Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland
Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland
Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland
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ALLAN RAMSAY 43<br />
was not accommodation for a tenth part <strong>of</strong> the inhabitants<br />
in the houses <strong>of</strong> two, or at most three, storeys which<br />
prevailed about the time <strong>of</strong> the Reformation, the<br />
architects <strong>of</strong> the Restoration period commenced the<br />
erection <strong>of</strong> those towering tenements, or lands^—twelve,<br />
fourteen, and even sixteen storeys high,—for which<br />
Edinburgh has been celebrated among the cities <strong>of</strong><br />
Europe. Thus the families <strong>of</strong> the Scottish metropoHs<br />
were packed together, one on the top <strong>of</strong> the other, like<br />
herrings in a barrel, in those quaint old houses, with<br />
their grim timber fronts, their crow-stepped gables and<br />
dormer windows, that remain even until to-day to show<br />
us the circumstances under which our fathers lived and<br />
loved.<br />
In circumstances such as these, domestic comfort and<br />
the sweet seclusion <strong>of</strong> home were out <strong>of</strong> the question.<br />
So criminally overcrowded was the town that well-born<br />
gentlemen and their households were content with two<br />
or three rooms, wherein all the manifold duties <strong>of</strong> social<br />
and domestic life had to be performed. Robert<br />
Chambers, in his charming Traditions <strong>of</strong> Edinburgh^<br />
relates how the family <strong>of</strong> Mr. Bruce <strong>of</strong> Kennet, a<br />
leading lawyer, afterwards raised to the Bench, lived in<br />
a house <strong>of</strong> three rooms and a kitchen—a parlour, a consulting-room<br />
for Mr. Bruce, and a bedroom. The<br />
children, with their maid, had beds laid down for them<br />
at night in their father's room, the housemaid slept under<br />
the kitchen dresser, and the one man-servant was turned at<br />
night out <strong>of</strong> the house. Even a more striking, example<br />
<strong>of</strong> the lack <strong>of</strong> accommodation was to be found in con-<br />
nection with the household arrangements <strong>of</strong> Mr. Kerr,<br />
' the eminent goldsmith <strong>of</strong> Parliament Square, who stowed