Page:John Russell Colvin.djvu/27

Rh west side is that 'old merchant's house,' of which it may at one time have formed part, in which Mr. Andrew Lang tells us that Mary Queen of Scots sometimes lived when she sought refuge from the politics and the pulpits of Edinburgh. Later, says Mr. Lang, it came into the possession of Colonel Nairne, who had been engaged in 1745 on the Hanoverian side. In the Colonel's garden stood once a solitary tree, known as Dr. Johnson's tree, from its having been mentioned in Boswell's narrative. About the year 1817, being then a bare trunk without branches, this relic was uprooted, in the sight of John Colvin and his younger brother, Binny.

At St. Andrews the lad attended as a day scholar the schools of Mr. Waugh and of Mr. Moncur, each in those days a great local dominie; and in 1819 was entered at the University. Mr. Waugh's schoolhouse, which was pulled down in 1834, stood immediately to the east of the Blackfriars' Chapel, in the present grounds of the Madras College. The site of Mr. Moncur's school was on the ground known as Gregory's Green (now no Green, but a space paved with cobblestones), at the east end of North Street, by the Fisher's Gate. This site is now occupied by Coast Guard barracks. In February, 1817, John Playfair being principal, John Colvin inscribed his name in the University books. At St. Andrews he remained, as at the other schools which he had attended, a day student; wearing the scarlet gown, but daily tracing and retracing his steps, as he had done when he carried his