dness of their surroundings had evidently sunk deep
into their temperament,--and ofttimes the teaching of nature in
situations like this is of the most lasting kind. So it was with them.
They were a community apart: gloomily, almost fanatically, religious;
believing in miracles, visions, and in the direct interposition of
Providence,--in a word, carrying to the extreme of bigotry all the grand
attributes of Scottish Presbyterianism and Covenanting sublimity of
motive. They married and gave in marriage among themselves, looking the
while rather askance at strangers as 'orra bodies' from the big world
without, who, because they _were_ strangers, ran a strong chance of
being no better than they should be!

To this 'out-of-the-way' corner of the planet there was sent, towards
the close of the year 1684, as manager of Lord Hopetoun's mines, a gay,
happy-hearted, resourceful young Scotsman, by name Robert Ramsay. The
poet, when detailing his pedigree to the father of his _inamorata_, had
boasted that he was descended, on the paternal side, from the Ramsays of
Dalhousie (afterwards Earls of that Ilk). Such was literally the case.
Ramsay of Dalhousie had a younger brother, who, from the estate he
held--a small parcel of the ancestral acres--bore a name, or rather an
_agnomen_, yet to be historic in song, 'The Laird of Cockpen.' Whether
in this case, like his descendant of ballad fame, the said laird was
'proud and great'; whether his mind was 'ta'en up wi' things o' the
State,' history doth not record. Only on one point is it explicit, that,
like his successor, he married a wife, from which union resulted Captain
John Ramsay, whose only claim to remembrance is that he in turn married
Janet Douglas, daughter of Douglas of Muthil, and thus brought the poet
into kinship with yet another distinguished Scottish family. To the
captain and his spouse a son was born, who devoted himself to legal
pursuits, was a writer in Edinburgh, and acted as legal agent for the
Earl of Hopetoun. Through his interest with the earl, Robert Ramsay, his
eldest son, was appointed manager of the lead mines in the Lowther
hills, and set out to assume his new duties towards the close of the
year 1684.

From this pedigree, therefore, the fact is clear of the poet's right to
address William Ramsay, Earl of Dalhousie, in terms imitated from
Horace's famous Ode to Maecenas--

'Dalhousie, of an auld descent,
My chief, my stoup, my ornament.'

But to