APPENDIX. 523 



APPENDIX B. 



THE following notice of the Old Calton Burial Ground, and 

 the historical reminiscences associated with it, is from the pen 

 of Professor Daniel Wilson : 



" It stretches southwards to the brow of the precipice which 

 overhangs the Old Town of Edinburgh, lying there at a depth of 

 about a hundred feet below, and where the crowded monuments 

 and family enclosures admit of a peep beyond the elevated 

 site commands a wide view of the distant Pentlands, the Castle, 

 with the Old Town piled up to its rocky heights, and the 

 crowded avenues between the Old and New Towns, whence the 

 busy hum reaches the ear, mellowed by the distance into sounds 

 of life that mingle not unpleasantly with the echoes of that 

 silent scene. The cemetery is of comparatively recent date ; and 

 though heaved into many a mouldering heap, its grassy mounds 

 have few associations with illustrious names. Nevertheless the 

 locality is not without its historical reminiscences ; and from its 

 commanding site, must have been a point of considerable im- 

 portance both to the assailants and defenders of the Scottish 

 capital, when in olden times it was guarded by embrasured wall 

 and gate. Eight below the crag, now crowded with the monu- 

 ments of modern generations, there formerly stood the ancient 

 Collegiate Church founded by the widowed Queen of the second 

 Scottish James in 1462, and beyond it St. Anthony's Port, which 

 commanded the northern entrance to the steep avenue leading 

 to the Netherbow. A Eoman causeway has been traced along 

 the very base of the cliff ; and the discovery of some fine red 

 Saurian ware in 1815, when digging the foundations of the Post- 

 office, which bounds the cemetery on the west, leaves no doubt 

 that the footprints of the Eoman conqueror have been there. 

 An old map of 1544 the earliest memorial of Edinburgh topo- 

 graphy now preserved in the British Museum, shows the Earl 

 of Hereford with his army occupying the Calton Hill, before 

 putting the city to fire and sword, according to the barbarous 



