EDINBURGH TO THE ROMAN CAMP. 67 



stores at Tanfield, whicli has gone through many dif- 

 ferent phases in its day. The premises were originally 

 built by the Portable Gas Company^ which sent out 

 its gas compressed into malleable-iron bottles^ but 

 the speculation was a losing one, and the firm was 

 very soon wound up. Sir Walter Scott was the 

 designer of the original building, with its two gaso- 

 meter towers, its halls, and large apartments, after 

 the style of a Moorish fort. 



The towers of five fiats (of which one flat serves 

 for the luncheon-room on sale-days, and the others 

 for skin stores) are still left to tell of the strange 

 scheme which gave birth to that building. It was 

 afterwards sold to some wholesale grocers and wine 

 merchants ; and it was there that the Free Kirk 

 ministers, with Chalmers, Candlish, and Cunning- 

 ham at their head, first marched, after the disruption 

 of 1843, from St. Andrew's Church, and held their 

 meetings for fourteen years. What is now the "West 

 Hall" had acquired before that a political renown. 

 Those walls had echoed back the voice of O'Connell, 

 as, with all that " action v/hich completes speech,^' he 

 talked to Edinburgh of Erin. He had canny Scots 

 to hear him; but it held them in a spell. 



*' To the last verge of that wide audience sent. 

 It played with each wild passion as it went ; 

 Now stirred the uproar, now the mupmur stilled. 

 And. sighs and laughter answered as it willed." 



An East Hall has now spruug up where "once a 

 garden smiled ;" in 1861 the North Hall, covering a 

 space of from 1,500 to 2,000 jards, was added, and 



2 F 2 



