le the Covenanter, married a daughter of the
family of Irvine of Monboddo, a scion of the house of Drum, and having
so acquired that barony, he transmitted it to his descendants, of whom
the most famous was his great-grandson, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, a
Judge of the Court of Session, an eminent lawyer, and a man of rare
accomplishments, with some whimsical peculiarities. In a treatise on the
origin and progress of language, he was the first seriously to assert
the descent of mankind from the monkey, and that the human race were
originally furnished with tails! That and a hundred other whimsies were
mixed up with a great deal of learning then very rare, and with a
philosophy that dealt in free and daring speculation, of which the world
was not yet worthy.

The first baronet of Leys, besides his brother James of Craigmyle, had
yet another brother, Robert Burnett of Crimond, an eminent advocate,
very learned, and of high moral and religious principle. Though his wife
was a sister of Johnstone of Warriston, he himself, unlike his two
brothers, was an opponent of the Covenant, for which he went into exile
until the Restoration, when he was made a Judge of the Court of Session
as Lord Crimond. He had three sons by the Warriston lady. His eldest,
Sir Thomas Burnett, was physician to royalty from Charles II to Queen
Anne. The third was Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury, of whom it is not my
intention to give any detailed account. His brilliant talents and great
influence made him many friends, and even more enemies. History is
beginning to do justice to his character without concealing his
weaknesses. He seems to have been more honest than was the fashion
in his time.

Such is the little gathering of family history, for the accuracy of
which I am chiefly indebted to my kind friend the Lord Lyon--himself a
Burnett. Perhaps I should apologise for saying even the little I have
said of the Dean's pedigree; but while I press into my service the
country of his birth and breeding, and the local peculiarities amongst
which his life was spent, as possibly having some influence on his
character, I could not resist the wish to show another element, drawn
from his ancestry, that went to the forming of that character. Was not
our Dean a worthy representative of Puritan leaders who refused to go
into the violence of the Covenant--of the Bishop of unreproached life,
who read the Thirty-nine Articles with an unconcealed desire to include
con