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The first fixed residence of David Hume in Edinburgh appears to have been in Riddel’s Land, Lawnmarket, near the head of the West Bow. He commenced housekeeping there in 1751, when, according to his own account, he ‘removed from the country to the town, the true scene for a man of letters.’ It was while in Riddel’s Land that he published his Political Discourses, and obtained the situation of librarian to the Faculty of Advocates. In this place also he commenced the writing of his History of England. He dates from Riddel’s Land in January 1753, but in June we find him removed to Jack’s Land,[41] a somewhat airier situation in the Canongate, where he remained for nine years. Excepting only the small portion composed in the Lawnmarket mansion, the whole of the History of England was written in Jack’s Land; a fact which will probably raise some interest respecting that locality. It is, in reality, a plain, middle-aged fabric, of no particular appearance, and without a single circumstance of a curious nature connected with it, besides the somewhat odd one that the continuator of the History, Smollett, lived, some time after, in his sister’s house precisely opposite.