7 
that he successfully followed his calling as one of the scientific arts ; 
and by those by whom he must be better appreciated than by my- 
self, he was greatly esteemed as a man conversant with the highest 
branches of his profession, and who has left behind him in that re- 
spect scarcely an equal, certainly no superior, in Edinburgh, or per- 
haps even in London itself. 
The four pre-eminent men whose names I mentioned in the first 
instance, demand from us much more than a simple passing notice. 
I wish that I were competent, and your present leisure sufficient, for 
the full biography which is necessary to do them complete justice. 
I am sure, however, that you will welcome some present short tribute 
of respect to their memory ; and that you will excuse my short- 
comings on a field of great extent, which I have had unfortunately 
but very brief opportunities of leisure to survey, and on which, in- 
deed, I should on that account have been compelled to decline entering, 
had it not been for the kindness of sundry Members of Council who 
have furnished me with the necessary means. 
William Henry Playfair , a Scotchman by descent, and a citizen 
of Edinburgh from his youth, was born in London, where his father, 
the brother of our former Professor, Philosopher, and Secretary, 
J ohn Playfair, practised as an architect of repute. Educated here 
under the eye of his uncle, and living much in the society of a 
host of his uncle’s pupils, comprising a multitude of young men of 
talent, who have since risen to great eminence in many departments of 
human knowledge, Mr Playfair acquired an extensive acquaintance 
with Learning, Science, and Art, and above all, in his own profes- 
sion, a correct and fastidious taste, of which we now reap the fruits 
in this city. 
At the early age of twenty-six Mr Playfair was chosen by His 
Majesty George the Third’s Commissioners to carry out the erection 
of the buildings for the University, — his first great work, in which he 
was at one and the same time aided by the general grandeur, and 
cramped by the faulty details, of his precursor Adam, — and in which 
he ultimately triumphed over every difficulty. There is nothing in 
our northern metropolis to compare with the simple stateliness and 
chaste details of the interior quadrangle of the University, — which is 
mainly Playfair’s own, — for his predecessor contemplated the mon- 
strous and fatal blot of a double quadrangle, with differently elevated 
courts ; — and we have nowhere else any single apartment that com- 
