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diff --git a/old/65604-0.txt b/old/65604-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8180794..0000000 --- a/old/65604-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2625 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Notes on the Art Treasures at Penicuik -House Midlothian, by John M. Gray - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Notes on the Art Treasures at Penicuik House Midlothian - -Author: John M. Gray - -Release Date: June 12, 2021 [eBook #65604] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team - at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON THE ART TREASURES AT -PENICUIK HOUSE MIDLOTHIAN *** - - - - - -NOTES ON THE ART TREASURES -AT PENICUIK -HOUSE MIDLOTHIAN -BY JOHN M. GRAY F.S.A. SCOT. -CURATOR SCOTTISH NATIONAL -PORTRAIT GALLERY. - -_REPRINTED, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS, -FROM “THE SCOTTISH LEADER.”_ - -[Illustration] - -FIFTY COPIES -FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. -1889. - - - - -THE ART TREASURES OF SCOTLAND. - - -III. PENICUIK HOUSE. - - -I. - -There are few Scottish families that, during the last two hundred -years, have been more closely connected with the progress of culture in -their native country than the Clerks of Penicuik. - -Claiming descent from the Drummonds of Hawthornden, through Elizabeth -Henderson, grand-daughter of the poet and first wife of the first -Baronet of Penicuik, they have produced, both in the main line and in -its younger branches, a goodly proportion of men of intellect and mark. -At present we need only name Sir John Clerk, the second Baronet, one of -the Commissioners for the Union, and a Baron of the Exchequer, a man -of varied attainments and the strongest individuality, and known as -an enthusiastic antiquary; his son, Sir James, who was the architect -of the present mansion of the family; whose brother, Sir George Clerk -Maxwell, the fourth Baronet, distinguished himself by his efforts to -promote the commercial interests of his country, establishing a linen -manufactory at Dumfries, engaging in mining schemes for copper and -lead, and writing much upon agricultural and industrial subjects; -John Clerk of Eldin, younger brother of the last-named, author of -the celebrated “Essay on Naval Tactics,” and known as an artist by -his series of etchings which preserve in a manner so interesting -to the antiquary the aspect of many of the historical edifices of -Scotland; his well-known son John Clerk, “the Coryphæus of the Scottish -Bar,” afterwards Lord Eldin; and the Right Hon. Sir George Clerk, -sixth Baronet, the friend of Sir Robert Peel, one of the prominent -politicians of his time, and especially versed in all matters of -statistics. William Aikman, the portrait-painter, too, was descended -from the house of Penicuik, his mother having been the eldest sister -of Sir John Clerk, the first Baronet; and, in our own time, Professor -James Clerk Maxwell, whose father was grandson of the fourth Baronet -and brother of the sixth, has by his eminence in science added new -lustre to his parental name. - -But not only have the Clerks been themselves witty—using the word in -its best, its old English, sense—they have been the cause of wit in -others; by their loyal friendships with the best Scottish painters and -poets of their time, and their open-handed patronage of these men’s -work, they have identified themselves with the history of art and -literature in Scotland. One can hardly pronounce the name of Allan -Ramsay without thinking of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, or the name of -Alexander Runciman, without recalling that of Sir James, his son and -successor. - -The mansion of the family is situated about a mile and a half from -the village of Penicuik, on a commanding situation, overlooking the -wooded valley of the Esk, a “classic stream” which, at this point, -is still uncontaminated by the chemicals of the paper-makers, whose -manufactories begin to appear a little lower, at the village itself. -Manifestly great care and the finest taste have been expended by the -successive owners of the place in laying out the grounds, which are -a triumph of landscape-gardening, so filled are they with pleasant -combinations of woodland, lawn, and flowers; and we shall hardly forget -their gorgeous aspect on that summer day when we first saw them, with -their wealth of purple rhododendron blossoms, and, here and there, -a touch of particularly vivid crimson of beech-leaves diversifying -the “greenery” of June. Especially noticeable is the skill which has -arranged that spaces of shadowed and closely enclosed foliage shall -lead, with all the force of sharp and grateful contrast, to amplest -breadth of outlook and extended view; and so aptly does the peak of the -Black Hill top the belt of trees that bounds the Upper Pond, and with -such a perfect sense of definitely calculated balance, of satisfying -composition, does the blue outline of Mendick complete the view as we -look up the stream from near the south front of the house, that, in a -fanciful mood, we could well believe the whole to have been the result -of something more than a mere happy chance,—could almost imagine -that he who designed the place had been gifted with a wizard’s power, -greater than that of the Prophet himself, that the mountains had indeed -been at his beck and call, that they had come at his bidding, and taken -their stations, each in the precise spot best fitted to give to the -prospect its last, its crowning perfection. - -Nay, Nature herself, even in her moments of wildest storm, seems to -have been working in harmony with the designer of the place, and -making for its beauty. When you have surveyed the last-named prospect, -and turned a little towards the left to follow the depressions of -the ground which mark the position of the unseen bed of the Esk, you -note the greensward that borders the stream; and this leads the eye -beyond to the further bank, where an open space of clearing among the -trees diversifies the succession of their rounded tops, this break -and point of pause being again repeated further up to the left among -the trees that crest the hill. The last opening was the work of the -tempest, which, by overturning a trunk or two, disclosed a glimpse of -the distant Peeblesshire moor behind, giving just that final touch, -that hint of the beyond “over the hills and far away,” which perfects -the view,—not only to the painter, as completing the lines of its -composition, but to the poet as well, by adding that sense of extended -outlook, as of a vista piercing into the breadth of the world, which is -needful, for finest imaginative effect, in every landscape. - -Then, too, there are the Penicuik Gardens to be seen,—the old garden, -lying on a sheltered slope to the south, with its glass-houses, -the first, or all but the very first, of the kind in Scotland; the -extensive modern garden, bounded by brick walls, the soft mellow -colouring of which tells so pleasantly through the green of the trees; -and especially the “American Garden,” with its wealth of many-coloured -azaleas springing from the midmost space of softest turf, “a garden -inclosed” like the garden of the Canticles, cloistered and protected, -like some princess of romance, by thick-set hedges and a circle of -sheltering wood, lest any eager and nipping air of our northern clime -should visit its cheek too roughly, and blanch the beauty of its ardent -face of flowers. - - -II. - -The house, which fronts us as we approach the termination of the -drive, is a modern edifice, built by Sir James, the third Baronet, -in 1761, after he had returned from a residence in Italy, saturated -with classical ideas. It was erected entirely from the Baronet’s own -designs; but, doubtless, these were produced under the influence of -Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, whose sister had been married -in 1753 to John Clerk, author of the “Naval Tactics,” Sir James’s -younger brother. Consequently the present house does not possess the -interest of having been the meeting-place of Allan Ramsay, who died in -1758, and his friends and patrons of the Clerk family; an association -erroneously assigned to the present structure by Dr. Daniel Wilson -in his “Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh,” a work which contains many -curious particulars regarding the Clerks, and especially of the Baron, -the second Baronet. The house in which the poet and the antiquary spent -together many a genial evening of “honest talk and wholesome wine” no -longer exists. It occupied a site close behind the present mansion, on -whose completion it was removed. Some of the old cellars remain under -the earthen mound to the south, and are still in use. We may sigh a -little over the memories and associations of old Penicuik House, over -the vanished picturesqueness of its “crowstep” gables and its circular -corkscrew turrets, of which a shadow still survives in the sketch by -John Clerk, reproduced in the Bannatyne Club issue of his etchings; but -doubtless the present mansion is vastly more commodious and in better -harmony with modern ideas of comfort than was its predecessor, and it -takes its place excellently in the landscape; its effect not greatly -marred by the more recent wings added by Bryce in 1857-8; its straight -perpendicular and horizontal lines contrasting excellently with the -flowing curves of ground and trees, in that fashion which Turner -recognised and loved, and emphasised so delightfully in his early -drawings of four-square English mansions set amid the rounded forms of -wood and hill and stream. - -As we turn our eye towards the offices of Penicuik House, which -are situated a little to our right, two objects of rather singular -aspect arrest our attention. Regarding one of them—a tall, very -ecclesiastical-looking steeple garnished with the usual large gilded -clock-face, which in the oddest fashion surmounts the stables—a -curious bit of tradition lingers in the neighbourhood. It seems that -Sir James designed not only his own mansion, but also the parish church -of Penicuik. When the plan of the latter, however, was submitted to the -heritors or kirk-session, it appears that they would have none of the -steeple,—for what reason is not recorded, whether it was that their -architectural tastes did not chime in with those of the Baronet, or -that they considered it as too decorative a feature to be in accordance -with severe Presbyterian principles, or whether, finally, the expense -was too great for their pockets. Declined, at any rate, the steeple -was, so local tradition affirms. But Sir James was by no means willing -that the structure which his brain had devised should only be dimly -visible upon paper, and never take substantial embodiment in stone and -lime; so he reared it, at his own proper cost, in his stable-yard, -where it still forms so imposing and unusual a feature. - -The other curious erection is a rounded dome on the opposite side -of the court, raising its height above the stable buildings. This -is nothing less than an accurate reproduction of “Arthur’s O’on,” -which formerly existed on the north bank of the Carron, a mile and a -half from Falkirk, believed by “Sandy Gordon,” the great antiquarian -friend of the second Baronet of Penicuik, to be a Roman _Sacellum_, or -chapel in which military standards and insignia were deposited, and -fully described and discussed in his “Itinerarium Septentrionale,” -that precious folio which Oldbuck had captured and was beginning to -examine when we make his acquaintance in the opening chapters of “The -Antiquary.” - -Turning, however, to the house itself, we may remark, as we enter, that -the ornaments of the front—the stone vases that break the sky-line, -and the graceful “Chippendale” shield of arms, furnished with the -decorative, not heraldic, adjunct of wings—were designed by John -Clerk of Eldin, author of the “Naval Tactics,” a cadet of the family. -Also that the _grisaille_ painting on the lower side of the roof of -the raised portico was executed—so James Jackson’s “Account of the -Parish of Penicuik” informs us—by Alexander Runciman, when he was -an apprentice with John Norie, the well-known decorative painter and -landscapist of Edinburgh, and that it was the ability displayed in -this work that induced Sir James to assist in sending the youth for -four or five years to Rome, whence he returned to execute the mural -paintings of the St. Margaret Staircase and the Ossian Hall of Penicuik -House. The motto, from Cicero’s _De Officiis_ with which the portal is -inscribed, was chosen by the Earl of Perth, grandson of John Drummond, -the attainted Earl of Melfort, a close friend of Sir James’s; and a -letter regarding it may be transcribed, as a quaint example of the -stately epistles of our ancestors. - - “SIR,—Upon considering the manner of your House of Pennicueik, - where I had the pleasure of beeing some days in November last, - and admiring the Architecture of it, after 40 years ponderating - (_sic_) in my mind a Precept of Cicero’s, - - _Non Domo Dominus, sed Domino Domus honestanda est,_ - - found for the first time that it was obtemperate, and should - wish for leave to inscribe it on Pennicueik House as the real - sentiment of - - Your most obedient - Servant and Cousin - PERTH. - - “_LUNDIN HOUSE, Ap. 22, 1771._” - - -III. - -In the Entrance Hall various antiquarian and artistic treasures -decorate the walls or are preserved in glass cases,—the colours of -the local volunteer regiment that was raised at the time of the French -Invasion scare, full-sized marble copies of various antique statues, -excellent old china, several fine missals, the fan and necklace of -Mary Queen of Scots, said to have come into the Clerk family from Mary -Gray, wife of the first John Clerk of Penicuik, through her mother, -Mary Gillies, to whom it was given before the execution at Fotheringay, -and the gold snuff-box presented by the Scottish Widows’ Fund to Lord -Eldin, in 1825, in recognition of his services at the time of the -foundation of the company. - - -IV. - -Turning to the right from the Hall we enter the Dining-room, where -the most important of the portraits are hung. But here the places of -honour on the walls, above the fireplaces and fronting the long line of -windows which light the apartment, are occupied by no family portraits, -by no effigies of distinguished heads of the house. Even the portrait -of the second Baronet, the potent Baron of Exchequer himself, even the -great Raeburn group of the fifth Baronet and his comely wife, Mary -Dacre, have been waived to less important positions; and the pictures -which hold the chief places represent a poet and a painter who were -loved and honoured by this family of Penicuik. - -Over the fireplace to the right is an excellent portrait, by William -Aikman, of Allan Ramsay the elder, a man who, though his verses may -seem a little artificial and a little dull to the readers of our own -day, is worthy of all honour, not only for having aided in turning -Scottish poetry into a freer and more natural channel, but also for -having established a theatre and the first circulating library in -Edinburgh, and so distinctly served the cause of culture in Scotland. -He was the sworn friend of the house of Penicuik, the chosen associate -of the second Baronet, and of his son, afterwards Sir James, whom he -addresses in that homely and vigorous “Epistle,” beginning— - - “Blythe may he be who o’er the haugh, - All free from care, may sing and laugh,” - -which is dated “Pennycuick, May 9, 1755.” - -The present picture, very similar to that which was excellently -mezzotinted by George White, shows the poet nearly to the waist, clad -in a brown coat, the shirt open at the throat and without a cravat. No -wig is worn, but the head is wound round tightly, cap-fashion, with -a low-toned orange handkerchief, beneath which appears the bright, -alert, intelligent face, with its bushy eyebrows and very black eyes, -its