Edinburgh Sketches and Memories

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EDINBURGH SKETCHES AND MEMORIES EDINBURGH SKETCHES & MEMORIES BY DAVID MASS.ON PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH LONDON AND EDINBURGH ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK i PREFATORY NOTE The following Papers, though in their collected state they have a certain continuity of general subject, were written at different times and for different purposes. One is a modified reprint of an article which appeared in the Westminster Review as long ago as 1856. Seven of the others were contributed, at intervals within the last twelve years, to Macmillan s Magazine, The Scotsman, or The Scots Observer, and are reprinted now with courteous permission. The remaining five are from manuscript of various dates since 1867, and are now published for the first time. An occasional small recurrence of fact or of phrase in the series may be excused in consideration that the Papers, thus written separately, may still be read separately.

Edinburgh : March 1892. CONTENTS Queen Mary's Edinburgh : — page i. i. Queen Mary's Return to Scotland, August 1561 1 2. Plan and Fabric of Edinburgh in 156 1 . . 9 3. The Edinburgh Population in 1561 ... 20 II. Robert Rollock and the Beginnings of Edinburgh University ..... 35 III. King James's Farewell to Holyrood . .61 IV. Proposed Memorial to Drummond of Hawthornden ... ..... 76 V. Allan Ramsay 88 VI. Lady Wardlaw and the Baroness Nairne . no VII. Edinburgh through the Dundas Despotism . . 141 VIII. The Last Years of Sir Walter Scott . . . 204 IX. Carlyle's Edinburgh Life : — Part I.— 1809-1818 226 Part II.— 1818-1822 262 Part III. — 1822-1828 302 X. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe . . . 359 XI. John Hill Burton 372 XII. Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh .... 384 XIII. Literary History of Edinburgh : A General Review . . . . . • ■ • 4J7 i. — queen mary's return to Scotland, august i 561 On a clear day the inhabitants of Edinburgh, by merely ascending the Calton Hill or any other of the familiar heights in or around their city, can have a view of nearly the whole length of their noble estuary, the Firth of Forth.

To the right or east, its entrance from the open sea, between the two shires of Fife and Haddington, is marked most conspicuously on the Haddingtonshire side by a distant conical mound, called Berwick Law, rising with peculiar distinctness from the northward curve of land which there bounds the horizon. It is thither that the eye is directed if it would watch the first appearance of steamers and ships from any part of the world that may be bound up the Firth for Edinburgh by its port of Leith. Moving thence westward, the eye can command easily the twenty miles more of the Firth which these ships and steamers have to traverse. The outlines of both shores, though the breadth between them averages twelve miles, may be traced with wonderful sharpness, pleasingly defined as they are by their little bays and promontories, and by the succession of towns and fishing villages with which they are studded.