CHAPTER IV.

RISE OF THE NEW TOWN.

IN 1679, James, duke of Albany, (afterwards James II. of England,) was received with all the pomp of a royal visitation, on his coming. to Edinburgh in the capacity of king's commissioner to the Scottish parliament—a sort of honourable banishment devised for him while the famous Exclusion Bill still hung in suspense. His duchess, Mary D'Este of Modena, and the princess, afterwards queen Anne, accompanied him, and the festivities at Holyrood had almost the effect of a restoration. It was during this temporary revival of the old Scottish court, that the first project of the new town was devised, although nearly a century elapsed before even the foundation stone of the North Bridge was laid.

In accordance with the more absolute powers of the period, James granted to the city in perpetuity, for the purpose of carrying into effect the project of an extended royalty and North Bridge, thus early devised, such rights as even parliament would now enact only for

a very limited period. In this charter, James bestows on the citizens this, among other privileges" That when they should have occasion to enlarge their city, by purchasing ground without the town, or to build bridges or arches, for accomplishing the same, not only are the proprietors of such lands obliged to part with the same on reasonable terms, but these, when acquired, are to be erected into a regality in favour of the citizens." Unfortunately, for Edinburgh at least, her royal guest departed with all his court and retinue, after a stay of only two years and a half; and when, as the first-fruits of the Union, the privy council, the parliament, and, as a natural consequence, nearly the whole of the nobility left also, all prospect of further extension seemed at an end.

In 1720, Allan Ramsay, in one of his earliest poetical effusions, entitled "Edinburgh's Salutation to the marquis of Carnarvon," who was then on a visit to the city, thus represents her addressing her noble guest,

"Lang syne, my lord, I had a court,
And nobles filled my cawsy;

But since I have been fortune's sport,
I look nae half sae gawsy.

Oh that ilk worthy British peer,

Wad follow your example,

My auld grey head I yet wad rear,

And spread my skirts mair ample."

But more desponding is the picture which Maitland draws of the Canongate, so late as the middle of the eighteenth century. place," he says, "has suffered more by the

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union of the kingdom than all the other parts of Scotland; for having been, before that period, the residence of the chief of the Scottish nobility, it was then in a flourishing condition; but being deserted by them, many of their houses are fallen down, and others are in a ruinous condition. It is a piteous case."

The first stone of the new bridge, which was to form the connecting link between the ancient city and those long-coveted fields, on which the new town was destined to arise, was laid on the 21st of October, 1763; and four years later, Mr. James Craig, architect, a nephew of the illustrious poet of the "Seasons," submitted to the approving town council the plan adopted for the intended city; along with a host of competing designs from rival architects and amateurs. To the original engraving of Craig's plan, its author appended the following lines from his uncle's poem of "Liberty :"

"August, around, what public works I see!

Lo, stately streets! lo, squares that court the breeze!
See long canals and deepened rivers join

Each part with each, and with the circling main,
The whole enlivened isle."

The regular array of formal parallelograms, says the author of the "Memorials of Edinburgh," "thus sketched out for the future city, was received by the denizens of the old town with raptures of applause. Pent up in narrow and crooked wynds, its broad, straight avenues seemed the beau ideal of perfection, and the more sanguine of them panted to see the magnificent design realized. Some echo of their

enthusiastic admiration," adds the memorialist of Old Edinburgh, "still lingers among us, but it waxes feeble and indistinct. The most hearty contemners of the dingy, smoky old town, now admit that neither the formal plan, nor the architectural designs of the new town, evince much intellect or inventive genius in their contriver; and, perhaps, even a professed antiquary may venture to hint at the wisdom of our ancestors, who carried their road obliquely down the steep northern slope, from Mutrie's-hill to Silver-mills, instead of devising the abrupt precipitous descent from where the statue of George IV. now stands to the foot of Pitt-street—a steep which strikes the stranger with awe, not unmingled with fear, on his first approach to our modern Athens from the neighbouring coast. When, some two or three centuries hence, the new town shall have ripened into fruit for some twenty-second century improvement commission, their first scheme will probably lead to the restoration of Gabriel's-road, and its counterpart from Charlotte-square to Pitt-street!" Such are a modern critic's remarks on the plan which appeared so faultless to the previous generation; and it must be confessed, that however admirably the streets which cross the new town from north to south serve for opening magnificent vistas, stretching away beyond the Forth to the highland hills, they are certainly planned without the slightest consideration of the requisites for a public

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thoroughfare. A Londoner, accustomed complain of the dangers of Holborn-hill or Snow-hill, would stand aghast if placed for the first time at the foot of Pitt-street, surmounted in the far distance with the statue of George IV., and the beautiful spire of the Assembly Hall behind it; and would also think it a feat of danger to guide a horse up such a steep. Both men and horses, however, are well accustomed to such feats in the northern capital; and few things are more likely to attract a stranger's attention at first, than the apparent recklessness with which hackney-coach and cabmen drive swiftly down these precipitous streets, especially if the stranger chance to be inside the flying vehicle. Accidents, however, are probably of as rare occurrence there as on the nearly level thoroughfares of London.

The new town, though not yet numbering as such more years than some of its oldest surviving inhabitants, has nevertheless its ancient associations and traditional memorials also. In the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, indeed, are preserved more than one primitive cinerary urn, discovered in the process of excavating for the foundations of its modern structures, and carrying the imagination back to that dim pre-historic era of our island's story, before the Roman legionary had come as the bloody missionary of civilization; and paved the way for the more glorious conquests of the gospel of peace and glad tidings to the poor skin-clad barbarians of Caledonia. In the "Pre-historic