijeiieris — a thing
totally apart and by itself.
Edinburgh is less a place of manufacturing
activity than the majority of modern cities, and
the impression of repose it creates suggests ideas
of culture, rather than of rough-visaged, rough-
handed industrial life. Accordingly, what with its
scliools of art and seminaiies of learning, at the top
of which ranks the University, which, for its medical
faculty especially, is of more than European fame,
and what with the cultivated society, with its a})-
pliances, which these involve and attract, there are
few cities which offer equal advantages for stimula-
ting the intellect, educating the taste, and enlarging
the heart. Its schools are of world-wide celebrity ;
and from them, as from the city itself, have prc'
ceeded not a few of our most distinguished public
men, such as Henry, Lord Brougham, Henry
Temple, Lord Palmerston, and Archd. Campbell
Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury, of these vei'v
days. It is from Edinburgh, others being judges,
have emanated the most prominent intellectual
movements of the age now passing, and the great-
est and wisest thinker living was educated at itst
University, and began his literary career, half a cen-
twvj ago, within its walls. It is the city of David
Hume, of Sir Walter Scott, and, in a sense, of
Thomas Carlyle ; and these three men nearly sunt
up tlie whole intellectual tendency of the present
time.
In proceeding to describe the various public buildings and places of interest, we shall divide the
city into Tliree Sections or Walks— a central, northern, and southern ; and shall take as the starting
and terminating point of each a building pretty generally known— the General Register House.
Any particular street or building, however, may be readily found by glancing, in the one case at the
headline of the page, and in the other at the prominent black titling lines in the body of the page
itself. The list of streets at the head of each section or walk will show the general outline of each,
I.
The General Regldcr House — Princes Street — Lotlnan Road {a ^mrtlon of) — Castle Terrace — Bark
of Castle — Castle — Castle Hill — Laimmarlcei — Ba7jk Street — George IV. Bridgi^ — Candle-
maker Row — West Port — Grassmarket — West Bow — High Street — Canongatc — Ilohjrcod —
Queen's Park and Drive — Arthur's Seat — Abhey HUl — Regent Road — Calton Hill — Waterloo
Place — Register House.
The G-eneral Register House.— This noble
edifice, for the preservation of the j)ublic and legal
records of the kingdom, was begun in 1776, but
was not fully completed till 1822. The entire cost
is said to have been somewhere about £80,000.
Built in the Italian style, from a design by Mr
Robert Adam, it is in the form of a square, with
a large central dome, 50 feet in diameter and 80
feet in height, and two small turrets at each cor-
ner. Viewed from the front, which is protected
by an elegant stone screen wall, the building is
200 feet in length and 120 in breadth. In the
numerous fire-j)roof chambers of the interior are
deposited a vast quantity of valuable and curious
historical and legal documents — such as the letter
i:>f the Scottish barons to the Pope in 1320, the
acts of settlement of the Scottish crown upon the
Stuarts in 1371 and 1373, the Treaty of Union,
•tc. ,and copies or transcripts of all the title-deeds
i>f property, legal contracts, mortgages, suits at
law, &c. , from a very early period.
The Wellington Statue. — In front stands a
handsome equestrian statue in bronze, by Steell,
of the late Duke of Wellington, which was first
unveiled to public view on the 18th of June 1852,
and cost £10,000.— A little to the west, behind the
]iresent building, and entering from West Register
Street, stand.s
The New Register House.— Designed by
Mr Robert Matheson, of Her Majesty's Board of
Works, this handsome building, which is also in
the Italian style, was completed in 1860 at a cost
of nearly £27,000. It was inteiided chiefly for the
preservation of the registers of births, deaths, and
marriages in Scotland, but is also used for other-
purposes connected with the courts of law.
A few paces further west, in the same street^
is Venetian Buildings, perhaps the hand-
somest business premises in the city, and the
extensive town establishment of Messrs Cowan
and Co., j)apermakers. Built in 1865, from
a design by Messrs George Beattie & Son, archi-
tects, this structure is a georgeous specimen of
what is termed the pure Venetian Gothic, tlie
highest development of which is only to be seen in
the magnificent i3alatial residences of the Venetian ,
nobility, so glowingly described by Ruskin. Per-
haps the most noticeable features of the present
building are the rich and elaborately carved Vene-
tian windows, and indeed the profusion and beauty
of the carved work generally. The panels of the'
piers of tlie great gateway in the centre of the
south front are ornamented with medallion profiles,
in bronze, by Wm. Brodie, R.S.A., of the late
Alexander Cowan of Valleyfield, and of his father
Charles Cowan, founder of the house. The total