I have said little of the Dean’s ancestors, merely named the Burnetts and Bannermans.  Indeed I would guard against loading my memoir of the Dean with anything like mere pedigree.  I take no interest in his ancestry, except in so far as they may have given a character—­so far as he may have inherited his personal qualities from them.  I will not dwell then upon Alexander de Burnard, who had his charter from Robert the Bruce of the Deeside lands which his descendants still hold, nor even on the first Lairds of Leys.  When the Reformation blazed over Scotland, the Baron of Leys and his kindred favoured and led the party that supported the new faith; but, even in that iconoclastic age, two of them are found protesting against the destruction of religious places at Aberdeen.  One, Gilbert Burnett (he was grand-uncle of the Bishop of Sarum), enjoyed considerable reputation abroad for certain philosophical writings.  He was Professor of Philosophy, first at Basle and afterwards at Montauban, and a general synod of the French Protestants desired that his works should be printed at the expense of the synod.  These Dissertationes Ethicae were accordingly published at Leyden in 1649; but his death prevented his other writings from being published.  Two brothers of the same generation, Thomas and Duncan, settled in England as physicians, and seem to have been men of literary eminence.  Pedigrees of both are to be found in the Herald’s Visitations of Essex and Norfolk.  Duncan, Thomas, and Gilbert, are all noticed by Sir Thomas Middleton among the “Learned Men and Writers of Aberdeen;” and Duncan is noted as a holy, good, and learned man.  In the stirring times of the Covenants, Sir Thomas Burnett of Leys, Baronet, though an adherent of the Huntlys, embraced the Covenant from conscientious motives against his political instincts and associations.  And ever afterwards we find him firm in the principles of the Covenant, yet advising peaceful and moderate counsels; and when Montrose, after his conversion to the royal cause, passed through Aberdeenshire, harrying the lands of the leading Covenanters, he supped one day at Crathes, excepted and protected Sir Thomas Burnett and his son-in-law, Sir William Forbes of Monymusk, in the general denunciation of the Puritans.  We find Sir Thomas repeatedly a commissioner for visiting the University of Aberdeen, and in his later years he endowed three bursaries at King’s College, his own alma mater.  Jamesone has painted him with a thoughtful and refined, but earnest and manly face.  The baronet’s brother, James Burnett of Craigmyle, was of the same character.  No less earnest and staunch than his brother in his adherence to his principles—­he ever figures as a peace-maker and enemy of bloodshed.  He is described by the parson of Rothiemay, an unsuspected testimony, as a “gentleman of great wisdom, and one who favoured the King though he dwelt among the Covenanters, and was loved and respected by all.”  Is it not plain that the temperance and moderation descended in the blood of the Burnetts?