The circular panel of the finely-carved mantle-piece in the council room of Heriot’s Hospital is filled with a painting which perpetuates the tradition that the medicinal spring of St. Bernard’s Well, on the Water of Leith--resembling in character the famed Harrogate springs--was discovered by a party of Heriot boys while sporting on the bank of the stream. A more dubious legendary tale assigns the origin of the name to the occupation of a cave on the neighbouring slope by the saint still associated with its healing waters; but its medicinal virtues are noted for the first time in the _Scottish Magazine_ for 1760, at which date the water seems to have been in great repute. The old Scottish judge, Lord Gardenstone, an eccentric valetudinarian, having derived much benefit from the medicinal waters, in 1789 erected over the healing fountain a fine Doric temple, designed as a reproduction of the famous Sibyl’s Temple at Tivoli. A colossal plaster statue of Hygeia was placed within the columns, over the vaulted chamber of the well. Thus enshrined, it has ever since been a favourite morning resort; and William Nelson continued for many years to be one of its most faithful frequenters. But the picturesque and richly-wooded valley of the Leith, to which the Heriot boys resorted in the eighteenth century, has long been invaded by the extended new town. The temple had fallen into disrepair, and the boys of the neighbouring village of Stockbridge had defaced and mutilated the statue, till it presented some of the most familiar characteristics of a genuine antique. The amenities of the spot had suffered in all ways, and the proposed erection of a public laundry on the adjacent area threatened the final ruin of the well, when in 1885 Mr. Nelson interposed, purchased it and the grounds in its vicinity, restored and beautified the well, and commissioned Mr. Stephenson to execute a marble statue of Hygeia, to replace the mutilated goddess of earlier days. The surrounding grounds were tastefully laid out, under the directions of a skilled landscape gardener, and the whole finished at a cost of £5,000, and presented to the city. He did not live to see the fine statue placed on its pedestal; but his letters to his friends frequently refer to it, along with others of the various works of restoration which so largely occupied his thoughts and engaged his active sympathy in his later years. Writing to Captain Chester in January 1886 he says: “I send you the last report of the Cockburn Association, from which you will see that I have in hand the restoration of several ancient buildings in the Castle, and of the mineral well on the Water of Leith called St. Bernard’s Well, a chromo-lithograph of which I enclose. I am glad that it has fallen to my lot to do something ere I be ‘called hence to be no more,’ for the beauty and interest of mine own romantic town.”