offal-these poor things, who cannot hope in a thousand years to come one atom nearer the caste immediately above them-these miserable slaves, who have been the slaves both of cruelty and of bigotry, ever since the world knew anything about themthese unhappy slaves, whom we see and pity now exactly as they were seen and pitied by the soldiers of Alexander the Great-these abject, these hopeless creatures, forsooth, are free and happy, compared with our fat, well-fed, grinning, singing, dancing blacks, who would never have dreamt of anything but content and comfort, had there been no societies to export sedition from England; no Smiths to preach ignorance, folly, and madness, in the name, and under the pretence of Christianity, in the West Indies.-We shall, however, resume these matters at greater length, and that very soon. In the meantime, let all who wish to have knowledge on this subject, in all its branches, read and study Mr Macdonnell; and let the Editor of the Glasgow Courier publish, in a separate volume, and on a legible type, his excellent Letters to Lord Liverpool, in answer to, and to the annihilation of, a certain scribe who has been figuring under the name of Anglus. Were two such books as these sufficiently circulated, there would be little need for any volunteer auxiliaries like ourselves. GREAT FIRE. THE year 1824 will be a memorable one in the annals of Edinburgh. Its High Street, which was always held out as an object of interest to strangers, is now the best part of it in ruins; and the Tron Church, the most public building from its situation in the Old Town, is shorn of all its honours, and by an agency which, from its isolated situation, could scarcely have been contemplated. The fire in June last, which, beginning at the Royal Bank Close, destroyed the houses on the upper part of the south side of the High Street, and the eastern angle of the Parliament Square, was followed on the 15th and 16th of November by a conflagration, which has laid the fairest part of the principal street of the Old Town in ruins, and totally destroyed the Parliament Square, except the buildings connected with the Scottish House of Parliament-besides having nearly annihilated half a dozen closes, or narrow lanes, reaching from the High Street to the Cowgate. On Monday evening, the 15th November, about ten o'clock, smoke was discovered issuing from the second floor of a house at the head of the Old Assembly Close, occupied by Messrs Kirkwood and Sons, engravers; and the drum instantly beat the signal of alarm throughout the city. Several fire-engines soon after arrived, and a crowd was speedily collected to render assistance where assistance could be afforded. The Lord Provost, Magistrates, Sheriff, and other high official personages, were also upon the ground soon after the alarm was given; and a party of soldiers were dispatched from the Castle. But for such conflagrations, former experience had provided no remedy; the engines were ineffective and out of order; and the multitude seemed assembled rather to witness the destructive effects of the fire than to render any useful assistance in extinguishing it. About eleven o'clock the whole house, consisting of six floors, and forming the eastern wing of one of the most imposing buildings in the High Street, was in a blaze. The crowd in the street, at this time, was excessive; for situated as the burning property was, upon the ridge of the highest ground in Edinburgh, it served as a beacon to direct the most distant inhabitants to the spot. Efforts were now directed to save the houses to the west; for though the wind was from the south-west, yet the tenement on the east, being of comparatively recent erection, and divided from the burning house by a strong party wall, seemed in less danger. But the progress of the flames was uncontrollable, and spreading westwards from the back of the building, the narrow access to which precluded the employment of engines in that direction, soon after twelve, the whole range up to Borthwick's Close was in a blaze. The appearance of the High Street at this period was singularly impressive. The glare from the burning mass illuminated the street from house, about two o'clock; and now, when it was too late, it was resolved to attempt its extinction, by leading up a pipe from an engine to the high roof of the adjacent house on the west, a measure which promised eventual success. But the pipe, when raised up, was found to be broken; and what might have saved this building, had it been applied in time, only served, like all the efforts of this night and morning, to shew the strong necessity for better apparatus, and a body more organized, to act with efficacy in similar calamities. The fire descended with uncontrollable fury, and about five o'clock the upper part of the front wall fell inward. its extremity at the Netherbow to the Castle at times more or less vivid, according to the quality of the material consumed. The spire of the Tron Church, and St Giles' imperial steeple, were striking objects in the sceneone side brightened by a light distinct as the sun at noon-day, but of a character totally different-red, flickering, and dismal, the other side extended in shadow over the neighbouring buildings. Numbers of people from the adjacent houses-men, women, and even children, half-dressed, with faces prophetic of danger, were pressing through the crowd with such parts of their furniture as they were able to carry, eager to lodge these small remnants of their home in some place of While the fire was thus raging in safety. Beds, tables, chairs, and all the front houses, those connected with the accumulations of many for years, them on the south side, and forming were heaped in confusion, at intervals, narrow lanes, or closes, down the steep on the streets, under the protection of declivity to the Cowgate, were not the soldiers, or watched by some poor more fortunate. To give any asindividual, who felt that he was ruin- sistance here was impossible, from the ed. Books, papers, and bedding, were nature of the confined passages, inactossing from the windows, by those cessible to engines, and dangerous who thought these articles must be safer from the falling portions of the shatanywhere, than where they were. The tered tenements. Three men, it is said, noise of the engines, the shouts and were killed by the fall of some of the answers of those giving and receiving ruins in Conn's Close. In the Assemorders-the running and crying of those bly Close, distinguished from many employed in carrying water to the en- others by its neatly laid pavement, and gines, and of those employed to clear its more ample breadth, in some places the passage for them; the trembling exceeding four feet, and known as a anxiety of the public authorities to place of fashionable resort before the save what the means at command ren- New Town existed, was destroyed the dered impossible to save-the soldiers Old Assembly Hall-the two under -the firemen the crowd-the low floors of a large building, with arched compressed howling of the flames- windows to the south,-and several the crackling of the burning rafters houses of smaller note; and at this the stream of burning embers, which time, (7th December,) about the midrose to a great height and fell at a con- dle of the close, two fragments of wall siderable distance-all combined to still remain which had fallen over in give the highest terrific sublimity to a mass, and are supported at their upscene which will not speedily be for- per extremity by the houses on the gotten by any who witnessed it. It other side, forming a species of Gothic wanted only the wailings of women, arch, which we recommend to the nothe cries of children, and the presence tice of the curious in such matters. In of an enemy, to present a vivid picture Borthwick's Close, and the Old Fishof a city set on fire, and taken by market, the fire extended nearly half storm. To such a height were the way down to the Cowgate; and the flaming embers projected, that several possessors of rare tracts and old machimneys on the opposite side of the nuscripts, in the hands of that most street were set on fire by their fall; delectable of all binders, Mr Abram and the heat was at one time so in- Thomson, began to be alarmed, that tense, as to be felt painfully warm by in spite of safes and fire-proof closets, the spectators on the footpath of the the Caxtons and Fausts might be in opposite side. peril. Abram was in danger, and part of his new premises were destroyed, by the falling of a chimney, or some such thing; and there is he, for the second time within these three The building to the westward, in which the Courant office was situated, was the next prey of the flames. Fire was observed in the upper floor of this years, blocked up by rubbish, and surrounded by parcels of calf-skins and parchments, sitting like Caius, Marius on the ruins of Carthage. The extent of this alarming firethe fearful rapidity of its progressits contiguity to the buildings destroyed in June and a feeling of general alarm, more universally excited than ever we before witnessed, drew crowds to the High Street, on the morning of Tuesday, to view the extent of the devastation. The engines were still directed to the smoking ruins, and flakes of burnt materials, raised by the wind, were falling quick in all the adjacent streets. Business was, in a great measure, suspended, and most of the shops in the High Street were shut. Parties stood here and there, inquiring and relating-conjecturing the causes, and speculating on the consequences, of this unforeseen and unprovided-for conflagration; and many a wrinkled hand was held up in commiserative pity and consternation, at witnessing the tottering fragments today, of what yesterday "seemed as fixed as Snowdown." Matters were in this state, when, about half past eleven, some wandering eye discovered flames playing about the balustrade and cornice of the steeple of the Tron Church. An alarm was immediately given that the Tron Church was on fire, which spread with the rapidity of lightning over the whole city. We ourselves were told by a person out of breath, that in verity it was so; but thinking it an experiment on our gullibility, we were in no haste, like Phrenologus and the turnip, to give credence to the assertion. Another and another arrived, (we were in the Parliament House at the time, and have general doubts of assertions made in that place,) all joining in a story as unlikely as "that Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane;" but, however improbable the fact seemed, we could not resist following the crowd of wigged barristers and writers, who were rushing to the scene. The moment we turned the corner of St Giles's, we saw how it was. Perched on the radiated pavement which marks the site of the ancient Cross, we there witnessed a sight of more imposing grandeur than had ever before been presented to our