166 Topography of Dumfries. 



While during all those vast flights of time the philo- 

 sophic foundations remained firm, they became buttressed 

 and bettered, and the artist borrowed, invented, and improved 

 the guises in which he clothed his symbolic entities. 



[Figs. No. 9 and Nos. ii to 22 are from blocks kindly 

 leni by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.] 



11th December, 1914. 



Chairman — G. F. Scott Elliot, Hon. V.P. 



Notes on the Topography of Dumfries. 



By G. W. Shirley. 



Introductory. 



We are apt to forget that our ancestors were as reason- 

 able beings as we are. Their actions sprang from motives, 

 beliefs, passions, and ideals similar to our own ; and our 

 inheritances from them, however absurd they may appear, 

 had each a rational basis which, did we possess sufficient 

 knowledge and imagination, could be readily understood. 



We cannot be satisfied with accepting Dumfries, topo- 

 graphically considered, as merely a fortuitous occurrence. 

 Its position and shape, the situations of its streets, and all 

 that makes up the material elements which distinguish il 

 from other inhabited places were not the outcome of any 

 irrational freak. Specific causes brought men together in 

 this place and confirmed them in its occupation for many 

 centuries. Definite reasons laid its arteries and veins exactly 

 in the positions they now occupy. Some objects there were 

 in the narrowing of St. Michael Street at the Penthouse End, 

 in widening the High Street at the Plainstones, in forming 

 the erratic block of houses surrounded by the High Street, 

 Queensberry Square, and South Queensberry Street, in 

 defining the narrow twining passages such as Loreburn 

 Street, Irish Street, and Shakespeare Street, and in the 

 hundred other features that, once the train of thought is 



