Traditions of Edinburgh - (Illustrated Edition) #433494

It has been very shrewdly remarked by a famous essayist and critic that a book is none the worse for having survived a generation or two. Robert Chambers’s Traditions of Edinburgh has survived many generations since its first appearance in 1825, and I have before me a copy of this edition in the original six parts, published at two shillings each, the first of which aroused in Sir Walter Scott so much interest. The work when completed appears to have passed through many reprints, but retained its original form until it was remodelled and almost rewritten in 1846, much new matter being then added, and certain passages altogether omitted. Shortly before his death the author again revised the work, adding a new introduction, in which he reviewed the changes of the preceding forty years. This was in 1868, and since that time old Edinburgh has almost ceased to exist. Many an ancient wynd and close has disappeared, or remains simply as a right of way, on all sides surrounded by modern buildings. The City Improvements Act, obtained by Dr William Chambers when Lord Provost of Edinburgh in 1865 and again in 1868, swept away hundreds of old buildings; and to it is due the disappearance of Leith Wynd, St Mary’s Wynd, Blackfriars Wynd, the Ancient Scottish Mint in the Cowgate, and other landmarks more or less familiar to our grandfathers. These changes are confined not alone to the old town of Edinburgh, but extend to other districts which at the beginning of the nineteenth century were comparatively modern and fashionable. Brown Square and the buildings adjoining it known as ‘the Society’ have passed away, being intersected by the modern Chambers Street. Adam Square, adjoining the College, has been absorbed in South Bridge Street; Park Street and Park Place, where was once a fashionable boarding-school for young ladies, have disappeared to make room for the M’Ewan Hall and other University buildings.

If it is true that the old town of Edinburgh has been modernised out of existence, the remark applies equally to its immediate suburbs. Indeed the all-round changes of the last forty years can fitly be compared to like changes which within the same period have taken place in the city of Rome. Until within very recent times Edinburgh bore some slight resemblance to the Rome of the Popes, with its stately villas and great extent of walled-in garden ground. Much of this aristocratic old-world aspect has passed away, and one can but lament the disappearance of many an eighteenth-century house and grounds, interesting in not a few cases as the former residence of a citizen whose memory extended back to the Edinburgh of Sir Walter Scott and the famous men who were his contemporaries and friends.