“Sir,—Upon considering the manner of your House of Pennicueik, where I had the pleasure of beeing some days in November last, and admiring the Architecture of it, after 40 years ponderating (sic) in my mind a Precept of Cicero’s,
Non Domo Dominus, sed Domino Domus honestanda est,
found for the first time that it was obtemperate, and should wish for leave to inscribe it on Pennicueik House as the real sentiment of
Your most obedient
Servant and Cousin
Perth.
“Lundin House, Ap. 22, 1771.”
III.
In the Entrance Hall various antiquarian and artistic treasures decorate the walls or are preserved in glass cases,—the colours of the local volunteer regiment that was raised at the time of the French Invasion scare, full-sized marble copies of various antique statues, excellent old china, several fine missals, the fan and necklace of Mary Queen of Scots, said to have come into the Clerk family from Mary Gray, wife of the first John Clerk of Penicuik, through her mother, Mary Gillies, to whom it was given before the execution at Fotheringay, and the gold snuff-box presented by the Scottish Widows’ Fund to Lord Eldin, in 1825, in recognition of his services at the time of the foundation of the company.
IV.
Turning to the right from the Hall we enter the Dining-room, where the most important of the portraits are hung. But here the places of honour on the walls, above the fireplaces and fronting the long line of windows which light the apartment, are occupied by no family portraits, by no effigies of distinguished heads of the house. Even the portrait of the second Baronet, the potent Baron of Exchequer himself, even the great Raeburn group of the fifth Baronet and his comely wife, Mary Dacre, have been waived to less important positions; and the pictures which hold the chief places represent a poet and a painter who were loved and honoured by this family of Penicuik.
Over the fireplace to the right is an excellent portrait, by William Aikman, of Allan Ramsay the elder, a man who, though his verses may seem a little artificial and a little dull to the readers of our own day, is worthy of all honour, not only for having aided in turning Scottish poetry into a freer and more natural channel, but also for having established a theatre and the first circulating library in Edinburgh, and so distinctly served the cause of culture in Scotland. He was the sworn friend of the house of Penicuik, the chosen associate of the second Baronet, and of his son, afterwards Sir James, whom he addresses in that homely and vigorous “Epistle,” beginning—