296 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [The Semnd High Schml,
School, a gold medal of the same value (five
guineas) as that annually presented to the Latin
class.?
?Several circumstances, to which I shall briefly
advert,? wrote an old pupil to Dr. Steven, seemed,
in my time, to distinguish the High School, and
could not fail to give a peculiar character to many
of its scholars in after life. For instance, the
variety of ranks : for I used to sit between a youth
of a ducal family and the son of a poor cobbler.
Humanity in the University, which he filled long
and with the highest honour.
He was succeeded as Rector by Aglionby-Ross
Carson, M.A., LL.D., a native of Dumfries-shire,
who in 1806 had obtained a mastership in the
school, and laboured in it assiduously and successfully.
Three months before his appointment as
Rector he had declined the Greek chair in the
University of St Andrews, to which, though not a
candidnte, he had been elected. It was while he
THE SECOND HIGH SCHOOL, 1820. (AferStonr.)
Again, the variety of nations: for in our class
under Mr. Pillans there were boys from Russia,
Germany, Switzerland,the United States, Barbadoes,
St. Vincent?s, Demarara, the East Indies, England,
and Ireland. But what I conceive was the chief
characteristic of our school, as compared at least
with the great English schools, was its semidomestic,
semi-public constitution, and especially
our constant intercourse at home with our sisters
and other folk of the other sex, these, too, being
educated in Edinburgh j and the latitude we had
cor making excursions in the neighbourhood.?
In June, 1820, the connection ceased between
(he school and Mr. Pillans, who, on the death of
Professor Christison, was awarded the Chair of
was in office that the third and last High Schoolthat
magnificent building which has been described
in our account of the Calton Hill-was erected ;
and the closing examination in the old schoolhouse
at the foot of Infirmary Street took place in
the autumn of 1828, and that interesting locality,
where the successive youth of Edinburgh for more
than two hundred and seventy years had flocked
for the acquisition of classical learning-a schoolboy
scene enshrined in the memories of many
generations of men, was abandoned for ever.
In 1828 the disused school-house was sold to
the managers of the Royal Infirmary for jE7,500,
and was adapted to form part of the Surgical
Hospital, externally, however, remaining unchanged.
297 1,,firwry Strert.1 1NFIRMARY SUGGESTED.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE OLD ROYAL INFIRMARY-SURGEON SQUARE.
The Old Royal Infirmary-Projected in time of Gorge I.-The First Hospital Opened-The Royal Charter-Second Hospital Built-
Opened 1741-Sizc and Constitution-Benefactors? Patients-Struck by Lightning-Chaplain?s Dutier--Cases in the Present Day-The
Keith Fund-Notabilities of Surgeon Squan-The H o w of CumehiU-The Hall of the Royal and Medical Society-Its Foundation-
Bell?s Surgical Theatre.
THOUGH the ancient Scottish Church had been
during long ages distinguished for its tenderness
and charity towards the diseased poor, a dreary
interval of nearly two centuries, says Chambers,
intervened between the extinction of its lazar-houses
and leper-houses, and the time when a merely
civilised humanity suggested the establishment of
a regulated means for succouring the sicknessstricken
of the poor and homeless classes.
86
A pamphlet was issued in Edinburgh in 1721
suggesting the creation of such an institution, and
there seems reason to suppose that the requirements
of her rising medical schools demanded it;
but the settled gloom of the ? dark age ? subsequent
to the Union, usually stifled everything. and the
matter went to sleep till 1725, when it was revived
by a proposal to raise Az,ooo sterling to carry it
out
