The genius of Scott has shed a peculiar interest upon this ancient
structure, whose cant name of the _Heart of Mid-Lothian_ has given a
title to one of his happiest novels. It stood in a singular situation,
occupying half the width of the High Street, elbow to elbow, as it
were, with St Giles’s Church. Antique in form, gloomy and haggard
in aspect, its black stanchioned windows opening through its dingy
walls like the apertures of a hearse, it was calculated to impress
all beholders with a due and deep sense of what was meant in Scottish
law by the _squalor carceris_. At the west end was a projecting
ground-floor, formed of shops, but presenting a platform on which
executions took place. The building itself was composed of two parts,
one more solid and antique than the other, and much resembling, with
its turret staircase, one of those tall, narrow fortalices which
are so numerous in the Border counties. Indeed, the probability is
that this had been a kind of peel or house of defence, required for
public purposes by the citizens of Edinburgh when liable to predatory
invasions. Doubtless the house or some part of it was of great
antiquity, for it was an old and ruinous building in the reign of Mary,
and only narrowly saved at that time from destruction. Most likely
it was the very _pretorium burgi de Edinburgi_ in which a parliament
assembled in 1438 to deliberate on the measures rendered necessary
by the assassination of the poet-king, James I. In those simple days
great and humble things came close together: the house which contained
parliaments upstairs, presented shops in the lower story, and thus
drew in a little revenue to the magistrates. Here met the Court of
Session in its earliest years. Here Mary assembled her parliaments;
and here—on the Tolbooth door—did citizens affix libels by night,
charging the Earl of Bothwell with the murder of Darnley. Long, long
since all greatness had been taken away from the old building, and it
was condemned to be a jail alone, though still with shops underneath.
At length, in 1817, the fabric was wholly swept away, in consequence
of the erection of a better jail on the Calton Hill. The gateway, with
the door and padlock, was transferred to Abbotsford, and, with strange
taste on the part of the proprietor, built into a conspicuous part of
that mansion.
[Illustration: EDINBURGH
from the Calton Hill.