eyes. Behind us, at no great distance, stood the Great Unknown, gazing with eagerness at the profile of the spire amidst the curling flames; around, and on every side, were multitudes of wigged and gowned lawyers, from the recesses of the Parliament House, mixed with mechanics, and sporting their hoary locks and official costume unheeded among the miscellaneous assemblage. One object of paramount attraction occupied the attention of all, and all eyes were raised to this object of awful grandeur, in the mingled emotions of deep sublimity, which it was so well calculated to excite. Surprise and wonder gave way in many minds, to fear that this spectacle at noon-day, and after such a night of burning, was only the beginning of sorrows to a city devoted to destruction. In distant quarters of the city, it was reported that the whole of the Old Town was burning; and individuals, who saw the conflagration only at a distance, found sufficient warrant to believe the report, in the blaze of the well-known steeple. It was a sight without parallel. Be the business or the haste of those who came within the magic sight what it would-there was no stirring farther. Transfixed as by magic-charmed as by a basilisk*—all stood in silent wonder to await the result, or conjecturing what the result might further be, when a building, dedicated to the most holy uses-nowise connected with any other and at a considerable distance from the former fire, was, as it were, spontaneously consuming. The fire, it is believed, had originated from the flight of embers carried by the wind, which was from the west, lodging about the wooden balustrade. The steeple of the Tron Church, at least the stone part of it, rises in the form of a square tower, and above the masonry, the spire was formed of wood, originally, we believe, intended to be covered with copper, but which, in the necessities of the city, was replaced by lead, as the cheaper metal. It must have made considerable progress before it attracted attention, for, in less than an hour, all that was consumable was consumed. The flames as * We use these terms because we find them in common use. We know nothing of magic, and never saw a basilisk. cended from the balustrade, as the heat melted the leaden covering-the lighter parts of the wood-work speedily gave way--and for nearly a quarter of an hour, the four angular ribs were seen in marked profile through the ascending flames. In this interval, a dark-coloured mass was seen to fall from the centre. It was the bell -the Tron Church bell-put up in the year 1673, at the expense of 1490 merks eight shillings Scots-and which for one hundred and fifty years never failed at ten o'clock in the morning to warn the merchant to his shop, and at eight in the evening to remind him to shut it up. It was well for thee, O Ebenezer, thou didst not live to see this day! thy heart must have been broken, as if on thine own anvil, at the sorrowful sight; for a church is nothing without a spire, and a steeple does not deserve the name when deprived of its bell. The very weather-cock, though it stood upon its revolving pedestal like a bright Phonix amidst the flames,† could withstand it no longer, and after looking wistfully below for a few moments, took its flight downwards to join its noisy companion. In sober seriousness, pinnacle after pinnacle fell, and before one o'clock, nothing of the steeple remained but the square tower. As the bulk of the wooden frame-work fell, a sort of wail-the suppressed ejaculations of the assembled thousandsrose from the crowd-the Great Unknown lifted up his stick involuntarily a little from the ground, and let it drop, as much as to say, as plainly as a stick could speak-it is gone-and thus falls the pride of the most lofty elevations! Endeavours were now made to save the body of the church, and by the exertions of the firemen and others, and the powerful assistance of an engine from Leith Fort, (the only one, we believe, which proved of any material use,) this was happily in a great measure accomplished, without any serious accident, though not without much danger. The crowd now gradually dispersed, at least the greater portion, and the fire-engines returned to their former stations at the still smoking ruins of the morning. Before night, the limits of the devastation seemed to be completely ascertained, and no further danger was contemplated; and the wearied citizens retired to early repose, happily ignorant of events which, before another day arose, were to plunge the seemingly devoted city in a calamity still more dreadful. On the evening of Tuesday the 16th, soon after ten o'clock, flames were discovered bursting from the windows of the top story of the house in the Parliament Square, part of which was recently fitted up for the accommodation of the Jury Court, and the drum again sounded the direful alarm of fire. The beat of the fire-drum of Edinburgh, (by the by, it is not so well beat now as formerly,) from the associations it calls forth, and the almost personal fear it inspires, we have always considered as the most impressive of sounds; and coming again to announce new conflagrations, increased its power of raising emotion tenfold. We never hear its beat-its rat-tat-tat-too,— three quavers, a crotchet, and a rest,— but we experience an almost breathlessness of anxiety, and, though the cause be perfectly insignificant, cannot help fancying images of helplessness and ruin, wretchedness rendered still more wretched, and the fire-fiend exulting in human misery. Our respected friend, Mr Alison, must avail himself of this remark in the next edition of his admirable Essay on Taste, in analysing the sublimity of sounds. No instance can be finer; and we have frequently felt its effect in the highest degree, when a little old drummer of the old City Guard, ‡-a perfect mannikin, who seemed as if he had enlisted when a boy in the Seven Years' War, * Ebenezer Wilson, the ringer of this bell past the memory of ordinary men-an eminent public character, in Edinburgh, and well-known to many of the present, and to all of the past generation,-was among the last to give up the luxury of a cocked hat. He has left but one behind him in Edinburgh-that which covers the head of our excellent purgative friend, Dr Hamilton.