Provost Drummond, who may be called the founder of the New Town, had long cherished and developed the scheme in his mind. Dr. Jardine, his son-in-law, lived in part of a house in the north corner of the Royal Exchange from which there was a wide prospect away over the Nor’ Loch to the fields beyond. It was plain countryside in those days. The swans used to issue from under the Castle rock, swim across the Nor’ Loch, cross the Lang Gate and Bearford’s Park, and make sad havoc of the cornfields of Wood’s farm. Bearford’s Park was called after Bearford in East Lothian, which had the same owner. Perhaps you remember the wish of Richard Moniplies in _The Fortunes of Nigel_, that he had his opponent in Bearford’s Park. But to return to Provost Drummond. He was once with Dr. Thomas Somerville, then a young man, in Dr. Jardine’s house, above mentioned. They were looking at the prospect, perhaps watching the vagaries of the audacious swans. “You, Mr. Somerville,” said the Provost, “are a young man and may probably live, though I will not, to see all these fields covered with houses, forming a splendid and magnificent city,” all which in due time was to come about. Dr. Somerville tells us this story in his _My Own Life and Times_, a work still important for the history of the period. All this building has not destroyed the peculiar characteristic of Edinburgh scenery. It is still true that “From the crowded city we behold the undisturbed dwellings of the Hare and the Heath fowl; from amidst the busy hum of men we look on recesses where the sound of the human voice has but rarely penetrated, on mountains surrounding a great metropolis, which rear their mighty heads in solitude and silence. [Illustration: REV. THOMAS SOMERVILLE, From a Photograph in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery]