environed by noble and famous mansions, some of their parks thrown liberally open to visitors. Close at hand on the Lowland side is Drummond Castle with its grand woods and gardens, seat of the old family of Perth, that has had strange vicissitudes: its representative now unites several titles in that of the Lincolnshire Earl of Ancaster, while the direct line of the Perth Earls was ruined by its Jacobite loyalty. On the hills behind are the grounds of Ochtertyre, which inspired Burns’s muse; and the often-visited Falls of Turret are, among several cascades, within a short walk. Behind the Knock lie Ferntower, once home of Sir David Baird, and Monzie Castle, which strangers must remember to pronounce with its z silent. Southrons will have some difficulty also in getting their tongues round the name of Cultoquhey, famed by the Laird of Cultoquhey’s prayer: “From the greed of the Campbells, from the pride of the Grahams, from the ire of the Drummonds, and the wind of the Murrays, Good Lord deliver us!” This laird’s name was Maxtone, which hints at his having emigrated from the Borders among such uncongenial neighbours; but in the whirligig of time his descendant has taken on “the pride of the Grahams,” being now Maxtone-Graham, with Murrays and Drummonds still around him. The old laird’s familiarity with the Litany may be explained by the fact of Muthill, a village near at hand, having kept for itself an Episcopal chapel through all adversities, as well as a parish church with rare relics of Catholic antiquity. The church and castle of Innerpeffray are other points of interest in a neighbourhood whose old families seem to have held their own against English and American invasion; but the Grahams themselves, Highland clan as they pass for and duly equipped with a tartan, seem to have come from the south, where Scott puts Roland Græme’s kin in the Border “Debateable Land.”
Of all the lairdly homes about Crieff, the best known in the world should be Gask, through the several authors whom the Oliphant family has produced. One daughter of this house was Lady Nairne, christened Carolina after the unfortunate prince for whom it had suffered poverty and exile. There was a Charles also, and George III. is said to have been tickled to hear how, every day after dinner, the old laird would turn to his son with “Charles, the king’s health!” More than any other writer, by her Jacobite ballads and her remaniements of popular songs, “the White Rose of Gask” has inspired a tender sentiment of the lost cause to thrill so many hearts and piano strings, long after Scottish royalists had transferred their worship to such clay idols as George IV. In my youth, indeed, there were still Perthshire men who spoke more or less heartily of the Hanoverian “usurpers.” I myself was brought up in a touch of the same sentiment, though that my father’s Jacobitism went not very deep appeared from the gusto with which he used to tell the tale of his translating to a lady the inscription on the monument at St. Peter’s dedicated by King George to the “last of the Stuarts,” whereupon a Yankee standing by put in the remark, “I guess George was right smart to say it was the last of them!” Lady Nairne’s hereditary feeling for the Stuarts might not perhaps have endured the test of experience; she was a devout Protestant, and in her old age showed sympathy with the Free Church movement, which is the antipodes of Jacobitism. So modest was she,
that for the greater part of her life, her neighbours, and her own husband, were not aware of her hand in the songs which had crept into wide popularity. It was taken for granted that Burns must be the author of her noblest strain, the “Land o’ the Leal,” better known than understood, as we remember from Mr. Gladstone’s blunder in confusing heaven and Scotland. “The Laird o’ Cockpen,” “Caller Herrin’,” “Will ye no come back again?” are other favourites among her songs, grave and gay; but her most recurrent theme was that glorified memory that, like Queen Mary’s, can wing a sentiment to pierce the joints of Scotland’s logical armour,—
Charlie is my darling,
The young Chevalier!