CHAPTER LXVI. 



PLACES OF MEETING— COLLECTION OF PICTURES. 



We have mentioned on page 47 that the Society held 

 its early meetings in the Merchants' Hall. 



At the General Meeting held on nth January 1791, it 

 was resolved, owing to the increasing prosperity of the 

 Society, to purchase a hall for their meetings, and it was 

 remitted to the Directors, with full powers to conclude a 

 bargain. The Directors made choice of a house in No. 39, 

 South Bridge, east side, then in course of erection, consist- 

 ing of a hall and committee room, with the flat above as a 

 residence for the hall keeper. 



In 1807 the Society had become so numerous and 

 influential, and their meetings, business, and objects greatly 

 increasing and extending, that it was considered desirable 

 and necessary that they should have more accommodation 

 than their hall in the South Bridge afforded, where there 

 was not sufficient room for the accumulation of papers, or 

 models, or for the officers of the Society. After various 

 consultations, the Society sold their hall in the South 

 Bridge to the Edinburgh Library Society, and concluded a 

 bargain for the purchase of the King's Arms Tavern, in- 

 cluding the large room formerly used as an Assembly Room, 

 and area belonging thereto. * The New Assembly Close, 



* This house was originally built in 1766 for an Assembly Room. It was 

 the third of the kind in Edinlmrgh. The first was situated in the West Bow, 

 and was demolished in 1836. The second was in the old Assembly Close, 

 and was destroyed on the occasion of the great fire in Edinburgh in 1824. 

 According to Arnot's History of Edinburgh, the door of the third As- 

 sembly Room was so disposed that a stream of air rushed through it into 

 the room, and as the footmen were allowed to stand with their flambeaux in 

 the entr}', before the entertainment was half over the room was filled with 

 smoke almost to suffocation. There were two tea or card rooms, but no supper 

 room, ^^^len balls were given, and after them supper, the table was laid out 

 in the dancing room before the company met. Additional tables were set out 



