An Act of Parliament securing the site having been obtained, the foundation stone was, on the 15th August 1840, laid by Sir James Forrest of Comiston, Bart., Lord Provost of the city, and Grand Master Mason. A metallic plate deposited in the foundation stone bore the following inscription, composed by Lord Jeffrey: "This graven plate, deposited in the base of a votive building on the 15th day of August 1840, and never likely to see the light again till all the surrounding structures are crumbled to dust by the decay of time or by human or elemental violence, may then testify to a distant posterity that his countrymen began on that day to raise an effigy and architectural monument to the memory of Sir Walter Scott, part., whose admirable writings were then allowed to have given more delight and suggested better feeling to a larger class of readers in every rank of society, than those of any other author, with the exception of Shakspeare alone, and which were therefore thought likely to be remembered long after this act of gratitude on the part of the first generation of his admirers should be forgotten. He was born at Edinburgh, 15th August 1771, and died at Abbotsford 21st September 1832." The monument was, at the cost of upwards of £1500, founded on the solid rock, fifty-two feet under the level of Princes Street. It assumes the form of a Gothic spire, and may be thus described. From each corner of a raised platform of masonry rise elegantly clustered columns, from which spring four grand Early English arches, which converge into a vaulted roof crossing each other by ribbed groinings with beautifully-carved bosses, and terminating in a richly ornamented pendant or drop centre. The arches are successively supported by projecting buttresses also arched upon clustered columns, and after ascending to the first gallery spring into the open air to the height of ninety-eight feet, and terminate in pinnacles carved with crockets and crowned with richly ornamented finials. The connecting buttresses are decorated with large niches adorned with brackets and canopies, and each of the abutment towers at the height of the first gallery has two chaste and tastefully-wrought gargoyles in the form of grotesque griffins. The pilasters which separate the different clustered pillars that support the roof of the structure, are crowned with finely-ornamented capitals, containing likenesses of sixteen Scottish poets.