ies
of art and nature, foreign and domestick, as appears by Sir Robert's
account, printed in four books in 1697.

A little further to the south of the Cowgate is the University, which
consists only of one college: The Magistrates of Edinburgh are governors
of it; it hath a principal or warden, and four philosophy regents or
professors. There is also a professor of Divinity, of Civil Law, of
History, Mathematicks, and Hebrew.

In studying four years at this college you commence Master of Arts: The
scholars are not in commons, and kept to strict rules as in the colleges
in England, nor wear gowns; they lodge and diet in the town, as at the
colleges in Holland, and are required to attend at their several classes
from eight in the morning till twelve, and from two to four. I wonder
how a college in a town used to so much business and diversion to take
off from the study of youth, should ever produce a good scholar.

This college consists of two lower courts, and one upper one, tolerably
well built; the upper court, to which you ascend by steps of stairs, is
larger than the other two. On the left of that court is the library, a
long spacious room, and the books neatly kept, and cloistered with doors
of wire, that none can open but the keeper, more commodious than the
multitude of chains used in the English libraries. The several
benefactions are kept in distinct apartments, with the donor's name
over them in gold letters; and over these cases of books are pictures
of most of the Kings of Scotland, and of all the reformers both at home
and abroad....

Joining to the College is a neat hospital for girls, with a pretty
garden, and bowling-green; and a little further is the churchyard of the
Grey-Friars, the burial-place of all the eminent burghers of the city;
for they don't affect so much as the English to be buried in churches;
that they think smells too much of the Popish stamp....

To the westward of this church-yard stands the most celebrated Hospital
of George Herriot, Jeweller to James the Sixth, for the bringing up of
130 poor boys, children of decayed merchants and tradesmen of this city.
The building exceeds any thing of the kind in Europe. Sutton's Hospital,
called the Charter-House at London, is a noble foundation; but the house
neither of that, Christ-Church, nor anything of the kind at Rome or
Venice, comes up to the magnificence of this building; which I suppose
is owing to Dr. Balcanqual, his executor, who