with a device emblematising the resurrection—namely, a couple of
cross-bones with wheat-stalks springing from them, and the date 1588.
Latterly it was occupied as the University Printing-office, and when
I visited it in 1824 it contained an old wooden press, which was
believed to be the identical one which Prince Charles carried with him
from Glasgow to Bannockburn to print his gazettes, but then used as a
_proof-press_, like a good hunter reduced to the sand-cart. This house
was removed in 1834, having been previously sold by the Commissioners
of Improvements for £150. The purchaser got a larger sum for a leaden
roof unexpectedly found upon it. When the house was demolished, it was
discovered that every window-shutter had a communication by wires with
an intricate piece of machinery in the garret, designed to operate upon
a bell hung at a corner on the outside, so that not a window could have
been forced without giving an alarm.
In the Cowgate, little more than fifty yards from the site of this
building, there is a bulky old mansion, believed to have been the
residence of the celebrated King’s Advocate Hope, himself, the
ancestor of all the considerable men of this name now in Scotland. One
can easily see, amidst all the disgrace into which it has fallen,
something remarkable in this house, with two entrances from the street,
and two _porte-cochères_ leading to other accesses in the rear. Over
one door is the legend: