[309] Right Hon. Charles Hope.

[310] Adam Rolland, Principal Clerk of Session, a nephew of Adam Rolland of Gask, who was in some respects the prototype of Pleydell, and whose face and figure have been made familiar to the present generation by Raeburn’s masterpiece of portraiture, now in the possession of Miss Abercrombie, Edinburgh.

[311] Sir Walter had written to Mr. Lockhart on 8th May:—­“Anne of Geierstein is concluded; but as I do not like her myself, I do not expect she will be popular.”

As a contrast to the criticisms of the printer and publisher, and a comment upon the author’s own apprehensions, the subjoined extract from a letter written by Mr. G.P.R.  James may be given:—­“When I first read Anne of Geierstein I will own that the multitude of surpassing beauties which it contained frightened me, but I find that after having read it the public mind required to be let gently down from the tone of excitement to which it had been raised, and was contented to pause at my book (Richelieu), as a man who has been enjoying a fine prospect from a high hill stops before he reaches the valley to take another look, though half the beauty be already lost....  You cannot think how I long to acquit myself of the obligations which I lie under towards you, but I am afraid that fortune, who has given you both the will and the power to confer such great favours upon me, has not in any degree enabled me to aid or assist you in return.”

[312] The Bee Preserver, or Practical Directions for the Management and Preservation of Hives.  Translated from the French of J. De Gelieu. 1829.

[313] “An oak tree which grows by the side of a fine spring near the Castle of Dalhousie; very much observed by the country people, who give out that before any of the family died a branch fell from the Edgewell Tree.  The old tree some few years ago fell altogether, but another sprang from the same root, which is now [1720] tall and flourishing; and lang be it sae.”—­Allan Ramsay’s Works, vol. i. p. 329:  “Stocks in 1720.” 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1800.

The tree is still flourishing [1889], and the belief in its sympathy with the family is not yet extinct, as an old forester, on seeing a large branch fall from it on a quiet still day in July 1874, exclaimed, “The laird’s deed noo!” and accordingly news came soon after that Fox Maule, 11th Earl of Dalhousie, had died.

[314] The Coalstoun Pear was removed from Dalhousie to Coalstoun House in 1861.

[315] Macbeth, Act III.  Sc. 4.

[316] Macbeth, Act IV.  Sc. 1.

[317] Lord Forbes was at this time His Majesty’s High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland:  he had been appointed in 1826.

[318] Rev. Edward Irving, minister of the Scottish Church in London, was deposed March 1833, and died Dec. 1834, aged forty-two.

[319] That is as a lay-member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.