-"We ne'er shall look upon their like again." "So have we seen, in Araby the blest, A Phoenix couch'd upon her funeral nest." A portrait of this personage exists, we believe, in the etchings of Kay. His nam was Jacky-the diminutive of the nomen Jack. and never grown an inch afterwards, -half seas over, felt all the importance of his important situation in cases of alarm from fire. His puny strides, accelerated to almost a trot-his tremendously distinct beats-his quick and eager answers to the half-naked inquirers from open window, or nightcapped heads popped out at doors,all betokened danger that was imminent, and alarm that had real foundation. A drum in the silence of night is quite a different affair from a drum, even ten drums, at the head of a regiment on parade. So have we felt it often, and so we felt it on the evening of the 16th of November, when the sound was carried to our ear on gusts of wind, that soon after increased to a hurricane. The fire, we have said, broke out in the upper floor of a house on the south side of the Parliament Square, remarkable as being the highest building in Edinburgh, and further, as having been built on the site of a house of no less than fifteen floors, which was destroyed, along with all the other buildings on the south and east sides, in a memorable fire which happened in 1700.* It retained the name which the wisdom of our ancestors applied to the cloud-capp'd mansion, of Babel's Land, from its emulation of that early piece of masonry, and was one of the Lions of Edinburgh. One part of the building projected farther south than the rest, and the high gable of this appeared, when seen from the Cowgate, to deserve the name. At the base of the bank, on which the gable rested, stands the house formerly the residence of Alexander Lockhart, (Lord Covington,) a Judge of the Court of Session; afterwards occupied for many years as a principal inn, under the direction of Mr Heron; and since as a printing-office. The Kirk-heugh Close (a designation which keeps alive the memory of the Parliament Square being a churchyard, and this lane a passage to the church) led from the Cowgate to the base of the stair which winded up to the top of this Babel. Part of the building had recently been fitted up for the accommodation of the Jury Court; and this Court had scarcely held two sittings in the new court-room, when all was destroyed, benches, desks, and all, by the most tremendous conflagration ever witnessed in Edinburgh. The fire (we repeat it for the third time-but we have done with old recollections) broke out in the upper floor of this house about ten o'clock. We saw it about quarter of an hour after, and the flames were bounding from the windows, lengthened by the wind into streaming sheets of fire. The alarm of the neighbourhood, and of all, at this new and dreadfully alarming conflagration,-which being at a considerable distance to windward of the former fire, gave no room to connect the one with the effects of the other, amounted almost to despair. To the west, one house alone intervened between it and the buildings of the Exchequer, the Parliament House, and the public libraries; and the houses in the eastern angle, in one of which was the office of the Water Company, were partly occupied as business chambers, and partly as dwelling-houses. In none of these could the inmates feel secure, after witnessing the rapidity and the extent of the fire of Monday; and accordingly whatever was movable was attempted to be removed, with all the speed and all the confusion which terror of life could inspire. Books and papers, and furniture of every description, were hurled from the windows, or dashed from the bearers in the Square. Hundreds embarrassed the entrances in removing what was saved to places of temporary protection; while the engines and the firemen, and the multitudes hastening to assist, were crowding in the opposite direction. In the lanes * "1700. By a dreadful fire that broke out at the north-eastern corner of the Meal-Market, about ten of the clock on Saturday night, on the third of February, all that magnificent pile of buildings (exclusive of the Treasury Room,) on the eastern and southern sides of the Parliament Close, with the Exchange, were destroyed."— Maitland's Hist. of Edinburgh, p. 112. Maitland also quotes an Act of Parliament, 1st William, Sess. 7. c. 8., which we recommend to the notice of the Dean of Guild. It enacts, that no building to be erected in the city thereafter, shall exceed five stories in height; and gives directions as to the thickness of the walls, which we are afraid have not been attended to in any building erected within these fifty years. |