Chapter LVI
The National Monument—Still incomplete—The Salisbury Crags—Danger of their Destruction—The Path impassable—Construction of the Radical Road—National Distress—Trials for Sedition—Anecdote of John Clerk—The City Guard.
As a landmark of modern Edinburgh, the National Monument must now be noticed. Its twelve massy columns of white Craigleith stone are familiar to all who have spent an hour in the city. The idea of it dates from 1816, for it was intended to commemorate Scotland’s share in the triumphs of the great war. During the following years it was often discussed. The original proposal was to erect a lofty pillar. Then, as we learn from Lord Cockburn, ‘there were some who thought that the prevailing effervescence of military patriotism created a good opportunity for improving the public taste by the erection of a great architectural model. The Temple of Minerva, placed on the Calton Hill, struck their imaginations, and though they had no expectation of being able to realise the magnificent conception, they resolved, by beginning, to bring it within the vision of a distant practicability. What, if any, age would finish it, they could not tell; but having got a site, a statute, and about £20,000, they had the honour of commencing it.’ The hour of its completion has not arrived yet. Nearly a century has elapsed since George IV. laid the foundation stone in 1822. Perhaps on the occurrence of the centenary the project may once more lay hold of the public imagination. At least the ‘distant practicability’ remains. Imposing and sublime possibility! Perhaps, in an era of colossal fortunes, some INDIVIDUAL may anticipate the city—engrossed with its Usher Hall and water-fleas—and capture the national glory to crown with immortality his own proud name.
One noble feature of our scenery was completed about this time by the walk round the Salisbury Crags. When Henry Cockburn as a boy of nine scrambled, as he tells us, for the first time to the top of that romantic cliff, the path at its base was not six feet wide, while at places there was no path at all. Between that time and the year 1816 certain persons quarried the rock to such an extent that what was formerly a narrow footpath became, in many places, one hundred feet wide. This impudent theft of public property would shortly have destroyed the whole face of the rock. Fortunately the depredators were stopped in time, and Edinburgh preserved at once a remarkable piece of geological ‘testimony,’ and one of its finest natural features. Cockburn records that Henry Brougham, ‘who as a boy had often clambered among these glorious rocks,’ then, in the capacity of Lord Chancellor, pronounced the judgment which finally saved a remnant of the Crags. The old path is mentioned by Scott in the Heart of Midlothian (Chap. VIII.) as having been his favourite evening and morning resort, when engaged with a favourite author or new subject of study. And he added to his enthusiastic description of the view from the Salisbury Crags a brief and mildly expressed reproach. ‘It is, I am informed, now (1818) become totally impassable; a circumstance which, if true, reflects little credit on the taste of the Good Town or its leaders.’ In a note, added in a later addition, he says, ‘A beautiful and solid pathway has, within a few years, been formed around these romantic rocks; and the author has the pleasure to think that the passage in the text gave rise to the undertaking.’ This was indeed the case; but, strange to say, the path thus due to Sir Walter Scott got the name of the Radical Road. In 1820, it appears, the ‘unemployed’ question was flagrant. The men, stimulated by Radicals, were becoming dangerous, when Scott’s happy suggestion solved the problem by providing them with a substantial piece of work. The discontent was allayed, and the road was constructed by these vigorous Radicals. The name of the Salisbury Crags commemorates the English invasion of 1336. King Edward III.’s forces were commanded by the famous Earl of Salisbury, who encamped on the Crags, and thus gave the spot its foreign name.1
The distress which followed as a natural consequence of the prolonged strain of the war, was in those years very severe. Outbreaks of seditious talk were common in England, and led to many serious disturbances. In Scotland they were fewer, because the law still made transportation the penalty for this offence. There were, however, some prosecutions for sedition, and in connection with the first of these, in 1817, Cockburn, who was, with Jeffrey, counsel for one of the defendants, tells a characteristic anecdote of John Clerk, who was counsel for another of the accused, along with James Campbell of Craigie. ‘Campbell called on Clerk on the morning of the trial. He found him dressing, and in a frenzy at the anticipated iniquities of the judges; against whom, collectively and individually, there was much slow dogged vituperation throughout the process of shaving. He had on a rather dingy-looking nightshirt: but a nice pure shirt was airing before the fire. When the toilet reached the point at which it was necessary to decide upon the shirt, instead of at once taking up the clean one, he stopped and grumphed, and looked at the one and then at the other, always turning with aversion from the dirty one; and then he approached the other resolutely, as if his mind was made up; but at last he turned away from it, saying fiercely, “No, I’ll be d—d if I put on a clean sark for them.” Accordingly he insulted their Lordships by going to Court with the foul one. Not like Falkland.’
About the end of the year 1817 Edinburgh streets finally lost the most picturesque of their official figures. The City Guard, a body first enrolled in 1696, now retired from view, their functions being better fulfilled by the new police, and Robert Fergusson’s well-known lines became superfluous:
‘Gude folk, as ye come frae the fair,
Bide yont frae this black squad;
There’s nae sic savages elsewhere
Allowed to wear cockad.’
Scott gives a capital description of them in the Heart of Midlothian (Chap. III.), where he says, ‘The venerable corps may now be considered as totally extinct.’ From Cockburn we learn that one of these stern-looking but half-dotard warriors used to sit as guard with the prisoners at the bar of the Court of Justiciary. ‘They sat so immovably, and looked so severe, with their rugged weather-beaten visages, and hard muscular trunks, that they were no unfit emblems of the janitors of the region to which those they guarded were so often consigned. The disappearance of these picturesque old fellows was a great loss.’ He wished they had been perpetuated, if only as curiosities. They were probably the last of our soldiers who carried as their special weapon the old genuine Lochaber axe, which Lord Cockburn styles ‘a delightful implement.’ Fergusson, who saw its virtues in a more practical way, speaks of the ‘deadly paiks,’ or blows, freely dealt by the hot-tempered veterans.
‘Gie not her bairns sic deadly paiks,
Nor be sae rude,
Wi’ firelock or Lochaber axe,
As spill their bluid.’
Their last march (as mentioned in Scott’s note) to do duty at Hallow-fair, had something affecting in it. Their drums and fifes had been wont on better days to play, on this joyous occasion, the lively tune of Jockey to the Fair; but on this final occasion the afflicted veterans moved slowly to the dirge of The last time I came ower the muir. They were always greatly disliked by the commons of Edinburgh, who never spoke of them by any better name than the loathsome appellation ‘the Toon Rottens’ (Rats).
Notes
1 James Grant, however, gives a Gaelic derivation of the name.