wide-nostrilled, humorous, slightly _retroussé_ nose, and its -large-lipped mouth, full and rippling over with good-nature and -sensitiveness. We are enabled to fix the exact date of the picture by -means of the following interesting inscription on the back, in the -autograph of Sir John, the second Baronet:— - - -“A Roundlet in Mr. Ramsay’s own Way. - - Here painted on this canvass clout, - By Aikman’s hand is Ramsay’s snout, - The picture’s value none might doubt, - For ten to one I’ll venture, - The greatest criticks could not tell - Which of the two does most excell, - Or in his way should bear the bell, - The Poet or the Painter. - - J. C. Pennicuik, 5 May 1723.” - -The picture accordingly represents the poet in his thirty-seventh -year, and was painted when the artist was about to leave Scotland to -settle in London, an occasion on which Ramsay inscribed to him his -“Pastoral Farewell,”—not his only poetical tribute to his friend, -for previously, in 1721, he had penned another “Epistle,” in which he -thanks the portraitist because - - “By your assistance unconstrain’d, - To courts I can repair, - And by your art my way I’ve gained - To closets of the fair.” - -There are many other portraits which enable us to gather what was the -personal appearance of the author of “The Gentle Shepherd.” There is -the print in which the poet appears in all the bright bravery of youth, -clad in a kind of fanciful Scottish costume,—a coat slashed at the -sleeves, a plaid laid over his right shoulder, a broad Highland bonnet, -with a St. Andrew badge, set on the head. This is the frontispiece to -the first quarto edition of his works, published by Ruddiman in 1721: -it is engraved by T. Vereruysse, and bears the initials J. S. P., -which, as we learn from the engraving by Vertue, evidently from the -same picture, in Ramsay’s “Poems and Songs,” 1728, stands for “John -Smibert, Pinxit.” This painter, born in Edinburgh in 1684, was a friend -and correspondent of Ramsay’s, and it was to him, while studying art in -Italy, that the poet addressed that “Epistle to a Friend in Florence” -which is included in his works. He accompanied Bishop Berkeley to Rhode -Island in 1727, and afterwards settled in Boston, where he resided till -his death in 1751. In Britain his works are scarce, but a portrait of -Berkeley by his hand is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and -there is at Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, along with minor examples of his -art, an important group of Lord Cullen and his family, including twelve -life-sized figures, which he painted in 1720. Smibert is believed to -have executed a second portrait of Allan Ramsay, that kit-cat likeness -with the head turned nearly in profile to the left, which formed -the frontispiece to “The Gentle Shepherd, with Illustrations of the -Scenery,” Edinburgh 1814, engraved by A. Wilson, from a drawing made -by A. Carse from the picture (now at New Hall, Mid-Lothian), which -had belonged to the poet himself, and afterwards to Janet Ramsay, a -daughter who survived him. - -Again there is a singularly heavy-looking and spiritless portrait -engraved in the second volume of Ruddiman’s 1728 edition of Ramsay’s -works, marked as by Strange’s master, “R. Cooper, ad vivum sculpsit, -Edin^r,” showing the figure to the waist, the right hand holding a -volume of the Poems; and the smaller print, without name of painter or -engraver, which seems to be an improved adaptation of this portrait, -the face become refined and delicate, a fitting face for a poet. - -There is, further, that interesting and characteristic chalk drawing, -by the poet’s artist son, preserved at Woodhouselee, and inscribed -“His first attempt of that kind from the life ... 1729,” done -when the youth—who in the words of his father in a letter to the -above-mentioned Smibert, had “been pursuing his science since he was -a dozen years auld”—was just sixteen, seven years before he started -for Italy, to study art in Rome; and there is a print in which the -same portrait is treated as a bust on a pedestal, drawn by the younger -Ramsay and engraved by Cooper. There is also the well-known portrait, -done by the same filial hand, that was engraved by David Allan in -the 1788 quarto edition of “The Gentle Shepherd,” a bust likeness, -with the strong-featured, firmly modelled face turned in profile to -the right, appearing from behind a parapet on which lie the various -symbols of the pastoral muse, a mask, a staff, a crook, and a rustic -pipe. In interest, however, and in all life-like qualities, the picture -at Penicuik is fully equal to the best of those we have named as -portraying the shrewd and cheerful countenance of the homely poet. - -The portrait which hangs to the left, over the other fireplace of the -Penicuik Dining-room is also by Aikman, and its subject is the painter -himself. Here again an additional interest is given to the picture, in -this case a most pathetic interest, by its inscription. On its back -is a note, also in the hand of the second Baronet of Penicuik, the -painter’s cousin:—“Mr. Aikman, painted by himself when dying, and left -as a legacy to me, J. C., anno 1733.” - -This artist was born in 1682, the son of William Aikman of Cairnie, -Forfarshire, by his second wife, Margaret, sister of the first Sir -John Clerk. In his youth he was possessed, as Douglas of the Baronage -says, with even more than his customary solemnity, of a “mighty genius -for portrait-painting.” His father, like so many of the Scottish -gentry, was a member of the Scottish Bar, and desired that his son -should enter upon the studies that would qualify him for the same -profession—studies which would reasonably occupy his time, put him -in the way of intellectual effort, and give him enough law to enable -him to manage his estates profitably, and to sit with dignity and -propriety upon the bench of county magistrates. But the parental wishes -were in vain; the “mighty genius for portrait-painting” was not to be -controlled. Aikman studied art for three years in Edinburgh, under Sir -John de Medina, of whose portraiture there is a representative series -in Penicuik House; and, when he came into possession of his ancestral -acres, which were valuable then, and have become doubly valuable since, -he promptly parted with them, sold all that he had for the sake of -art; and having rid himself of the burden of ponderable and engrossing -material things, started a free man to study painting in Rome. During -the five years that he spent abroad he even visited Constantinople and -Smyrna, a “far cry” indeed for a Scottish laird of the beginning of the -seventeenth century. Returning to his native country in 1712, he was -in time patronised by John, Duke of Argyll, and in 1723 he established -himself in London, where he moved in the best and most cultured -circles, numbering among his friends Sir Robert Walpole, Pope, Swift, -Arbuthnot, and Gay, several of whom still live upon his canvases. -At the age of forty-nine he was prosperous and happy, in excellent -practice as a portrait-painter, busied upon a great group of the -Royal Family, commissioned by the Earl of Burlington, and now in the -possession of the Duke of Devonshire. But this work was destined never -to be completed. His only son, one of those “bonnie bairns” to whom -Allan Ramsay refers in his “Pastoral Farewell to Mr. Aikman,” a youth -of great artistic promise—several etched studies after Van Dyck by his -hand still exist to prove his talent[1]—sickened and died at the age -of eighteen, and the father never recovered the blow. He pined away, -died six months afterwards, 1731, and was buried in the same grave -in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, Edinburgh. Mallet wrote his epitaph; -Ramsay, Thomson, and Somerville have recorded his virtues and the charm -of his presence. - - [1] A three-quarters length portrait of the younger Aikman, - with a grave earnest face, clad in a long-skirted grey coat, - and holding a sketch in his hand, is in the possession of the - representative of the family at The Ross, Hamilton. It is an - excellent example of the elder Aikman’s portraiture. - -At Penicuik we are enabled to trace the development of Aikman’s art -from first to final phase. His portrait of “Dame Christina Kilpatrick,” -second wife of the first Baronet, is marked on the back by the -painter’s cousin, “painted 1706 by Mr. Aikman when he was learning to -paint, but very like.” The portrait of the second Baronet himself, -similarly inscribed, “painted by Mr. Aikman, about the year 1706, when -he was beginning to paint,” is identical in style with the work of his -master Medina. In the Red Bedroom are hung his school copies after -classical subjects by Maratti, done at Rome; and we have seen that the -portrait of himself was one of the very last canvases that his brush -touched. - -This portrait of Aikman showing the figure nearly to the waist within -a painted oval, is practically identical with that in the National -Gallery of Scotland, formerly in the possession of Mrs. Forbes, the -artist’s eldest daughter, and engraved in “The Bee,” vol. xviii. 1793. -The only difference is that here the draperies consist of a coat and -vest of a cool yellowish-brown velvet, passing into definite yellow in -the high lights, while in the National Gallery version a golden-brown -gown and a flowered vest of the same colour is substituted. The -well-balanced, handsome, oval face, with its ripe mouth, rippling in -its lines and dimpled at the corners, fine dark-blue eyes, and rounded, -slightly cleft chin, is turned in three-quarters towards the right, and -surmounted by a voluminous powdered wig. Another portrait of Aikman -by himself is preserved at Florence in the Painters’ Gallery of the -Uffizi. Here the pose of the figure is similar to that in the two other -pictures; but the coat is of crimson, the lower part of the body is -wrapped in a dark mantle, and no wig is worn, its place being taken by -a white handkerchief which is wound round the head. Among the portraits -of Aikman at The Ross is another from his own hand, showing him as he -appeared on his travels, bearded, and wearing a turban and a ruddy -Eastern gown. - -We may now turn to the family portraits with which the walls of the -Dining-room are covered. The earliest of them is a portrait of John -Clerk, father of the first Baronet, and the founder of the family, -known for centuries in the familiar traditions of the Penicuik nursery -under the playful title of “Musso,” from his prolonged residence in -France. He was born in 1610, the son of a merchant-burgess of Montrose, -and baptized at Fettercairn by the Bishop of Caithness, on the 22d -December of that year. Bred a merchant, he settled in Paris in 1634, -where he acquired “a fortune of at least £10,000,” as his grandson -informs us. In 1647 he returned to Scotland, married, acquired the -lands of Penicuik and of Wrightshouses, near Edinburgh, and died in -1674, at the age of sixty-three. - -His portrait, which hangs in the Dining-room, is not a contemporary -work, but a copy executed by Aikman—to range with the other family -pictures—from a miniature, done in Paris by an unknown painter, and -still preserved in the Charter-room. This original, inscribed on its -gold case “John Clerk of Pennicuik, 1644,” is a bust portrait painted -in oils on a small oval slab of bloodstone, the polished green surface -of which, with its red markings, serves for background. The face shows -a delicate, prominently aquiline nose, a forehead broad rather than -high, sharply pencilled black eyebrows above the dark blue eyes, a -full, brightly red lower lip, a small moustache of darkest brown, -turned up at the ends, and a tiny tuft on the chin. The bust is clad in -that pseudo-Roman costume so much affected in the portraiture of the -period, similar to that in which Charles II. appears in the equestrian -statue in the Parliament Square, Edinburgh, and very closely resembling -the dress worn by George Lauder, author of “The Scottish Souldier,” in -the scarce portrait engraved by J. Hermanni after J. Reyners. The tunic -is of a bright blue colour, cut square at the neck, and edged with -gold lace, decorated on the breast and shoulders with gold ornaments -worked into the shape of satyr and lion heads, and a bright red mantle -falls in graceful folds on either side. The little picture is of -excellent workmanship and is delicately finished, much of its precision -of detail having been lost in Aikman’s not very refined life-sized copy. - -Above the fireplace in the Drawing-room is another portrait of this -same John Clerk, a large, dark, gallery full-length, stated to have -been executed, like the miniature, in Paris. Here the founder of the -family is depicted standing, in a black dress, his right hand resting -on the stone ball which surmounts and decorates the parapet of garden -walk, his left hand sustaining his sword. The countenance is manifestly -the same as that in the miniature. This picture is stated by family -tradition to have been painted by “De Wit,” a portrait-painter we have -not as yet been able to identify. It bears no resemblance in style to -the portraits executed by James de Witt at Holyrood in 1684-5, and at -Glamis Castle in 1686-8; and it could hardly have been the same artist -who was working at Paris before the year 1647. Nor, of course, is it by -Jacob de Wit, the painter of a subject in the Library to be afterwards -described, who was not born till 1695. - -The portrait of the wife of John Clerk, Mary, daughter of Sir William -Gray of Pittendrum, is also a copy, and of this a delicate and spirited -contemporary miniature is preserved at Penicuik. It was executed about -the end of the last century by Miss Ann Forbes, a grand-daughter -of William Aikman’s, and consequently a connection of the Clerks, -whose work, chiefly in crayons, though this is an oil picture, is -to be found in many Scottish houses, as, for instance, at The Ross, -Hamilton, the seat of the present head of Aikman’s family. A few other -examples of her brush are preserved in the present collection; and -her own portrait, painted by David Allan, a carefully handled cabinet -picture, very clear and silvery in tone, showing her standing in -three-quarters length, holding a portcrayon and a portfolio, is in the -Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The portrait of Mrs. Mary Clerk, -like that of her husband, shows the figure to the waist; the face is in -three-quarters to the right. She has light hazel eyes, neutral brown -eyebrows and hair, the latter elaborately curled, fastened with bows -of black ribbon, and decorated in front with a small plume of white -ostrich feathers, and she wears pearl ear-rings and a double string of -large pearls round the neck. The costume is a black flowered dress, -worn low at the breast, with a tall white lace collar standing up -behind the neck. - - -V. - -We come now to examine the portraits of Sir John Clerk, the first -Baronet of Penicuik, who was born in 1649; served repeatedly in -Parliament, after the Revolution of 1688, as member for the county of -Edinburgh; was Lieutenant-Colonel of a regiment commanded by the Earl -of Lauderdale; was created a Baronet by Charles II. in 1679; acquired -the lands of Lasswade in 1700; and died in 1722. He is described by his -son as “one of the strongest men of his time, but not full in stature, -being scarce 5 feet 6 inches,” “finely made, had proportionate breadth, -and a Hercules shoulders,” “a man of knowledge and application,” “a -pretty good scholar, and exceedingly knowing in Divinity.” - -No fewer than five portraits—pictures and miniatures—at Penicuik -are stated to represent this first Baronet. The earliest is that -preserved in the glass case beside the entrance to the Library. It is -a miniature, executed on paper with the brush and Indian ink, showing -a small head, turned in three-quarters to the left, and garnished with -a long wig. On the back is inscribed, in the handwriting of the Chief -Baron, the first Baronet’s son, “Sir