sister Lady Margaret Fordyce's marriage, that she composed the ballad of Auld Robin Gray, the name of which she took from the cow-herd at the home-farm-a simple swain, of whom I now found there is no tradition left. A friend of the family, Sophy Johnstone by name, an eccentric masculine person, a sort of rough version of Diana Vernon, was in the custom of singing a certain homely song about a silly bridegroom-a favourite subject of ridicule to our Doric muse-the air of which had a great charm for Lady Anne. 'I longed,' says her ladyship, 'to sing old Sophy's air to different words, and to give to its plaintive tones some little history of virtuous distress in humble life, such as might suit it. While attempting to effect this in my closet, I called to my little sister, now Lady Hardwicke, who was the only person near me : "I have been writing a ballad, my dear-I am oppressing my heroine with many misfortunes-I have already sent her Jamie to sea, and broken her father's arm, and made her mother fall sick, and given her Auld Robin Gray for a lover, but I wish to load her with a fifth sorrow in the four lines, poor thing! help me to one, I pray." "Steal the cow, sister Anne !" said the little Elizabeth [Elizabeth was at this time only eight years old]. The cow was immediately lifted by me, and the song completed.' The public very soon obtained possession of the composition; it got into collections of songs; it was the rage for several years; but the authoress never claimed or acknowledged it, conceiving that a literary reputation would only make her an object of jealousy to her friends. But the honours of the song were not yet exhausted. Not only was the present superior air composed for it by a worthy clergyman-Mr Leeves of Wrington-but it had a romance composed to it by a man of eminence; was the subject of a play, of an opera, and of a pantomime; was sung by the united armies in America, acted by Punch, and danced by dogs in the street.' The authorship and even the age of the song were, meanwhile, a mystery to the public. Many thought it a production of days gone by, though this a matter-of-fact Edinburgh writer disputed, on the ground

that, in old times in Scotland, where the pound was only twenty-pence, no one would have thought of making a crown into such a sum by a sea-voyage. A few suspected Lady Anne Lindsay, and I found, on conversing with old people at Balcarres, that, in that district, no doubt on the point was ever entertained. To arrive at an authoritative conclusion, the Antiquarian Society commissioned their secretary to make inquiry of Lady Anne herself, who, feeling offended by the way in which he put his questions, dismissed him unsatisfied. Finally, a gentleman advertised a reward of twenty guineas to any one who should ascertain the point beyond dispute; a plan which also failed. It is rather remarkable that Lady Anne retained her secret above fifty years, only disclosing it to Sir Walter Scott in 1823, in consequence of his quoting in the Pirate a verse of a second part of Auld Robin Gray, which her ladyship had written some years after the first, but which had the usual bad fate of sequels and continuations.

I may now enter Balcarres House, and, taking the gentle reader along with me, endeavour to make him participate in the pleasure which I had in inspecting it. I shall not, however, detain him with Colonel Lindsay's handsome new drawing-room and library, though from the window of the latter there is one of the most beautiful peeps of wood-confined landscape-disclosing Kilconquhar church and lake-which I have ever anywhere seen. The dining-room is metal more attractive, for it is old, and characteristic of old times, even to the furniture. It is, however, chiefly curious for a ceiling of decorative stucco-work in compartments, presenting in the centre the arms of James I. of Great Britain-and thus indicating its age as between 1603 and 1625-while, in others, the busts of four heroes of antiquity appear in high relief, mailed and helmeted, with their names inscribed thus: DAVID REX-HECTOR TRO.-JOSVE DUX-ALEXAND. REX. How often has the company of this banquet-hall been changed, excepting these ancient effigies only! How often has our playful poetess sat under them!

Familiar must they have been to the eyes of all her predecessors, back to the very first Lord Balcarres, so created at the coronation of King Charles in Holyrood. And there they still are, likely to look down on many future scions of the gentle-natured race of Balcarres, who, in their turn, must pass away, leaving still these eternal guests sole-remaining. I was most earnest, as may be supposed, in my inquiries for the chambers which the tradition of the house connected more particularly with Lady Anne, and was led to a long winding or turnpikestair, which ascends from the original, but now superseded entrance-hall, and gives access to all the older portion of the mansion. Two flights of this stair conduct us to a floor in which there is a moderate-sized bedroom, usually called Oliver Cromwell's Room, from his having once occupied it, and which now appears remarkable only for the great thickness of wall disclosed by the opening of its single window. This, according to the best accounts, was the apartment of the authoress of Robin Gray, but probably only was so when she revisited the house in later life, during the proprietorship of her brother; for in one of her letters she speaks of having had a more elevated retreat in her younger days-in the same staircase, however-being thus lodged appropriately for an intellectual labourer

'Where Contemplation roosted near the sky.'

