built them, may be more fittingly expressed in the words of a stranger to the blood of Edzell :-"It is impossible,” says this writer, "to behold a scene of more melancholy desolation, or one which reads a more humbling lesson to human pride, than that which the Castle of Edzell now presents. On the one side, the lofty tower, with its massy wall and narrow windows, speaks of the proud feudal baron, whose will was law among his retainers, whose right was the sword among his peers, and who, secure within the walls of his stronghold, could bid defiance to all the arts of attack known in the military practice of the period. The more modern buildings, less massy in their construction, more convenient in the disposition of their parts, and displaying the elegances of more refined life and manners, yet not altogether without the means of defence, indicate the progress of successful ambition and the operation of salutary laws, tending in some measure to restrain the licence and rapaciousness of feudal cupidity and injustice; while the richly sculptured wall of the pleasance proclaims the recognition of vested rights under the protection of just and equal laws-by which the arts of peace could be cultivated with success, and the elegances of life enjoyed without fear. It is well that the court-yard of the castle should no longer echo with the war-cry of the mailed warrior issuing to battle, or ring with the tramp of his charger; but it is deeply to be regretted that the proud name of its once lordly proprietors should have also departed, or should be heard only in the traditional tale which the hoary sire teaches his children. The hospitable fire is now quenched, the hearth is desolate, and the lofty arched hall has disappeared for ever. One little page in their country's history, darkly and imperfectly narrated, is all that remains of the glorious deeds and daring enterprises of the House of Edzell; while a shattered wall, a ruinous moss-grown battlement, and a mutilated statue, only survive of all the imposing grandeur of their ancient and favourite residence." *

* Views of Edzell Castle, p. 10.

SECTION IV.

I must now return to Earl James and the fireside of Balcarres, -which perhaps he might not have been then enjoying, had he joined the rebellion in the "Forty-five," a step which his sense of honour and military allegiance would, I am satisfied, have restrained him from, even though his known affection to the Stuarts had not occasioned a guard to be set over him to prevent his joining the Prince's army.

The events of that memorable year are indeed written in blood. I will not dilate upon them. The savage Pacha of Acre had no juster claim to the title of Djezzar than William Duke of Cumberland might have asserted to the corresponding epithet in English. At a county meeting held in Colinsburgh shortly afterwards, a Whig gentleman proposed his health; Bethune of Kilconquhar (great-grandfather, I believe, of the present Sir Henry) drank it, and then rose and gave as his toast the health of one Sibbald, the butcher of Colinsburgh; the Whig demurred

"Sir!" said Kilconquhar, "I've drunk your butcher, and, by heaven, Sir! you drink mine, or out you go by the window!"

Nor will I dwell upon the causes which tended to prolong for so many years the reign of Jacobitism in Scotland. George III. adopted a milder, juster, wiser policy than his predecessors. Times were changed, and, though many looked with an eye of lingering affection to Prince Charles's little Court in Italy, the virtues of their actual and truly British monarch gradually reconciled them to his occupancy of the "Stuarts' chair." The oppressive enactments of timid policy were rescinded. The Highlanders, marshalled under the banners of George III. and their native chieftains, won for themselves the highest reputation for honour, worth, and bravery. "I sought for merit," said Lord Chatham, "and I found it in the mountains of the North. I there found a hardy race of men, able to do their country service, but labouring under a proscription. I called them forth to her aid, and sent them to fight her battles. They did not disappoint my expectations, for their fidelity could be equalled only by their valour, which signalised their own and their country's renown all over the world."-The Jacobite estates,

Highland and Lowland, were restored, as we shall find hereafter, to the descendants of those by whom they had been forfeited. Whig and Tory, Protestant and Roman Catholic, every sect and every party, blessed, or ought to have blessed, the generous, the Christian monarch, whose bounty supported the last claimant of his throne in age and poverty; and in our own times the spirit of party-hatred has at least so far subsided, that the descendants of the bitterest enemies of the old Tory cause would scarce refuse a tear to the memory of "Auld lang syne," when gazing on the tomb where slumber in a foreign land the last relics of the royal race of Stuart.

After Earl James's marriage, the old family château again became the cheerful residence of a domestic circle, and was repeopled with a youthful tribe who have since become the venerable patriarchs of numerous families. Happy in his home, in the love of his family, and in the friendship of the learned and the good, living in the past rather than present times, and in his retirement meeting with little of worldly selfishness to shock the chivalry that moulded his every thought and deed, the evening of our great-grandsire's days glided on in tranquillity, like a mountain-stream, emerging from the rocks and the ravine, and peacefully stealing through green meadows to the ocean. Happiness smiled around him; converting his sword into a sickle, the retired soldier forsook the worship of Mars for that of Ceres, and introduced those agricultural improvements into the North, which he had long studied and admired while quartered in the richest districts of the South. He is described by one who knew him well as a nobleman distinguished by the benevolence of his heart, the liberality of his sentiments, the uncommon extent of his knowledge, particularly in history and agriculture, and as the first who brought farming to any degree of perfection in his native county.