John Clerk then in those days -in London a counselar at Law great wigs were in fashion 1689.” In -the same case is a second miniature of similar general character, but -drawn upon vellum, accompanied by a companion miniature of the first -Baronet’s second wife, Christian, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Kilpatrick. -Another portrait of this lady, an oil-portrait, showing the figure to -the waist, is in the Dining-room. Here she wears a claret-coloured -dress and an amber-brown mantle. The hair is yellowish brown, the -eyes of a dark rich brown, and the face, which is a little out of -drawing, though curiously individual and life-like, has peculiarly -raised eyebrows. This work is inscribed in the handwriting of her -son-in-law—“Dame Christian Kilpatrick, my father’s second wife, -painted 1706 by Mr. Aikman, when he was learning to paint, but very -like”—an early example of the artist, done when he was studying under -Medina, the year before he left for Italy. - -In the Dining-room are three other works, all life-sized oil-portraits, -stated to be likenesses of the first Baronet. One of them, showing Sir -John clad in a brown gown lined with red, is manifestly a companion -portrait done at the same time as the last-named portrait of his wife. -It also bears a similar note by the Baron—“My father Sir John Clerk, -painted by Mr. Aikman about the year 1706, when he was beginning to -paint.” In its style of handling, as well as in its combinations of -colour, it recalls most strongly the works of Sir John Medina, its -painter’s master. - -A second portrait is also by Aikman, a later and more accomplished -work. Here the figure is seen nearly to the waist, turned to the right, -with the face slightly in the same direction. A curled wig is worn, and -a single-breasted coat of pale blue velvet. The eyes are of a clear -blue colour; and the face is of that firm, powerful, large-featured -type which for generations was habitual in the house of Penicuik. This -picture, again, is inscribed in the son’s handwriting—“Sir John Clerk -of Pennicuik, my Father, painted by Mr. Aikman. He was born in April -1649, and died in March 1722, aged 73.” - -Very considerable difficulty attaches to the remaining portrait, -which is believed to represent the first Sir John Clerk, and to the -manifestly companion portrait beside it, which has been held to portray -his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Henderson of Elvington, -and grand-daughter of William Drummond of Hawthornden, a poet “of an -excellent Fancy for the times he lived in,” as the Baron remarks, -rather patronisingly, in the family history with which he begins his -account of his own life. - -It has been stated (Catalogue of National Gallery of Scotland, 1887) -that these portraits “are dated 1674.” This, however, is inaccurate, -as no inscription appears upon either work. It has also been asserted -(Catalogue of Royal Scottish Academy Loan Exhibition of 1863) that “the -original Scougal accounts for the price paid for them” are preserved -at Penicuik; but a search which we have made through the old receipts -of the period has failed to disclose such a document. Probably this -second reference is not to the painter’s receipt, but simply to an -entry of the payment which is to be found in an interesting old -account-book preserved in the Charter-room at Penicuik, one of that -“great many journals and writings” which the Chief Baron records that -his father left “under his hand, which will, I hope, bear testimony -to the regard he always had for virtue and Honesty.” This volume the -Chief Baron—partly in filial piety, more perhaps with the instinct -of the accurate and omnivorous antiquary—has docketed as follows: -“Book of Accompts by my Grandfather Mr. Jo. Clerk, and Father Sir John -Clerk, Whereon are several things remarkable. 1º, their methodes of -accompting. 2º, their methodes of management. 3º, the different -prices of things. John Clerk, 1733.” Here on a page _headed June 1674_, -but under date of “Nov^r 1675,” the following entry appears—“To John -Scougall for 2 pictures £36”; and it is curious, as illustrating “the -different prices of things,” and also as showing how a love of all the -various fine arts prevailed then among the Clerks, as it has prevailed -among them ever since, to note another entry, which appears a few lines -beneath: “To Mr. Chambers for Teaching G. and me to play y^e violl -£150,” both sums being in Scots currency. - -There can be no doubt that the portraits above referred to are the “2 -pictures” by Scougall mentioned in the account-book, for a comparison -with other works by that painter proves them to be excellent and most -typical examples of his brush, and there are no other pictures in the -house painted in a style recalling that artist, except the portrait of -Lord Justice-Clerk Sir Archibald Primrose, which will be afterwards -referred to. It has been assumed, but on less sufficient evidence, that -they represent the first Sir John Clerk (by whom they were certainly -commissioned) and his first wife, and that they were painted to -celebrate the wedding of the pair, which occurred in 1674. It is to -be noted, however, that the account-book gives no information as to -who the personages are that appear in the pictures; that there is no -contemporary inscriptions on the works themselves to prove that it is -the first Baronet and his wife that are portrayed and not merely two -of their friends; that in the male portrait the face is delicate in -its curves and contours, with a long thin nose, drooping at the point, -quite unlike the countenance which appears in the pictures certified in -the handwriting of the son as representing the first Baronet; and that -the present picture seems to portray a man of more than twenty-five or -twenty-six, the age of the first Sir John when the work was executed. - -But, whomever they portray, the pictures are excellent and interesting -examples of a little-known Scottish artist, by far the finest works -by John Scougall with which we are acquainted; and they afford -most interesting representations of the costume of the end of the -seventeenth century. - -Each of them shows its subject to the waist. The male figure is turned -to the right, clad in a black doublet, with richly wrought silver -buttons, partly open in front and disclosing the shirt, which also -appears at the arms, beneath the short sleeves of the coat; and the -short embroidered cravat is drawn through a loop and spread out, in -fan-like folds, on either side. The thin, nervous-looking face wears -a very peculiar expression; the eyes dark blue, the long yellowish -hair curling down to the shoulders: it is a face eminently individual, -utterly unforgetable. - -The lady’s portrait is even a more beautiful and fascinating old -picture. Here the figure is turned to the left; the face, seen in -three-quarters, is rather pallid in its flesh-tints, as was usual with -the painter, a characteristic which appears also in the male portrait. -The eyes are of a neutral grey-blue; the yellow-brown hair is worn flat -on the top, and bound with a string of pearls, from beneath which it -flows in carefully arranged ringlets. The dress, of plain white satin, -with voluminous sleeves, is cleverly handled and excellently expressive -of the texture and sheen of the material; and a brooch of pearls and -dark stones is set at the breast, clasping a scarf of faint blending -blue and yellow tints, which floats over the lady’s right shoulder, and -flows freely behind. - -Of James Clerk of Wrightshouses, the second son of the first John Clerk -of Penicuik, and brother of the first Baronet, we have an imposing -three-quarters length painted by Sir Peter Lely. He appears standing, -robed in a rich crimson gown, which shows its orange-tinted lining, -with an elaborate lace cravat, and ruffles appearing at the hands, one -of which is laid gracefully against his side, while his right arm rests -on a stone parapet to the left. The face is of a man of between thirty -and forty, with handsome regular features and the rounded, oval cheeks -and small, ripe, red-lipped mouth which the painter loved to depict, -and with much individuality and character in the firm clear-cut line of -the nose. A dark curtain appears behind the figure, and a low-toned, -wintry-looking distance of landscape. - -The companion picture of Mary Ricard, “a French lady,” wife of -James Clerk of Wrightshouses, also shows the figure standing and in -three-quarters length. She is clad in a low-breasted, short-sleeved -dress, richly brocaded with crimson, yellow, and green flowers, and -with a simple string of large pearls round the neck. She has brown -eyes, light brown eyebrows, moderately arched, and dark brown curling -hair, one curl lying isolated on her white shoulder. She is arranging -flowers in a yellow brown pot decorated with Cupids’ heads, which -stands on a table to the left, and behind the figure is a wall with a -pilaster, a red curtain, and a glimpse of landscape with blue mountain -peaks, which may very well be the southern slope of the familiar -Pentlands as seen from Penicuik House. - - -VI. - -Of the first Baronet’s eldest son, Sir John Clerk, second Baronet, and -one of the Barons of Exchequer, several portraits are preserved at -Penicuik; but even a more complete picture of this stout old gentleman, -perhaps the most potent and memorable figure that appears in this -family history, may be gathered from the voluminous diaries in his -hand that are preserved in the Charter-room, and from that “History of -my Life,” which he himself compiled from these, and which the present -Baronet has placed at the disposal of the Scottish History Society for -publication; a manuscript affording a clear narrative of the events of -the Baron’s life, and throwing curious and valuable side-lights upon -the manners and public occurrences of the time, while, in almost every -line of its pages, it gives a vivid, if unconscious, picture of the -quaint, masterful personality of its writer. - -He was born, as he tells us, on the 8th of February 1676—not in -1684, as stated by his biographers; studied at Penicuik School and -Glasgow University; and, at the age of nineteen, went to Leyden to -be instructed in law by “a very learned man, Philippus Bernardus -Vitrianus.” Here he boarded with a German who taught mathematics, -philosophy, and music, and he applied himself to all of these studies -as well as to law, having previously, as he remarks with proper pride, -“played tolerably on the harpsicord, and since I was 7 I touched the -violin a little.” Nor do these exhaust the list of his pursuits, for -“among other things I learned to draw from Francis Miers, a very great -painter; this proceeded partly from inclination, and partly from the -advice I had from some of my Dutch friends, for all their young Folks -learn to draw from their being 7 years of Age, and find it vastly -useful in most Stations of Life.” His great friend at Leyden was Herman -Boerhaave, then a man of twenty-six, afterwards world-famous as a -physician, and he gives a curious account of his being treated by the -young doctor with a “chymecal medicine he had discovered which would -carry off the smallpox before they came any length,” and which was -successful at the time, though the malady returned in full force three -months afterwards, when Clerk had gone to Rome. “We not only lived like -brothers while I studied in Leyden, but continued a correspondence -together while he lived”; and forty-four years afterwards Boerhaave -bequeathed to the Baron a collection of his books, which still forms -part of the Library at Penicuik House. - -After leaving Leyden Clerk visited Germany, Italy, France, and -Flanders, and the two large MS. volumes of his “Travels” during this -period—not only descriptive of the various places that he saw, and -very particularly of the antiquities of Rome, but also giving an -account of the laws manners, and customs of the several countries that -he visited—prove how diligent and observant the youth had been during -the whole time. At the end of these volumes he sums up the results of -his residence abroad, as follows:— - -“_N.B._—My improvements abroad were these: - -“I had studied the civil Law for three Winters at Leyden, and did not -neglect it at home, by which means I passed Advocate, by a privat and -publick examination some months after my return, with great ease and -some credite. - -“I spoke French and Italian very well, but particularly Dutch, -having come very young into Holland, and kept more in the Company of -Hollanders than those of my own country. - -“I had applied much to classical learning, and had more than ordinary -inclination for Greek and Roman Antiquities. - -“I understood pictures better than became my Purse, and as to Musick -I ... performed better, especially on the Herpsicord, than became a -gentleman. - -“This, to the best of my knowledge, is a faithful account of myself.” - -The volumes are illustrated with over fifty drawings of the landscapes, -buildings, statues, etc., which he had seen during his travels, “a few -of many hundreds executed while I was abroad.” - -In 1702 he was elected member for Whithorn in Galloway, which he -represented till 1707; and his “History” contains curious particulars -of the last sittings of the Scottish Parliament, and personal -references to the prominent political figures of the period,—to the -Duke of Queensberry, the Duke of Argyll, the Marquis of Tweeddale, the -Earl of Stair, Robert Dundas, second Lord Arniston, and Fletcher of -Salton—“a man of republican principles,” “a little untoward in temper, -and much inclined to Eloquence.” In 1706-7, through the influence of -the Duke of Queensberry, his first wife’s cousin, and the Duke of -Argyll, he was appointed a Commissioner for the Union; and in the -following year he became one of the Barons of the newly constituted -Court of Exchequer in Scotland. - -From this period till his death on the 4th of October 1755, his life -was occupied with his official duties; with planting and improving -his various estates; with the classical studies to which he continued -faithful all his days; with the composition of various learned -pamphlets, several of which have been published—his “Historical -View of the Forms and Powers of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland,” -written in conjunction with Baron Scrope, having been edited by Sir -Henry Jardine in 1820; in the enjoyment of the society of his friend -Allan Ramsay, the poet; and in correspondence with Roger Gale, and -with Alexander Gordon, in the subscription list of whose “Itinerarium -Septentrionale” he is entered for “five books,” in company with such -well-known names as “Mr. Adams, Architect”; “The Right Hon. Duncan -Forbes, Lord Advocate of Scotland”; “James Gibbs, Esq., Architect”; -“The Right Hon. The Lord Lovat”; “Richard Mead, M.D.”; “The Hon. Sir -Hans Sloane, Bart.”; and “Mr. John Smibert,” the portrait-painter. -Gordon styles him “not only a treasure of learning and good taste, but -now one of its chief supports in that country,” and pronounces that -“among all the collections of Roman antiquities in Scotland, that of -Baron Clerk claims the preference, both as to number and curiosity.” -It was one of the Baron’s antiquarian experiences at a supposed Roman -camp on his property of Dumcrieff, in Dumfriesshire, which, narrated -to Scott by his son, John Clerk of Eldin, suggested the episode of the -“Prætorium” in “The Antiquary.” - -Occasionally across the quiet and characteristic pages that narrate -his daily doings there falls the shadow of larger national events: of -the Rebellion of 1715,—“The Earl of Mar was not only my acquaintance -but my particular friend”; of the South Sea Scheme, in connection with -which Clerk held stock, and was a consequent sufferer; and of the -Rebellion of 1745, when the Highlanders in occupation of Edinburgh -visited Penicuik House, demanding food and drink. - -As a poet—or, at least, a rhymester—the Baron is known by the really -vigorous