'Residing,' she says, 'in the solitude of the country, without other sources of entertainment than what I could draw from myself, I used to mount up to my little closet in the high winding staircase, which commanded the sea, the lake, the rock, the birds, the beach, and with my pen in my hand, and a few envelopes of old letters-which too often vanished afterwards-scribble away poetically and in prose, till I made myself an artificial happiness.' Unluckily, amidst the alterations of the house, this sanctum of our poetess has been destroyed.

Having seen all that was pointed out to observation within doors, I was next led to the wood-screened ruins

of a chapel near the house, which the family use as a place of interment. A deep gloom and silence rest on this building, the walls of which are mantled with ivy, while two or three narrow lanceolated window-spaces seem formed expressly as haunts for melancholy night-birds. In the interior, the sod shews a few mounds, betokening sepulture at no remote date; and in particular two, which lie along in one line, and are more notable than the rest. A plain stone informs us that the upper grave contains the remains of Mrs Anne Murray Keith, in whom some readers will be prepared to recognise the Mrs Bethune Baliol of Scott, though that fancy portraiture fails, I am assured, to realise the singular intelligence, spirit, and grace of the old lady's character. Mrs Keith and the dowagercountess of Balcarres (mother of Lady Anne) being the children of twin-sisters, lived together for many years in the greatest harmony, calling each other playfully husband and wife. Time saw them at length deposited together in this spot, having died within little more than two years of each other, both at an advanced age. The grave of Anne Keith certainly adds about six feet of classic ground to the already hallowed precincts of Balcarres. She from whom our modern Ariosto derived the bases of many of his most romantic fictions-in her own phrase, she knew her ain groats among other folks' kail'—the sister of the elegant Ambassador Keith—accomplished up to the intellectual level of some of the best minds of her time-was no ordinary person. It is worth while to extract the description that has been given of her personal appearance in another novel, in which she prominently figures under the appellation of Mrs Sydney Hume :—

A lady of benign and motherly aspect, whom want of height could not rob of dignity, though it was tempered with a benevolence and cordiality quite calculated to put a stranger at once at his ease. But as a stranger she evidently did not intend to regard me-she walked up with an air of the most winning frankness, and, with the loveliest smile that ever graced the lip of age, held out her hand to me.

'I was so struck by her serene and benevolent aspect, and the maternal kindness of her reception, that I could have almost revived the fashion of her day, and kissed the hand I held, I believe, a moment longer than courtesy demanded. I looked, I am sure, with more than civil earnestness in her face, and with more than ordinary admiration on the beautiful curls of the finest ivory (not silver) which were ranged in an order younger locks might have studied with advantage, round her open commanding brow-under a cap whose mingled taste and simplicity rendered it the meetest covering ever ancient lady's head was crowned withal. The upper part of the face beneath it-the lofty brow, and a nose which must have been somewhat too strong for feminine beautyspoke an intellect of no common order, and certainly inspired, when vice or folly came athwart her path, a good deal of uncomfortable awe. But the large, mild blue eye -the most intelligent I ever remember seeing of so peculiarly light a shade-and a mouth around which smiles of good-humour and genuine enjoyment usually mantled, softened the manlier conformation of the other features; and, joined to the pale, though not sickly hue of the once delicately fair skin, gave altogether an aspect at once feminine and interesting to Mrs Sydney Hume.' *

It is greatly to be lamented-though I am perhaps too much of an enthusiast on such points-that Lady Anne was not placed for her last repose in a scene associated with the history of her beautiful ballad. The course of life bore her far from Balcarres. Having, in 1793, married Mr Barnard, son of the bishop of Limerick, she accompanied her husband to the Cape of Good Hope, to which he had the appointment of secretary; and there Lady Anne spent nine years. Afterwards she dwelt in London till the close of her days, only once or twice revisiting the scenes of her youth. A relative has stated a few particulars about her, which may be read with interest. The journals of her voyage to the Cape, and of

* Probation: a Tale. By the author of Selwyn in Search of a Daughter.