"If our letters on this subject," says he, in one to his friend Lady Loudoun,* accompanying his System of Agriculture, which,

* Lady Margaret Dalrymple, only daughter of John first Earl of Stair, married Hugh second Earl of Loudoun in 1700. "Besides her personal charms, which were very considerable, she had acquired a large portion of those mental and liberal accomplishments which so much adorned the brilliant Court of Queen Anne; and possessed, moreover, in a high degree, that dignity of character and deportment,

at her request, he had committed to writing, and sent her in the beginning of 1761,-" are intercepted and fall into the hands of a virtuoso, will he not think that, at our time of life, to be aiming at improvements in agriculture, we must needs be a couple of Chinese philosophers? You know the foundation of their religion is, that a veneration for the Deity, and a benevolence to mankind, expressed by having children, improving fields, and planting trees, are surely rewarded by paradise. The reward, I am certain, is even to be found here, as the rational and natural pleasures will ever excel the artificial ones, which neither give felicity here nor hereafter."

It has been said truly, "Il ne plaît pas long temps qui n'a qu'un genre d'esprit." That variety of pursuits is essential to the happiness of the individual, however enthusiastically devoted to the master-passion that "like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest" within him, might be affirmed with equal truth. Happy is the man who can, like Earl James, enjoy existence and redeem his time, equally without and within doors, though to him, unfortunately, wisdom at one entrance was almost shut out. The death of his brother, to whom, as I have already intimated, he was devotedly attached, had so nervously affected him, "that

and that vigorous and active spirit, by which her gallant brother (the Marshal) was so eminently distinguished. In 1727 her ladyship fixed her residence at Sorn Castle, in Ayrshire, the vicinity of which was in a very uncultivated state, and the whole aspect of the country dreary and comfortless. In a soil and climate where roads and shelter were peculiarly necessary, not a single road or hedge, and very few trees were to be seen. Not discouraged by these unfavourable circumstances, she determined to create a scene more congenial to her own taste, and more like those to which she had been accustomed in a better country. Accordingly her skill and activity gradually produced an agreeable change. Besides enlarging the garden and orchard, she subdivided an extensive farm which she occupied herself, inclosed it with hedges and hedge-rows, interspersed with belts and clumps of planting. Through the whole extent of her farm, she likewise adorned the banks of the river and of the rivulets with walks and plantations. These operations she herself carefully superintended, and many, both of the fruit and forest trees, were actually planted and pruned with her own hands, and still remain pleasing monuments of her laudable industry. These her useful labours did not pass unrewarded. When she first settled in that country, her constitution and health appeared to be entirely broken; but, in the course of her rural occupations, they were gradually re-established, insomuch that, during the last thirty years of her life, she enjoyed an uncommon degree of health and cheerfulness. After an illness of a few days, she died on the 3rd of April, 1777, in the hundredth year of her age, regretted by her friends and the industrious poor, to whom she had so long been a benefactress. Old Stat. Acc. of Scotland.

it suddenly took from him the use of his hearing, which was never tolerably restored. Books, therefore," says his daughter, 66 were his constant resources; his taste was just, but unfettered, nor could any one form any idea of what Lord Balcarres' opinion was to be on any subject he was considering. Criticisms on the authors, however, that fell in his way, came with so much justice and imagination from his tongue, abridged and amended, that no one could enjoy my father's conversation and be ignorant."†

*

* In illustration of this I may give an extract from a letter from Miss C——, the governess of Balcarres—a lady indeed of more wit than reverence or sympathy -to her brother, dated 24 Dec. 1765,-" My Lord has read the little bookie, viz. the Court of King James and Charles, and, to shew you that he is so far like Mr. Shandy, to our great surprise he commended it and called it a curiosity; whereas we had all laid wagers about it, some thinking he would burn it, others that he would keep it for a continual fund of quarrel and discontent at such 'meeserable times,'—and who would have thought he would have looked on it, or had the patience to read a thing that gives such a false picture of James the Sixth and Charles the First ?.. I wagered he would not burn it, but that he would keep it as a substitute for the Union, which has been once or twice in his Lordship's mouth every day since the year 'fifteen,'-but, as Tristram said of his father, 'Nobody could know how a thing would strike him.' ”

+ The following letter is from Earl James to his mother-in-law, Lady Dalrymple:

"My dear Mother, I wish to know how this severe weather agrees with you. I have several times thought my long journey through this world was near an end,―asthma and pains still disturb me, and deafness cuts off the communication with friends, the chief consolation of old age, and refers us too much to our weak imperfect selves, an inspection where few even of the best can reap any solid satisfaction. The amusements called diversions, are they not arts to remove us from ourselves?—I have written none this long time except when business compelled me, yet have neglected nothing that might do good to our family, and make my wife easy after I am gone,-Annie has both understanding and application to carry on my plans. I can now say I think I have done some little good in this world, and have during my long life never injured any one to the best of my knowledge; our follies and errors, I hope, will be forgiven by our benign Creator, who made even the best of us but weak imperfect creatures.

"I have been reading Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe,'— '-were it abridged, it might be instructive and entertaining. Your friend Montaigne says, that if clever men in their compositions endeavoured to simplify more, few books would contain all the real knowledge that the mind is capable of receiving.

"Our little ones are recovered from the measles. Annie complains of numbness in her knees, which gives me concern, for time adds daily to her goodness and complacency. You have ever been a friend as well as a mother to her, I wish you would be a husband to her too, after I am gone."

I add a letter from an old friend to Earl James:

"London, March 31, 1757. "There are few pleasures, my dear Lord, more pure, I mean more disinterested, than that of hearing of the health and happiness of our friends who are far removed from us; this pleasure I have enjoyed frequently with respect to your lordship since you left this place, for, having frequent occasions of seeing people coming from your parts, I find them all agree in the accounts they give me of your present happy situation,—from one I learn how happy you have been in your marriage, and, which is more, how sensible you are of