verses which he added to the single surviving stanza of the -old Scotch song - - “O merry may the maid be - That marries the miller,” - -which will be found in Johnston’s “Musical Museum,” but were first -published anonymously, in 1751, in “The Charmer”; and by the lines -beginning - - “Harmonious pipe, how I envye thy bliss - When pressed to Sylphia’s lips with gentle kiss,” - -which he sent, screwed up in a flute to Susanna Kennedy, afterwards the -celebrated Countess of Eglintoune, to whom Allan Ramsay dedicated his -“Gentle Shepherd,” and of whom Clerk was a lover in his youth, at the -time when, as he tells us, he suffered from his father’s “attempts” to -find him a wife, and especially to wed him to a lady—whose name he -honourably suppresses—“not to my taste, and indeed it was happy for me -to have stopt short in this amour, for she proved the most disagreeable -woman I ever knew, tho’ otherways a wise enough country woman.” There -also exist in MS. “Some Poetical Ejeculations on the Death of my dear -wife, Lady Margaret Stuart,” that “choice of my own,” who became his -first wife, “a very handsome woman, for the most part bred up in -Galloway, a stranger to the follies of Edinburgh,” “the best Woman that -ever breathed Life.” - -The earliest of the portraits of the Baron preserved at Penicuik House -hangs in the dressing-room of the present Baronet. It is a small, -carefully finished pencil-drawing; an interesting memorial of Sir -John’s student days at Leyden. The figure is portrayed to the waist, -clad in a loose gown, and with a voluminous cravat wrapped round the -neck. The hands are not shown. The hair is long and curling. The face -full, beardless, and youthful, set in three-quarters to the right, -is modelled with excellent thoroughness, and very crisp and incisive -in the touches that express the lips and the dimple at the corner -of the mouth. The background is dark to the left, and to the right -appears a wall decorated with pilasters. The drawing is inscribed on -the background “Ætatis 19,” and beneath “My picture done at Leyden, -Jo. Clerk”; while on the back is written “My picture done at Leyden by -Francis Miris,” the two latter inscriptions being in the handwriting of -the Baron himself. - -A comparison of the dates leads to some dubiety as to who was the -actual draughtsman of this portrait. There were three well-known Dutch -painters of the name of Mieris—Frans Van Mieris, the pupil of Gerard -Dow, born at Delft in 1635, died at Leyden 1681; Willem Van Mieris, his -son, born at Leyden 1662, and died there, 1747; and his son, Frans Van -Mieris, the younger, born at Leyden 1689, died there in 1763. The year -in which the drawing was executed must have been 1695, consequently it -cannot be the work of the elder Frans; nor can it have been done by -his grandson, the younger Frans, who was then only six years of age. -A solution of the difficulty seems to be afforded by a comparison of -the “Travels” and the “History” of the Baron. In the former, a journal -written at the time, he states that he was instructed in art at Leyden, -by “Miris,” but in the latter, compiled from the former many years -afterwards, he states that “Francis Miers, a very great painter,” -was his teacher, the Christian name being apparently added from -memory, which, in the present case, seems to have played him false. -There can be little doubt that the portrait was drawn by Willem Van -Mieris, who at the time of Clerk’s residence at Leyden was forty-one -years of age, and in full practice as an artist. As corroborating -this supposition, we may notice that in the account of the Clerks of -Penicuik contributed by Miss Isabella Clerk to the “Life of Professor -James Clerk Maxwell,” and “chiefly derived from a book of autograph -letters which was long kept at Glenlair, and is now in the possession -of Mrs. Maxwell,” it is stated that the Baron was a pupil of _William_ -Mieris in drawing; and further, that a drawing of two men’s heads -similar in style to the present portrait, preserved in the Penicuik -Drawing-room, is inscribed in the Baron’s hand, “Originall by William -Van Miris, 1696,” indicating that about the date he must have been in -communication with this artist. - -Three oil portraits, showing the Baron in later life, hang in the -Dining-room. In the first, by Sir John Medina, he appears still as -a young man, seen to the waist, clad in a bright blue coat and a -crimson cloak—a combination of primary colours in which the painter -frequently indulged. His right hand is laid on a book, which rests on -an unseen table in front to the right. He wears a long yellowish wig, -with powdered curls, and the blue eyes and the alert mouth are full -of activity and energy. Probably this portrait was executed at the -time of his marriage, in 1700, for there is a companion picture of his -first wife, Margaret Stewart, daughter of the third Earl of Galloway, -and grand-daughter of James, Earl of Queensberry, painted by Aikman. -As was to be expected in so early a work of the artist’s—he must have -been under twenty when he painted it, for the lady died in 1701—this -latter is full of faults, stiff in pose, with little suggestion of the -figure under the draperies of white and blue: still it conveys the idea -of a charming and attractive personality, fitting as that of the lady -for whom the Baron—as shown in the “History of his Life,”—mourned so -truly. - -There is a second bust-portrait of the Baron by Sir John Medina, a -low-toned picture, executed with care if with considerable hardness. -Here the costume is a lilac gown, with a long curled wig, and a -white cravat; the body seen turned to the right, and the face in -three-quarters to the left. - -The finest, however, of the portraits of the second Baronet, is -the three-quarters length by his cousin, William Aikman. Here he -appears robed in his black gown as Baron of the Exchequer, worn over -a yellow-brown coat. Long white hanging bands appear at the breast, -and lace ruffles at the wrists; and the grave face, with its strongly -marked features, is surmounted by a long curled wig. His left hand -hangs down in front fingering among the folds of his gown, and the -right rests upon a red-covered table. The whole is relieved against a -plain brown background, with a low-toned space of crimson curtain to -the left. It is an excellent example by the painter, well arranged, -dignified, firmly handled, and manifestly faithful to the personality -portrayed. A bust-portrait similar in costume and wig to this one, but -with some difference in the features, was engraved, in line, by D. -Lizars, “from a portrait in the possession of John Clerk of Eldin, Esq.” - -Of Sir James, the third Baronet, the architect of the present house of -Penicuik, we, unfortunately find no adequate portrait. The only effigy -of him that is here preserved is a small silhouette in white paper, -relieved against a black background, marked as cut two years after his -death by Barbara Clerk, his fifth sister, and as being considered very -like by those who knew him. It shows a small face, looking a little -downwards, with a high forehead, beneath the wig, impending over the -delicate features. (_See_ Note at page 69.) - -In the Dining-room there hangs another picture by Aikman, marked in the -Baron’s writing, “My eldest son, John Clerk, by Lady Margaret Stuart, -born 1701, died 1722, painted by Mr. Aikman.” The figure is seen nearly -to the waist; the costume, a long curled grey wig, and a lilac-grey -gown, lined with blue. The small eyes are of a blue colour; the face -pale, refined, and delicate-looking. This was “the most accomplish’d -Son,” of “bright aspiring mind,” whose birth cost the life of the -Baron’s first wife, and whose own death, some twenty-one years later, -was mourned by Ramsay in the verses addressed to the bereaved father, -which may be read in his works. On another wall hang three pictures, -portraying, in pairs, the Baron’s six daughters by his second wife. - -Near the portrait of his son is a half-length by Aikman, rather hard -in execution, showing a gentleman, with face turned to the left, in -a purple-grey coat, the end of his white cravat being thrust through -one of its button-holes. This is Dr. John Clerk, grandson of the first -Baronet of Penicuik, whose father, Robert Clerk, was a physician in -Edinburgh, and a close friend of Dr. Pitcairn. The son, born 1689, -died 1757, was a personage of greater mark. For above thirty years -he was the most eminent physician in Scotland; on the institution -of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1739, he was elected a -Vice-President, an office which he held till his death; and from 1740 -to 1744, he was President of the Royal College of Physicians, in whose -Hall in Edinburgh another smaller portrait of him is preserved. He -purchased the lands of Listonshiels and Spittal in Mid-Lothian, and -founded the family of the Clerks of Listonshiels. His name appears in -the list of subscribers to the collection of Ramsay’s poems, published -in 1721, and he is believed to have contributed songs to the “Tea-table -Miscellany.” The portrait of his second son, Colonel Robert Clerk, in a -red military uniform, is also preserved in the Penicuik Dining-room. - -Two other works by Aikman may here be mentioned, two drawings in red -chalk upon blue paper, which hang in a passage near the Library door. -They evince more of an ideal aim than any other of the productions of -this painter with which we are acquainted. Evidently they are companion -works, and the female portrait is dated 1730, the year before the -artist’s death. This shows a girl’s head in profile to the left, a -young attractive little face, with the faintest half-smile playing -round the tiny mouth, and the short hair decorated with a chaplet of -leaves, or of leaf-like ribbons. It is a portrait of Jean Clerk, the -Baron’s third daughter, who married James Smollet of Bonhill, one of -the Commissaries of Edinburgh. - -The other drawing shows a male face in three-quarters to the right, -with flowing hair over the shoulders, and a heroic expression on the -high-arched brows, the raised eyes, and the rippling lips; the dress -thrown carelessly open at the throat. This is Patrick Clerk, the -Baron’s third son. His life-record is a brief one, as given in the -Baronage along with that of three of his brothers: “Patrick, Henry, -Matthew, and Adam, died abroad, in the service of their country.” We -learn from the Baron’s MS. that he died at Carthagena in 1744. - - -VII. - -We now come to consider the prime artistic treasure in Penicuik -House, the largest and finest of the three Raeburns that hang in -the dining-room, that admirable group of Sir John Clerk, the fifth -Baronet, and his wife Rosemary (so she signed her name) Dacre. It is -an oblong picture, showing the two life-sized figures almost to the -knees, and turned towards our right. Nearly one-half of the picture, -that to the left, is occupied with a landscape of undulating country, -diversified by darker passages afforded by tree-masses, with flashes -of light playing over the grass in points where it is quickened by -the radiance of the setting sun, and with still sharper flashings -which mark the course of the “classic Esk.” To our extreme right an -elm-tree raises its great forked stem, and throws out a slenderer -branch, bearing embrowned leafage. This is carried over the upper edge -of the picture, across nearly its whole extent, repeating, by its mass -of dark against the sky, the arm of the male figure standing beneath, -which is extended, dark against the distant expanse of dimly-lighted -landscape background. The sky, against which the heads of the figures -are set, is filled with the soft mellow light of a sunset after rain, -struggling with films of fluctuating misty clouds,—a sky in the -treatment of which Raeburn has used a portrait-painter’s licence, -making it lower in tone than would have been the case in such a natural -effect. The figure furthest to our right is that of the lady, clad in -white muslin, a dress utterly without ornament, but “adorned the most” -in the absolute simplicity of its soft overlapping folds, delicate and -full of subtlest gradation as a pile of faintly yellow rose-leaves. The -waist is girt with a ribbon of a more definite yellow, though this too -is subdued, taking grey tones in shadow. The light comes from behind -the figures, and the edges of the dress, catching its brightness, are -the highest tones of the picture. The lady’s face is one of mature -comeliness and dignity, the hair brown and slightly powdered, the light -touching and outlining sharply the rounded contours of cheek and chin, -and the edge of the throat, which rises from the masses of pure soft -muslin—itself still purer and more delicate in tone and texture. Her -left hand hangs down by her side, fingering a little among the folds -of the dress and compressing its filmy fabric; and her right hand -rests on her companion’s left shoulder, its hand, an admirable piece -of draughtsmanship and foreshortening, hanging over, loose from the -wrist, which is circled by a sharply struck band of black ribbon. The -Baronet stands by her side, with his left arm—on whose shoulder the -lady’s hand rests—circling her waist, and his right relieved against -the background as it stretches across the canvas, pointing, over the -river, to the mansion of Penicuik,—which is manifestly visible to the -pair in the distance, though unseen to the spectator of the picture. He -wears a soft felt hat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned, and Quaker-like in -fashion, with an oval metal clasp set in front in its band. His coat -is low-toned greyish yellow in its lights, and low-toned olive green -in shadow, the vest and breeches showing a lighter tone of the same; -and a white cravat and ruffles appear at throat and wrists. His face -is a well-conditioned face of middle life, small-mouthed, with cheeks -plumply rounded, and a nose delicately aquiline. He stands, quietly -expectant, looking into the lady’s face, which is gazing right onward -into the background. - -There is in this group none of the strong, positive, insufficiently -gradated colour, which is sometimes rather distressing in Raeburn’s -work. It is far quieter and more delicate than is altogether usual in -his art, full of tenderness and subtlety; the faces exquisitely lit -by reflected light, their half-shadows softly luminous and delicate -exceedingly, never sinking with a crash into blackness and opacity. The -artist has seldom produced a finer or more artistic group, has seldom -given us a more fascinating portrayal of well-born manhood and of -female loveliness. - -It is not at all in originality of general conception that the -greatness of Raeburn’s portraiture usually lies, in the novel groupings -of its figures, or in any suggestion of story in their combinations. -Some other painters have contrived to throw a hint of narrative into -works which, in first and main aim, were mere likenesses; but Raeburn -was a portraitist in the strictest and most exclusive sense; and he -simply adopted the accepted poses of the figure that were current in -the Scottish portraiture of his day, though to these his original -genius gave a finer grace, catching from Nature an added ease. But -in the grouping of this picture, and in its lighting—so abnormal in -arrangement—we certainly have as definite a departure as could well -be imagined, from the stock traditions that have guided the art of -portraiture from time immemorial; and some other reason than a purely -technical one is suggested by the marked originality of the work, -in both conception and treatment. Was this strange and most unusual -distribution of light in the picture a mere artistic experiment in -chiaroscuro? Did the painter devote half of his canvas to an extended -landscape vista, merely in honour of the Baronet’s ancestral acres; and -was that pose of regardant countenance and interlacing arms selected -only because it made for a graceful flow of changeful line? Hardly was -all this the case, one fancies. - -May it not, then, be conceivable that when the portrait had been -commissioned, and while its details and way of treatment were being -discussed by the pair—painter and baronet—as they sat together, in -quiet after-dinner hour over their wine, in this very room where the -completed picture now holds its place,—is it not just conceivable that -Sir John, in some such time of genial heart-expansion, as he poised -his glass to catch the last warm gleam of summer evening light that -streamed across the darkening woods,—that the childless man, beginning -now to verge gently towards age, may have been stirred by ancient -memories, and have told the artist of some bygone scene to which these -ancestral woods were once the witness? Is it a walk of plighted lovers -that the painter hints at on his canvas, and has the bride just caught -first sight of her future home? Or, can the scene be one tenderer -still? The middle-aged lover looks—calmly, earnestly expectant, -waiting for an answer that will not come from the lady’s lips, that -will certainly not be given by their _words_—at the noble face of the -mature and stately beauty by his side, into her dear grey eyes that -never meet his, but gaze right on into the distance—into the future -is it? Has the painter then meant to show us one of those strenuous, -delicately-poised moments that come in mortal lives, when “words are -mere mistake,” when - - “A lip’s mere tremble, - Looks half hesitation, cheeks just change of colour,” - -at once crystallise intensest emotion and afford its fullest -expression, and sign and seal a human soul with final impress of -success or failure? Is—in briefest English—the man waiting for the -sign that will make him accepted or rejected lover? - -This portrait, the chief treasure of Penicuik House, would surely -possess enough of interest from the power of its artistry, and the -romantic associations with which our fancy may possibly invest it; but -its interest is deepened, and it gathers a yet more intimate charm when -we have heard the beautiful old-world story connected with the lady’s -birth. - -Of this curious episode there are varying versions extant, which -are given and fully discussed by Ellen K. Goodwin, in a pamphlet -(Kendal, 1886) reprinted from the “Transactions of the Cumberland -and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archæological Society.” There is a -puzzling difference between the date of 15th November 1745, given by -Lady Clerk as the day of her birth, and that of 3d November which -appears in the register of Kirkliston parish as the day of her baptism; -but this discrepancy—we may suggest—would be lessened to within a -single day, if her Ladyship has calculated according to New Style, -introduced in Scotland in 1600, and the register has estimated by -Old Style, current in England till 1752; while the presence of the -Highlanders at Carlisle at the time would be accounted for if they -crossed the border on “the 7th or 8th of November,” New Style. - -The following is the interesting version of the story, communicated by -Lady Clerk herself to the Editor of “Blackwood’s Magazine”:— - - “... The incident occurred November 15th, 1745. My father, Mr. - Dacre, then an officer of His Majesty’s Militia, was a prisoner - in the Castle of Carlisle, at that time in the hands of Prince - Charles. My mother (a daughter of Sir George le Fleming, Bart., - Bishop of Carlisle) was living at Rose Castle, six miles from - Carlisle, when she was delivered of me. She had given orders - that I should immediately be privately baptized by the Bishop’s - chaplain (his Lordship not being at home) by name of Rosemary - Dacre. At that moment a company of Highlanders approached - headed by a Captain Macdonald, who having heard there was much - plate and valuables in the Castle came to plunder it. Upon the - approach of the Highlanders, an old grey-headed servant ran out - and entreated Captain Macdonald not to proceed, as any noise or - alarm might cause the death of both lady and child. The Captain - enquired where the lady had been confined. ‘Within this house,’ - the servant answered. Captain Macdonald stopped. The servant - added, ‘They are just going to christen the infant.’ Macdonald, - taking off his cockade, said, ‘Let her be christened with this - cockade in her cap, it will be her protection now and after if - any of our stragglers should come this way: we will wait the - ceremony in silence,’ which they accordingly did, and they went - into the coachyard, and were regaled with beef, cheese, and - ale, then went off without the smallest disturbance. My white - cockade was safely preserved and shown me from time to time, - always reminding me to respect the Scotch, and Highlanders in - particular. I think I have obeyed the injunction by spending my - life in Scotland, and also by hoping to die there. - - ROSEMARY CLERK. - - * * * * * - - “_EDINBURGH, April 21, 1817._” - - -In memory of the event, Lady Clerk always wore the cockade, along with -a white rose, upon her birthday. It has been said that she presented -it to George IV. on the occasion of his visit to Scotland, and its -existence, unfortunately, cannot now be traced: but a still living -connection of the family informs us that she had seen the relic in the -possession of Lady Clerk, at a more recent date than that of the royal -progress. - -It will be remembered that Scott, to whom in his youth Sir John and -Lady Clerk had been kind, with his keen and appreciative eye for the -picturesque, has seized upon this incident and turned it to excellent -account in the opening chapter of “The Monastery.” - -That white cockade, the symbol of a cause so full of poetry and -romance, seems to have brought a benison with it to the babe Rosemary -Dacre, to have dowered her with beauty, and gifted her with an -unusually magnetic attractiveness. As she grew into fairest womanhood -she had many lovers, declared and undeclared, and in the hearts of -those who failed to win the lady her memory seems to have lingered -tenderly with no touch of bitterness; to have been, to some of them, a -kind of lifelong inspiration, evoking gentle wistful feelings, such as -Dante Rossetti has so exquisitely recorded in one of the finest of his -earlier poems, his “First Love Remembered.” - -Some curious records, some strange hints of the potent part which -the lady of the white cockade, and the memory of her, played in the -lives of certain men whom she never wedded are preserved at Penicuik, -casketed in the dainty little Chippendale workbox that once was hers, -among other personal relics,—her long black gloves, with a space of -black lace inlet from palm to top; her cap edged with delicate lace; -a long tress of her dark brown hair, marked “June the 6th, 1794, aged -48”; and her silhouette, cut in black paper, showing a strong dignified -profile, beneath a tall hat, wound round with a veil. - -Two of the interesting letters preserved in this quaint old workbox -are from Lord Chancellor Eldon, who in his youth, as they clearly -indicate, had been a lover of Rosemary Dacre; though the impression can -hardly have been overwhelmingly deep or very permanent, for he was only -twenty-one when he eloped with Bessy Surtees, a step which entailed the -loss of his Oxford fellowship, closed his hopes of preferment in the -Church, and obliged him with “a most kind Providence for my guide,” as -he says, to take to the study of law, one of his earliest legal efforts -being the delivery, as Deputy-Vinerian Professor for Sir Robert -Chambers, of a lecture on “the statute of young men running away with -maidens.” But in his youth the future Lord Chancellor was, as he used -to confess, “very susceptible.” “Oh,” he would say, “these were happy -days; we were always in love then.” - -The first letter of the old man of nearly eighty runs as follows:— - - “_14 April 1829._ - - “DEAR MARY DACRE,—Pardon my use of a name, which belonged to - you when I first knew you. I can sincerely assure you that I - have often, often thought of the person who bore that name - when I knew her, with, may I say, sentiments of most sincere - affection? If I had been Lord Stowell, her name now might - neither have been Molly Dacre, nor Mary, Lady Clarke. - - “Thank you a thousand Times, thank you for your Letter, which I - have this moment received. I would thank you more at large if - I could delay in an hour, in which I am much engaged, to thank - you, but that I cannot persuade myself to do. - - “I have done my best to defeat this disastrous measure. If I am - wrong God forgive me! if I am right God forgive others, if He - can! Lady Eldon, Bessy Surtees, sends her Love to you with that - of, - - Yr obliged and affectionate Friend, - ELDON. - - Mary Lady Clarke, - 100 Princess Street, - Edinburgh.” - - -The second letter is written, on the 29th of June in the same year “as -Lady Eldon’s Secretary” to thank Lady Clerk for a present of jewellery. - - “... After the Lapse of so many years to be remembered by one - whom we remember, I can most sincerely say, with Respect and - affection, is perhaps the most gratifying circumstance that - could have happened to either of us. I feel the Value of your - kindness to her ten thousand Times more than any that could - have been shown to myself. She will wear the Ornaments from - you and the Grampians as in Truth the most valuable she has, - as long as she lives, and we shall both take some Pains to - secure its being, in the possession of those who follow after - us, an heir Loom. I know not why we search the World over for - Diamonds, when the Grampians can furnish what equals, if it - does not surpass them, in beauty and brilliancy. - - “How often have Lady Eldon and I—distant as we are from your - Habitation—fancied that we have been looking at Molly Dacre, - and listening to ‘Auld Robin Gray’ sung exquisitely by her? - eyes and ears alike highly gratified. Excuse this—remember - that it comes from one, who, in his last Letter, expressed a - wish that he had been THE ELDER BROTHER. - - “With Lady E’s Thanks and affectionate Regards, - - Yr - Dear Madam, - Eldon. - ELIZ: ELDON.” - - -The allusion at the close of the first letter is to the Catholic Relief -Bill which Lord Eldon so strenuously opposed. Only four days before the -date of the note his name had headed the protest of the Peers against -the measure. - -The Lord Stowell referred to is the Chancellor’s elder brother, Judge -of the High Court of Admiralty. He was born in the same year as Mary -Dacre, and, curiously enough, his birth also was associated with the -presence of the Pretender’s army. As in the other case there are -varying versions of the story. One tradition asserts that the town of -Newcastle being fortified and closed in anticipation of the approach -of the Jacobites, who were then in possession of Edinburgh, it was -thought that his mother should be removed to a quieter place, in -anticipation of her confinement; and that this was effected by her -being lowered in a large basket into a boat in the river and conveyed -to Heworth, a village four miles distant. The other version assigns the -perilous descent to Dr. Hallowel, her medical attendant, who was let -down from the top of the town wall of Newcastle in order to be present -at Heworth at the critical moment. - -The remaining letters afford even a more curious glimpse of the -fascination which Rosemary Dacre exercised upon those who came within -the circle of her influence. The first is addressed to her husband’s -nephew and successor the Right Hon. Sir George Clerk, and is dated— - - “CHITTON LODGE, - _3 June 1830._ - - “MY DEAR SIR GEORGE,—Enclosed I send you Capt. Morris’s verses - which I mentioned to you. The circumstances which occasioned - them were the following. Lord Stowell, Lord Sidmouth, and - Capt. Morris, with some other Friends, were dining with me - last Spring, when Lord Stowell remarked that although Capt. - Morris was the same age as himself he was much more active - and elastic. Capt. Morris attributed this to his having been - ardently in Love for the whole of his Life; and on being - pressed to disclose the object of his passion confessed that it - was Lady Clarke, who at the age of sixteen won his affection, - and that although he had been since married she had never - ceased to exercise an influence on his heart, and be a source - of animation. Lord Stowell immediately acknowledged that by - a remarkable coincidence he also had been enamoured of Lady - Clarke, and at the same age of sixteen, and that although twice - married, the recollection of her charms had not been effaced - from his mind. This of course gave rise to much mirth among the - company, Lord Sidmouth particularly laughing at the Lovers, - who at the age of eighty-four declared that their passion was - undiminished towards a Lady who had attained the same age, - - I am, - My dear Sir George, - Yours truly, - JOHN PEARSE.” - - -Then follows a copy of the enclosure from Captain Morris of the Life -Guards, who, it may be remarked, was a well-known politician and -popular song-writer, and a boon companion of the wits at Brooks. -His portrait, engraved by Greatbach, is given in an early volume -of “Bentley’s Miscellany,” and another portrait, painted by James -Lonsdale, was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, -London. - - “NO. 1 THORNHAUGH ST. - BEDFORD SQ. - _May 29, 1829._ - - MY DEAR SIR,—Looking in my Scrap Book to-day, I find a few - Stanzas, on my _deathless Passion_ for my _first love_, - written in my latter days, and as such an extraordinary and - singular coincidence on that subject occurred at your table on - Wednesday, I take the liberty of enclosing them to you, the - more so as Lady Sidmouth is a correspondent, and perhaps might - have no objection to honour them with a perusal; if you think - so, and will let her Ladyship see them, I beg permission to - commit them to your care, and I remain, - - My dear Sir, - Most gratefully and faithfully - Yours, - CHAS. MORRIS.” - - “I beg leave to add that it is sixty-eight years since I lived - in Carlisle with my Father and mother. Lady Clark will of - course have no recollection of my _Boyish adoration_, but to - recall it, if possible, to her memory, I would wish her to - know that it is Chas. Morris, son of Col. Morris, of the 17th - Regt., who lived with my mother at Carlisle, and with whom Lady - Clark and the Dacre Family were acquainted.” - -Then follows the brave old jingle of rhyme which the ever-faithful -lover had made in praise of his lady:— - - “Though years have spread around my Head - The sober Veil of Reason, - To close in Night sweet Fancy’s light, - My Heart rejects as Treason; - A spark there lies, still fann’d by Sighs, - Ordained by Beauty’s maker, - And fix’d by Fate, burns yet, tho’ late, - For lovely Molly Dacre. - - Oh! while I miss the days of Bliss - I pass’d in rapture gazing, - The Dream impress’d still charms my breast - Which Fancy ever raising. - Tho’ much I meet in Life is sweet, - My Soul can ne’er forsake her, - And all I feel, still bears the Seal - Of lovely Molly Dacre! - - Whene’er her course in chaise or horse - Conveyed her to our city, - How did I gaze, in bliss’d amaze - To catch her smile of pity; - And round her door the night I wore, - Still mute as any Quaker, - With hope-fed Zeal, one glance to steal - From lovely Molly Dacre. - - When rumour dear proclaimed her near, - Her charms a crowd amazing, - How would I start with panting Heart - To catch her eye when passing. - When home she turned, I ran, I burned - O’er many a distant Acre, - To hope by chance one parting glance - From lovely Molly Dacre. - - I’ve often thought the happy lot - Of Health and Spirits lent me, - Is deem’d as due to faith so true, - And thus by Fate is sent me. - While here she be there’s life for me, - And when high Heaven shall take her, - Alike last breath, I’ll ask of Death - To follow Molly Dacre. - - M.” - -Surely it was with true significance that Rosemary Dacre’s seal—the -seal which always descends to her name-child in the house of -Penicuik—was engraved with the sign of a single star, shedding a -benign and steadfast light over a pathless vastitude of air and a -fluctuating waste of sea; for the Lady’s memory seems to have shone -with an ideal light through many human lives. - - -VIII. - -The next portrait by Raeburn represents John Clerk of Eldin, the -seventh son of Baron Clerk, second Baronet of Penicuik, and author of -the celebrated “Enquiry into Naval Tactics.” He was educated at the -Grammar School of Dalkeith and the University of Edinburgh, and in -that city he engaged in business as a merchant till about 1772, when -he purchased the property of Eldin, in the parish of Lasswade, and -obtained a post in connection with the Exchequer, the secretaryship to -the Commissioners on the Annexed Estates in Scotland. He was a man of a -vigorous and active mind, and seems to have possessed equal aptitudes -for art and science. Some of his sketches are dated as early as 1758, -but it was in 1770 that he began to etch upon copper, and in the next -twelve years he produced a series of over a hundred plates. These are -founded upon a careful study of the old Dutch masters of the art. In -their topographical aspect they are of great interest as portraying -many ancient buildings which have since been removed or altered; and as -examples of etching, in spite of certain amateurish defects, they form -a curious connecting-link between the period of Rembrandt and the early -days of our own century, when the process was taken up and carried to -such fine artistic issues by two other Scotsmen, Geddes and Wilkie. A -large collection of Mr. Clerk’s etchings and drawings is preserved in -the Library at Penicuik. A series of the former, tinted by Robert Adam, -the celebrated architect, whose sister, Susannah, Mr. Clerk had married -in 1753, was presented to George III. in 1786, at the suggestion of -the Earl of Buchan. Twenty-eight of them were issued to members of the -Bannatyne Club in 1825, and other of the coppers having been recovered, -a series of fifty-five etchings and reproductions of sketches were -issued to the same Club in 1855 with an admirable memoir by David Laing. - -In his scientific pursuits Clerk was the intimate associate of Dr. -James Hutton, whose geological papers his pencil was ever ready to -illustrate, and it is believed that the Professor’s “Theory of the -Earth” owed something to his friend’s suggestions. The first part of -Clerk’s celebrated “Enquiry into Naval Tactics” was published in 1782, -and the second, third, and fourth parts were added in 1797. Though a -work of great interest and value, the assertion that it was the means -of Rodney’s adopting that mode of breaking the enemy’s line which led -to the celebrated victory off Dominique on 12th April 1782, seems to be -one incapable of absolute proof. We have a pleasant characterisation -of him, _à propos_ of his death, May 1812, in Lord Cockburn’s -“Memorials”:— - -“An interesting and delightful old man; full of the peculiarities that -distinguished the whole family—talent, caprice, obstinacy, worth, -kindliness, and oddity, ... he was looked up to with deference by -all the philosophers of his day, who were in the habit of constantly -receiving hints and views from him, which they deemed of great value. -He was a striking-looking old gentleman, with his grizzly hair, -vigorous features, and Scotch speech. It would be difficult to say -whether jokes or disputation pleased him most.” - -“A striking-looking old gentleman” he certainly shows in Raeburn’s -portrait—which, technically, is an excellent example of the ‘square -touch’ and vigorous modelling of that painter—with the strong face, -clear light yellowish eyes, broad forehead, and white hair, rising -from the high-collared old-fashioned coat. The picture has been -lithographed by A. Hahnisch in the 1855 Bannatyne Club issue of the -etchings, and the personality of its subject may be gathered from -two other portraits;—a crayon likeness by Skirving, showing less of -dignity and more of shrewdness, which passed by bequest to the Blair -Adam family, and was admirably mezzotinted by S. W. Reynolds in 1800; -and a three-quarters length portrait in oils by James Saxon, now in -the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where he is represented seated -at a table holding a plan which depicts his naval manœuvre of breaking -the line. The latter belonged to the father of W. H. Carpenter of the -British Museum, who caused the ships in the distance to be painted in -by William Anderson. - -The remaining example of Raeburn at Penicuik House is a portrait of -Mr. Clerk’s eldest son, John Clerk, Lord Eldin. Lord Cockburn tells a -pretty story of the relation between the two. “‘I remember,’ the father -used to say, ‘the time when people seeing John limping on the street, -used to ask what lame lad that was; and the answer would be, That’s the -son of Clerk of Eldin. But now, when I myself am passing, I hear them -saying, What auld grey-headed man is that? And the answer is, That’s -the father of John Clerk.’ He was much prouder of the last mark than -the first.” - -From his earliest years the future judge possessed all that love for -art which has been constant in the family of Clerk; his own drawings -possess considerable vigour and character. He was an enthusiastic -collector, and the crowd that was gathered in his house in Picardy -Place, Edinburgh, at the sale of his collection after his death in 1832 -was so excessive that the floor gave way, causing the death of one -person, and the serious injury of several others. Vigorous and lifelike -sketches of his vehemence and wit and curiously eccentric and powerful -personality will be found in the pages of Lord Cockburn and in “Peter’s -Letters to his Kinsfolk.” From their student days Raeburn and he were -chosen friends, and it must have been about the date of the present -portrait that the whimsical episode occurred which Allan Cunningham -records in his account of the painter, an account that has left little -to be gleaned by later biographers. “Raeburn received an invitation to -dine with Clerk, and hastening to his lodgings, he found the landlady -spreading a cloth on the table, and setting down two dishes, one -containing three herrings and the other three potatoes. ‘And is this -all?’ said John. ‘All,’ said the landlady. ‘All! Did I not tell ye, -woman,’ he exclaimed, ‘that a gentleman was to dine with me, and that -ye were to get six herrings and six potatoes?’ The tables of both were -better furnished before the lapse of many years; and they loved, it is -said, when the wine was flowing, to recall those early days, when hope -was high and the spirit unrebuked by intercourse with the world.” - -The present portrait shows Clerk in the character of a budding -barrister. The figure is life-sized, seated, seen in three-quarters to -the left, the wigged head turned nearly in pure profile to the left. -The figure, clad in black coat, black satin vest, and knee-breeches -of the same, and with ruffs at breast and wrists, lies back easily in -the chair, the right hand extending over its arm, and holding a law -paper, the left placed, with outspread fingers, on the table in front, -which is covered with a richly tinted cloth, on which lie “Stair’s -Institutes,” the “Regiam Magista,” and other volumes in “law-calf,” -while on the other side, as though to hint at the advocate’s artistic -tastes, appears a cast of a classical head, just as in the later -Raeburn portrait a little bronze version of the Crouching Venus nestles -among the bundles of briefs. The face, wearing an expression of great -earnestness and intentness, is as yet beardless, unformed, and rather -heavy-looking; different indeed from the emphatic furrowed countenance -that appears in the later portraits which show him when age had -developed his full individuality. The eyes are pale bluish grey, and -the eyebrows very light in colour. - -There are no other early portraits of Lord Eldin, by which we can -judge of his appearance at the time that this one was executed. The -admirable three-quarter seated portrait by Raeburn, where he appears -holding his spectacles in his right hand, and with the other supporting -a folio which rests on a table, shows him in later life. It passed by -bequest to the house of Riccarton, and has been powerfully mezzotinted -by Charles Turner, the plate appearing, after it had been reduced in -size, in the Bannatyne volume of Mr. Clerk’s Etchings, 1855. A somewhat -similarly arranged portrait, of cabinet size, painted by Andrew Geddes, -another of Lord Eldin’s artistic friends, was in the possession of -the late Mr. James Gibson Craig; and there is the lithograph by B. W. -Crombie, a bust-portrait, in ordinary dress, executed in June 1837, -showing in the shrewd profile face much of that “thoroughbred shaggy -terrier” aspect upon which Lord Cockburn remarks in his “Life of -Jeffrey”; and also the bust by Joseph, engraved in line by Robert Bell, -of which a cast is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. - -In addition to these there are several caricatures which doubtless -preserve much that was characteristic of the man. There is the etching -by Kay, in the plate of “Twelve Advocates who Plead with Wigs on,” -showing an eager countenance, with opened mouth and protruding under -lip; and the four very vivid and lifelike sketches by Robert Scott -Moncrieff, reproduced in “The Scottish Bar Fifty Years Ago.” The first -of these latter shows him in suppressed—but most belligerent—mood -seated as an advocate listening to the pleadings of the council on the -opposite side, with mouth compressed, and lips drawn down at the ends, -his left hand grasping his spectacle-case, the other cast over the arm -of his chair and grasping his papers. Another shows him pacing the -floor of the Parliament House, briefs in hand, his gown trailing behind -him, his wig perched knowingly in front, his spectacles pushed far up -his forehead,—much as Carlyle, in his “Reminiscences,” records that he -saw him, when he visited the Parliament House in 1809, on his arrival -in Edinburgh to begin his student-life. “The only figure I distinctly -recollect, and got printed on my brain that night, was John Clerk, -then veritably hitching about, whose grim, strong countenance, with -its black far-projecting brows and look of great sagacity, fixed him -in my memory.” The third of Mr. Moncrieff’s drawings shows him in the -full fury of his vehement eloquence as a pleader, his gown flying about -him in mighty folds, his right fist clenched and raised in excited -action. A fourth sketch, a rather terrible one, depicts him in latest -age, seated on the bench, his hands laid in front and muffled in his -judge’s gown, his great mouth with its prominent under lip firmly set, -and his small eyes keenly observant through his spectacles. One other -caricature remains to be noticed, the little etching marked “X. Y. Z.,” -which is often to be found bound up along with copies of his sale -catalogue, showing him in full-length ascending a flight of stairs, -snuffbox in hand. - -In the Business-room there hangs a small portrait of Lord Eldin’s -younger brother, William Clerk, advocate—“only less witty and odd than -his great Swiftian brother,” as Dr. John Brown has truly remarked—who -figures so prominently in the biography and correspondence of Sir -Walter Scott. At college they were contemporaries and bosom friends, -they passed their Civil Law and their Scots Law examinations on the -same day, and together assumed the advocate’s gown. It was in his -company that the young Scott, after a fishing expedition to Howgate, -visited Penicuik House, when he “was overwhelmed with kindness by the -late Sir John Clerk and his lady”—the pair who figure in the great -Raeburn group, and when “the pleasure of looking at fine pictures, -the beauty of the place, and the flattering hospitality of the owners -drowned the recollection of home for a day or two.” The friendship -thus begun was continued through life; and in his latest years Scott -dwells, in his Diary, with especial gusto upon the snug little dinners -in Rose Court, Edinburgh, when a few chosen spirits gathered round -Clerk’s bachelor board. - -The present picture, a cabinet-sized bust, is somewhat amateurish in -its execution, but still full of character and individuality; the -features of the shrewd, wrinkled face, its definitely curved nose, -sharply-cut mouth, thin compressed lips, and dark, brilliantly blue -eyes beneath the bushy white eyebrows, combine into what is doubtless -a faithful rendering of that friend of whom Scott wrote in his Diary, -in 1825, “I have known him intimately since our college days; and -to my thinking I never met a man of greater powers or more complete -information on all desirable subjects.” It is the work of Mrs. Hugh -Blackburn, a lady so well known for her excellent renderings of birds -and animals; but another oil-portrait of William Clerk, a cabinet-sized -bust, turned to the right and dated 1843, the work of Miss Isabella -Clerk, sister of the seventh Baronet, is also preserved at Penicuik. - -Among the portraits of more recent members of the Clerk family are -various works representing their eminent politician and statistical -authority, the Right Hon. Sir George Clerk, D.C.L., the sixth Baronet, -who repeatedly represented the county of Mid-Lothian in Parliament; -who was a Lord of the Admiralty under the Liverpool Administration; -succeeded Mr. Gladstone as Master of the Mint in 1845, and in the -same year was appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade, and -a member of the Privy Council. Several miniatures representing him -are preserved in the Drawing-room, and there are also two life-sized -three-quarter-length portraits in oil. That hung in the smaller -Drawing-room is an excellent example by William Dyce, R.A., a distant -connection of the family’s, and was painted in 1830. It is executed -with great delicacy, quietude, and reticence, and does full justice -to the Baronet’s refined and handsome face, then in its prime. This -picture has been excellently mezzotinted by Thomas Lupton. That in the -Dining-room, painted by the vigorous hand of Sir John Watson Gordon, -portrays Sir George in later life, seated in an easy chair, and holding -one of the statistical blue-books which his soul loved. Of his wife, -Maria, second daughter of Ewan Law of Horsted Place, Sussex, there is -also an oil portrait in the Dining-room, showing a refined face, with -a delicate complexion, bearing the trace of suffering in the firmly -compressed yet pathetic mouth, and the straight dark eyebrows, which -are knit a little and contracted over the pale grey wistful eyes. The -picture has a rather slight and unfinished appearance, and is somewhat -chalky in its whites. Its painter, the late J. R. Swinton, worked -comparatively little in oils, and examples of his better-known crayon -drawings may be studied in the portraits of the Dowager Lady Clerk and -her sister-in-law, the Hon. Mrs. Elphinstone, which hang in the smaller -Drawing-room. - -It should also be noticed that many characteristic likenesses of the -sixth Baronet are included in an interesting volume of sketches, -done in old days by his niece Mrs. Hugh Blackburn, and now preserved -at Penicuik, a series portraying familiar scenes there, and at Sir -George’s London residence in Park Street, Westminster,—card-parties -and musical evenings in which Piatti and other eminent performers took -part, days spent on the ice, or picnicking among the Pentlands, rides -in the Park or over lonely stretches of moorland—drawings highly -humorous, plentifully touched with caricature, yet including not a -little substantial truth of portraiture. - -There is also in the Dining-room an interesting cabinet-sized portrait -of Sir George’s younger brother, John Clerk Maxwell of Middleby, that -genial, practical, individual Scotsman of whom a most interesting -account is given in the life of his distinguished son, Professor James -Clerk Maxwell. The picture is the work of his niece, Miss Isabella -Clerk, and shows some traces of the amateur, especially in the size and -uncouthness of the hands, but a comparison with the engraving from the -portrait by Watson Gordon, given in the above-mentioned volume, proves -it to be a substantially faithful likeness of the good old man. - - -IX. - -We now come to glance at the portraits at Penicuik House which do -not represent members of the Clerk family. Among the earliest of -these, hung in the Dining-room, is a three-quarter-length seated -portrait of Sir Archibald Primrose, Lord Carrington, that ancestor of -the Rosebery family who played an important part in politics during -the Restoration period, who fought under Montrose, was captured at -Philiphaugh, and barely escaped being executed for treason; who was -appointed Lord Clerk Register in 1660, and Lord Justice-General in -1676, presiding, in that office, at the trial in 1678, of Mitchell -for the attempted assassination of Archbishop Sharp; and whose later -years were spent in steady opposition to the administration of the -Duke of Lauderdale. He is styled by Burnet “the subtelist of all Lord -Middletoun’s friends, a man of long and great practice in affairs ...; -a dextrous man of business, he had always expedients ready at every -difficulty.” In the picture he appears in his black, gold-laced robes -as Lord Clerk Register, his right hand resting on the arm of his chair, -the left raised, and his face seen in three-quarters to the right, -with its thin prominent nose drooping at the point, small chin, and -lips rising towards the ends and pursed and dimpled a little at the -corners. A similar picture, but only bust-sized, stated (Catalogue of -Royal Scottish Academy Loan Exhibition, 1863) to be dated 1670, has -been long at Dalmeny, and a copy of it was presented by Lord Rosebery -to the Faculty of Advocates in 1883, and now hangs in the Parliament -House. His Lordship has recently acquired, from the Rothes Collection, -another, a three-quarter length, version of the picture; and we are -informed that there is also a similar-sized version in the possession -of Lord Elphinstone. A portrait of Sir Archibald Primrose appears in -Mr. A. H. Millar’s list of the portraits at Kinnaird Castle, but we -have not examined this work, and cannot say whether it is a repetition -of the present portrait. - -Two interesting oil pictures showing Charles, third Duke of -Queensberry, and his celebrated Duchess, hang near the portrait of Lord -Carrington. The Duke, the correspondent of Swift, painted rather dryly -and hardly by Miss Ann Forbes, whose work we have already referred -to, is seen to below the waist, clad in peer’s robes, the figure -turned towards the right. The face, shown in three-quarters, closely -resembles that in the cabinet-sized bust in oils at Ballochmyle, and -in the mezzotint engraved in 1773, by Valentine Green after George -Willison, with the same high cheek-bones, and prominent high-bridged -nose, and the eyes are of a warm brown colour; but the face is older -than in either of the other portraits, grave and worn, and covered with -wrinkles. - -The companion portrait of the Duchess, “Prior’s Kitty, ever young,” -the eccentric patroness of Gay, a work by Aikman, recalls in most of -its details her portrait by Charles Jervas, in the National Portrait -Gallery, London. She is shown in three-quarters length, slim, graceful, -and youthful, clad in a coquettish country costume, a dress of greyish -brown, of dainty proportions at the waist, low-breasted, and with short -sleeves that display the well-turned arms, with a small white apron, -and a little close cap set on the head and almost entirely concealing -the dark brown hair. The face, with its blue eyes and fresh delicate -complexion, is drooping a little, turned in three-quarters to the left; -her left hand rests on the edge of a milk-pail, and her right holds -what appears to be a broad round-brimmed hat. The background is a -landscape, with rocks and trees rising behind the lady to the left, -and with a stretch of green meadow to the right—in which, however, no -figures appear, as in the National Portrait Gallery picture,—and a -space of blue sky faintly tinged with red towards the horizon. - -We are informed that these three last-named works were acquired at a -sale, about the end of the last century. - -Near them hangs a three-quarter-length portrait which forms an -interesting memorial of one of the second Baronet’s most congenial -friendships. It represents that prominent statesman in the days -of Queen Anne and George I., Thomas, eighth Earl of Pembroke, -Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1707, a man of great refinement and -varied culture, President of the Royal Society, of which body Baron -Clerk was elected a member in 1728, “an honour”—as he states in -his “History”—“I value much.” Clerk first made his acquaintance -during his student-days at Leyden, when the Earl was acting as First -Plenipotentiary at the Treaty of Ryswick. In his account of that Treaty -in the “History of my Own Times,” Bishop Burnet remarks that “there -was something in his person and manner that created him an universal -respect; for we had no man among us whom all sides loved and honoured -as they did him.” In 1726 Clerk tells us that he corresponded with -Lord Pembroke upon classical and antiquarian subjects; it was then -that the Earl “sent me his Picture which is now among the Ornaments of -Mavisbank,” one of Sir John’s houses; and after he visited London in -the following year, and examined its chief artistic collections, he -records with delight his pilgrimage to his friend’s seat of Wilton, and -his appreciation of the princely gathering of statues, coins, medals, -etc., which he had brought together there, and especially of his great -ancestral treasure, the Van Dyck group of Earl Philip and his family. -The eighth Earl, it may be noticed, died in January 1732-3, not -1702-3, as given in Noble’s “Granger,” or 1722-3, as stated by Chaloner -Smith. - -In the portrait he appears in three-quarters length, clad in armour, -with a lace cravat, and a long dark curling wig, the jewel of the -Garter being suspended by its blue ribbon under his right arm. The -figure is turned to the left, but the sallow, shaven face, with its -dark eyes appearing from beneath bushy black eyebrows, looks in -three-quarters to the right. His right hand is raised holding a baton, -behind which is placed a helmet, the left rests on a gold-hilted sword; -and there is a rocky background, disclosing a space of sky and sea with -a ship and boats. - -The picture is evidently a version of the portrait of the Earl painted -by William Wissing, mezzotinted by John Smith in a plate to which the -date of 1709 has been assigned, though the painting must have been -executed much earlier, as Wissing died in 1687. The naval background -is stated to be from the brush of “Vandevelde,” having evidently been -introduced by that artist, after the death of the original painter of -the work, at the time when the Earl was appointed Lord High Admiral of -Great Britain and Ireland, a post which he held in 1701, and again in -1708. The younger William Vandevelde must be the artist indicated, as -the elder painter of the same name died in 1693. - -Among the other portraits in the Dining-room may be mentioned a fine -three-quarters length of the Earl of Denbigh, by Lely; a vigorous -bust-portrait of the Duke of Norfolk, by Kneller,—the eighth Duke, -as is proved by the robe and collar of the Garter which appear in the -picture; and a copy from the well-known Janssen portrait of Drummond of -Hawthornden, in the possession of the Earl of Home: while the portraits -of Prince Charles Edward and of his wife the Princess Stolberg, known -as the Countess of Albany, though sufficiently indifferent works of -art, possess a certain interest as having been presented to Rosemary -Clerk by Miss Law of Princes Street, Edinburgh, after she had heard the -tale of the White Cockade, as recorded by Lady Clerk herself, in the -postscript to her letter to the Editor of “Blackwood’s Magazine,” which -we have already quoted. - - -X. - -In the Corridor hangs an important and striking portrait of Lord -Godolphin, probably from the hand of William Aikman, a work doubtless -acquired by the Baron as representing an eminent English statesman with -whom he had been brought into contact about the time of the Union. The -figure is seen to below the waist, turned in three-quarters to the -right; and the face is more individual and characteristic, if less -dignified and well conditioned, than that which appears in Houbraken’s -line-engraving, or in Smith’s mezzotint after Kneller. The nose is -small and clear-cut, the mouth has a thin upper lip drawn inwards a -little, the eyebrows are straight, slight, and of a dark brown colour, -and there are strong lines on the cheeks curving downwards from the -nostrils. A long grey curling wig is worn, and a claret-coloured coat, -with a plain cravat falling in front; and a ruddy cloak is wrapped -round the waist, and passed over the left arm. His right hand rests -against his side, and his left is laid gracefully over a parapet. - -In the same Corridor, hung over a door in an exceedingly bad light, is -a bust-portrait titled on the back, in an old hand, “Calderwood the -Historian by Jamesone.” The costume is a small black cap and a black -doublet with a round ruff. The face, seen in three-quarters to the -right, against a dark background, is full of intelligence; the features -small, the eyes grey, the moustache and beard of a moderate length, -yellowish-brown in colour. The flesh-tints are ruddy, inclining, -indeed, to an unduly hot tone, but the picture has evidently been much -repainted. It is undoubtedly a production of the period indicated -in the inscription, and resembles works that have been attributed -to Jamesone; but we are not acquainted with any duly authenticated -portrait of the historian of the Kirk of Scotland with which it might -be compared. - -The excellent bust-portrait in the Drawing-room, attributed to Holbein, -is certainly incorrectly titled as representing Sir Thomas More. This -vigorous, ruddy, bearded countenance is quite unlike the worn, shaven, -student’s face which appears in the Chancellor’s authentic portraits by -Holbein,—in his two drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and -in the pen sketch, for the lost oil picture of the Family of Sir Thomas -More, which he himself sent to his friend Erasmus, by the hand of the -painter, when Holbein returned to the Continent in 1529, a sketch still -preserved in the Museum of Basle. - -Again, the curious, but much injured, panel picture in the smaller -Drawing-room, of a lady wearing a white pipe-frilled cap, with a bowed -veil over it, titled “Mary of Guise,” shows no resemblance to such -authentic portraits of the Queen as that at Hardwick, in which she -appears with her husband King James V.; and the impaled lozenge on the -background bears no trace of the arms of either Lorraine or Scotland. - - -XI. - -We have now to examine the mural decorations of Penicuik House, which -include the celebrated Ossian ceiling of the room designed for a -picture-gallery, and now used as the Drawing-room. But first, two -smaller cupolas surmounting the staircases which give access to the -upper floor of the mansion are deserving of notice. One is decorated -in upright compartments, showing Jupiter in his car drawn by snakes, -wielding his thunderbolts, with a moonlit landscape beneath, and on -the other side a figure of Apollo, with yellow rays circling his -head, driving his team of fiery white steeds over a landscape which -is beginning to blush beneath the rosy light of dawn. Between these -are ranged a series of allegorical figures of the Months, each marked -with a sign of the Zodiac, and surrounded by scrolls, grotesque birds, -and beasts, and vases. The whole is relieved against a light green -background, and the compartments are divided by broad bands of ochre. - -This curious example of the decorative art of the end of the last -century is the work of John Bonnar, then a decorative painter in -Edinburgh; and when, a hundred years after its execution, his grandson -and great-grandson, who were at the time pursuing the same business in -the same city, cleaned and restored the work, along with the Runciman -ceilings, their ancestor’s signature was disclosed upon a corner of its -surface. - -The other cupola is decorated by the hand of Alexander Runciman, -with scenes from the life of St. Margaret of Scotland, whose history -furnished only the other year a subject for the brush of another of the -most imaginative of our Scottish painters, Sir Noel Paton. Curiously -enough we can find no single reference to this important St. Margaret -series in any of the biographies of Runciman, or in the anonymous -pamphlet, published in 1773, which so elaborately describes the ceiling -of the Ossian Hall. Both series are executed in oil colours upon the -plaster. Here the decorations consist of four oval compartments, each -occupied with a scene from the life of the Queen. - -The first shows “The Landing of St. Margaret.” Its background is a -rich blue sky, and a distance of stormy sea. In the centre is King -Malcolm, clad in a broad Scottish bonnet with a little white plume, red -knee-breeches, white hose and white shoes with ample rosettes, and with -a red cloak flapping around him in voluminous folds. With one hand he -leads the lady, robed in a yellow mantle and a white dress, her long -yellow hair tossed by the wind, and with the other points energetically -towards the church before them, where white-robed monks, with clasped -hands, are awaiting their arrival. - -The second subject is “The Royal Wedding.” The pair are being united -by a venerable and aged ecclesiastic with a grey beard, whose bronzed, -weather-beaten countenance tells splendidly against his elaborate white -vestments. To his right is the King, crowned and robed in red, placing -the ring on the hand of the Queen, who stands draped in gold-brocaded -white and green. An altar appears to our right, and beside it a -mail-clad knight, with head bowed in worship. The figures of women are -introduced to our left, and white flowers and a steaming censer lie on -the ruddy marble pavement beneath. - -The third subject shows the manner of the saint’s queenship. She is -known to her people in the breaking of bread; clad in the same robes -that she wore at the marriage festival, she is feeding the poor, and -her husband, in his red mantle and wearing his royal crown, follows in -attendance upon her, bearing a heaped platter. - -The fourth subject shows the final development of Queen Margaret’s -saintship. Having on earth filled herself with the life of heaven, she -is now seen, white-clad, and with a red robe falling from her shoulders -like the mortal life that she is done with, ascending inevitably into -skies, where the clouds dispart to disclose the benignant figure of -the Almighty Father and the white shape of the Holy Dove. Beneath is -outspread a familiar landscape which she is leaving for ever—the -Fifeshire hills appear on the right on the farther side of the Firth, -and beneath is the town of Edinburgh, with the Palace, and the -Castle rock crested with her chapel, and to the left the Pentlands -which overlook Penicuik, with a kindly ray streaming from above, and -irradiating their summit. - -In spite of all deductions that may be made on account of occasional -crudities and defects, and of the glaring anachronisms of costume that -are apt to offend our more archæologically cultured eyes, the series is -a remarkable one, with great richness and variety of colouring, and -with a dramatic power which goes directly to the heart of the legendary -tale, and portrays its incidents in a vivid and impressive manner. -Dealing for the most part with definite history, the series is more -complete in its realisation than was possible in some of the visionary -subjects from Ossian which the painter afterwards essayed in the Hall -of Penicuik House. - -The three last-named subjects are signed: the second bears the date of -“Sept. 7, 1772,” the third “Octr. 14, 1772,” and the fourth “Octr. 6, -1772.” The inscriptions are interesting as showing that the subjects -were executed immediately after the painter’s return from Italy, and as -illustrating the impetuous speed with which he must have worked. - - -XII. - -Runciman next turned to the larger undertaking of which the St. -Margaret Cupola was but the prologue, and upon which he worked with -equal energy, for the ceiling of the Ossian Hall of Penicuik House can -hardly have been commenced before the end of 1772, and it was certainly -completed during the following year. - -It was just ten years previously that “Fingal” (1762) and “Temora” -(1763) first appeared, and the controversy regarding their authenticity -still raged fiercely. Dr. Johnson and David Hume denied their claim -to be regarded as genuine Celtic poems, but they were defended by -Lord Kames, Dr. Gregory, and by Dr. Blair, who pointed out their -adaptability to the purposes of the painter, as presenting fitting -subjects for the exercise of his brush. It was probably upon this -suggestion that the Ossian ceiling was commissioned by Sir James Clerk, -and commenced by Alexander Runciman. - -The centre of the ceiling is occupied by a large elliptical -compartment, depicting Ossian old and blind, singing, and accompanying -his songs on the harp. In front is seated the white-draped shape -of Malvina, and around are grouped a varied crowd of listeners. The -distance is a rocky coast, with ruined castles, and a fine expanse of -sea, across which white sails are speeding; and above, the clouds take -strange, fantastic, half-defined shapes as of spiritual presences, the -figures of the vanished heroes of whom the poet sings,—“The awful -faces of other times look from the clouds of Crona.” This compartment -is surrounded by an ornamental border of gold, which in its turn is -enclosed in a wreath of vine-leaves and fruit; and the four corners are -occupied by figures symbolical of the four great rivers of Scotland, -the Tay, the Spey, the Clyde, and the Tweed,—figures manifestly -reminiscent of the work of Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. - -Beneath, round the ample cove or _volto_ of the room, is ranged a -series of smaller subjects from Ossian—“The Valour of Oscar,” “The -Death of Oscar,” “The Death of Agandecca,” “The Hunting of Catholda,” -one of the finest of the subjects, very graceful in the figure of the -nymph drawing a bow; “The Finding of Corban Cargloss,” an attractive -moonlit scene; “Golchossa mourning over Lamderg,” “Oina Morval -serenading Ossian,” a vigorous subject of “Cormac attacking the Spirit -of the Waters,” “The Death of Cormac,” “Scandinavian Wizards at their -Incantations,” in which the grotesque is in excess of the terrible, and -“Fingal engaging the Spirit of Lodi.” - -If we were to criticise the ceiling purely as an example of decorative -art, we might well object that the elaboration and wealth of detail in -the work is hardly suitable to its position, that designs so placed -should have been simpler and more salient in their component parts, -and executed in a lighter and more airy scheme of colouring, so as to -carry the eye freely upwards. But as an example of poetic art, in its -earnestness of aim and vigour of conception, it is deserving of all -praise, as one of the very few instances that Scotland has to show of -a serious effort to produce a monumental work, a pictorial epic,—an -effort honourable alike to the painter and his patron. The art of -Runciman, as here displayed, may be regarded as the precursor of the -art of David Scott, another of Scotland’s most imaginative painters, -who was also powerfully attracted by the Ossianic legends, choosing -“Fingal and the Spirit of Lodi” for the subject of one of his earliest -works, and in another depicting Ossian himself, not surrounded by -sympathetic listeners as in this central compartment by Runciman, -but seated alone by the sea-shore, amid the last dying radiance of a -sunset, with his harp lying idle by his side. - -It is recorded that about 1720 John Alexander, the grandson of George -Jamesone of Aberdeen, executed a “Rape of Proserpina” on a staircase in -Gordon Castle. After the completion of his work at Penicuik Runciman -decorated a church in the Cowgate of Edinburgh (now St. Patrick’s -Catholic Chapel) with sacred subjects, of which a portion still remain; -and—presumably in humble imitation of the Ossian Hall—Alexander Carse -painted an oval subject on the ceiling of the “Pennecuik Parlor” of New -Hall, Mid-Lothian, depicting “The Troops of Tweedale in the Forest of -Selkirkshire, convened by Royal authority in May 1685, as described in -Dr. Pennecuik’s Poems.” This brief list may be said to include almost -all the mural art—excepting such as was simply decorative—executed in -Scotland during modern times. - -The Ossian ceiling formed the subject of a learned and elaborate -descriptive pamphlet, published anonymously, in 1773, by A. Kinnaird -and W. Creech, Edinburgh; and the painter would appear to have intended -to preserve a record of his work—in the manner afterwards adopted by -Barry, in the case of the illustrations of “Human Progress,” with which -he decorated the walls of the Hall of the Society of Arts in London, -for etchings, executed by Runciman’s own hand in a free and somewhat -loose style, of the first two subjects of the St. Margaret Cupola, and -of “Cormac attacking a Spirit of the Waters,” and “The Finding of -Corban Cargloss,” from the Ossian ceiling, are frequently to be met -with. - -We have not been able to discover in Penicuik House Alexander -Runciman’s easel Picture of “Nausicaa at Play with her Maidens,” -executed during his residence at Rome, and shown in London, in the -Free Society of Artists’ Exhibition of 1767, a work which Allan -Cunningham informs us was “painted for Pennycuik”: and, on account of -the delicacy and transparency of its colouring, we should be inclined -to attribute to John Runciman, who died at Naples at the early age of -twenty-four, that sketch of “David with the Head of Goliath,” which has -been commonly assigned to the elder of the two brothers. Certainly by -John Runciman is the excellent picture of “Belshazzar’s Feast,” hung -in the Billiard-room, a work so delicate in its handling, so mellow in -the golden and ruddy tones of its colouring, as to support the opinion -held by some discerning critics, that this artist’s brief life afforded -definite promise of his becoming a far subtler and more refined painter -than the better-known member of his family ever was. - - -XIII. - -In the Drawing-room hang many admirable and interesting works, to -a few of which we may direct attention. Chief among them is the -noble three-quarter-length of Anthony Triest, Bishop of Ghent, by -Rubens, a portrait most characteristic in pose, vigorously lifelike -in expression, and accomplished in colour. Another portrait of this -prelate, a seated half-length turned to the right, was painted by Van -Dyck, Rubens’ great pupil, and etched by his own hand in a plate which -was afterwards completed with the graver by Peter de Jode. In the same -room is Van Dyck’s rendering of “A Lady of the Coningsby Family,” a -graceful full-length, draped in rose-colour, the gloved right hand -resting on a flower-pot which is relieved against a wooded background, -and the right foot raised as the figure stands on a flight of stone -garden-steps. A bust-sized male portrait of an unknown subject also -bears the name of Rubens, and, by whatever hand, it is certainly an -admirable example of Flemish art. The costume is black with a piped -ruff; the face worn, the brow furrowed, the hair yellowish, slightly -silvered with age, the thick beard and moustache of a ruddy colour, -and the flesh-tones most attractive in the quietude and cool grey -quality of their shadows. By Zeeman, an esteemed Dutch painter of naval -subjects, known, too, as an etcher of much directness and simplicity of -method, is a large sea-piece, with shipping and a great expanse of sky -in which the clouds are beginning to grow mellow towards the sunset; -and by Melchior Hondecoeter we have a vigorous picture of “Fighting -Cocks,” firmly painted, and effective in the contrast of the white -plumage of the nearer bird to the glowing brown and ruddy tones of the -rest of the picture. - -The Library, a particularly sunny and spacious room on the upper -floor, contains in addition to its books—which, as we have already -said, include those bequeathed to the Baron by Boerhaave, his early -friend,—a fine and extensive collection of prints, duly catalogued and -arranged in volumes according to their various schools. Among the rest -are some rare Dürer items, and a set of John Clerk’s etchings in their -progressive states, along with many original sketches by his hand. - -Over the fireplace is inlet in the wainscoting an attractive subject -representative of “Music,” executed in _grisaille_ on canvas, in clever -simulation of a marble bas-relief. It is signed by its painter, Jacob -de Wit, a native of Amsterdam, born 1695, died 1754, who “attained a -marvellous excellence in the imitation of sculpture of all kinds of -materials, bronze, wood, plaster, and particularly white marble, in -which he produced such complete illusion that even the practised eye -is deceived.” His most notable work of this kind was the decoration, -in 1736, of a hall in the Hôtel de Ville of Amsterdam; and it is -further stated by Kugler that “a favourite subject with the master was -the representation of pretty children in the taste of Fiammingo.” The -present picture, in the satisfying arrangement of its composition and -in the grace of its flowing lines, possesses a more legitimate artistic -value than could come from any merely imitative dexterity in rendering -the effect of sculpture by means of painting. The musicians are a party -of naked, chubby children. The figure of their leader is an especially -charming one, standing holding up a music-book in one hand, beating -time with a roll of papers held as a baton in the other, and singing -with open mouth; his raised face, with the soft hair clustering about -the rounded cheeks, wearing an entranced expression which embodies the -very spirit of melody. Beside him one of his infant musicians touches -the wires of a lyre, another bends over a great mandoline, of which a -third is tightening the strings, and a fourth breathes softly on the -flute. - -At the entrance to the Library door are placed two large glass cases, -one filled with natural history specimens, the other containing the -valuable collection of Roman remains, in metal, pottery, coins, etc., -accumulated by Baron Clerk, which it would require the skill of an -archæologist rightly to estimate. Among them is a curious and most -interesting ivory carving, inscribed, on a parchment label, in the -Baron’s handwriting, “An Antient piece of Sculpture on the Tooth of -a Whale,—it was found by John Adair, Geographer, in the North of -Scotland, Anno 1682, all the figures are remarkable.” In this year -Adair, the Geographer for Scotland, was appointed by the Privy Council -of Scotland to make a survey of the kingdom and maps of the shires, of -which only a portion was published. The carving represents a crowned -queen, seated holding a lapdog on her knees; with a knight, wearing a -surcoat over chain-armour, and bearing a sword and a shield blazoned -with a _chevron chequé_, standing on her left; and on her right a -musician playing on a crowde, an old instrument resembling a violin; -while between these, round the rest of the ivory, is a row of female -figures, wearing long flowing robes, standing with clasped hands, that -beside the musician holding a palm-branch. The carving is described and -figured in Dr. Daniel Wilson’s “Prehistoric Annals of Scotland.” Dr. -Wilson considers it to be a queen piece of a chess set, and assigns it -to the fourteenth century. - - -XIV. - -In the Charter-room are preserved, in addition to documents, many -curious miscellaneous relics of an artistic and personal sort. The -MSS. include the account-books of the family, extending well into the -seventeenth century, kept with the minutest accuracy, and containing -many entries of great interest to the student of the social manners -of the past. There are also voluminous devotional compositions, -commonplace-books, etc., by the first Baronet; and the MS. “History -of my Life,” and the two volumes of the “Journal of my Travells for 5 -years Through Holland, Germaine, Italy, France, and Flanders,” by the -second Baronet, Baron Clerk, along with the MSS. of several of his -published and unpublished historical and antiquarian pamphlets. - -A somewhat grim development of portraiture is seen in a couple of -waxen death-masks—one of them shows the face of Lady Margaret Stuart, -the Baron’s much-loved first wife—each casketed in its little wooden -case or shrine. The habit of preserving such masks seems to have been -common in Scotland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,—we -remember that the Abertarff sale included several representing various -members of the Lovat family: a survival, one may call it, of the -old Roman custom of preserving the waxen images of ancestors, which -prevailed, too, in France, in the days when Clouet was summoned to -Rambouillet, to cast the waxen effigy of the dead Francis I. - -In the Charter-room are various interesting old miniatures and -drawings, among the latter one of a cupid and a griffin, attributed to -Raphael; one by Guido; a couple of designs by Inigo Jones—one marked -“given me by the Earl of Burlington in 1727” (the year of the Baron’s -visit to London), “I very much value this and the other drawing by -Inigo. John Clerk, 1744;” and the original sketch for the picture of -St. Cecilia, still preserved at Penicuik, by Francesco Imperiali, an -artist of repute in his day, who died at Rome in 1741, under whom the -Baron studied art when in Italy, and who was afterwards one of the -instructors of Allan Ramsay, the portrait-painter. - -Another relic of the Baron’s days in Italy is the small marble bust of -Cicero—preserved in the Charter-room—which, as he tells us in his -“History,” was bequeathed to him by “Montignia Chapigni, a learned -antiquarian and philosopher.” Yet another is a little wooden casket, -fragrant still with a sweet old-world perfume, as we open the drawers -filled with neatly stoppered bottles. This is the “Box of Chymical -Medicines, still at Penicuik,” which was presented to the Baron on his -leaving Florence, along with “all the variety of wines and sweet meats -which his country produced,” by the Grand Duke Cosimo III., who had -previously honoured the young Scotsman by bestowing on him “a patent -under the privy seal signed by himself and his Secretary of State, the -Marquise de Ricardi, appointing me a Gentleman of his Bedchamber, which -patent lies now in the Charter-room.” - -On one of the shelves is placed another curious family relic, a basket -filled with artist’s materials, marked “Oil colours brought from Rome -by Uncle Sandy,” a son of the first Baronet, that Alexander Clerk who -figures in the Baronage as “bred a painter,” and whose name appears, -in 1729, on the original indenture of the Edinburgh School of St. -Luke, as a member of that first academy founded in Scotland for the -study of art, in which, six years later, Strange the engraver received -instruction. In this old document, so significant in the history of -painting in our country, and now fittingly in the possession of the -Royal Scottish Academy, Richard Cooper, Strange’s master, appears -as Secretary. Among the other signatures are those of James Clerk, -Alexander’s elder brother, afterwards third Baronet of Penicuik; his -nephew Hugh Clerk, Junr., who “served with the allied army in Germany, -and died soon after the battle of Minden”; the two Ramsays; “Ja. Norie” -and “Jas. Norie, Junior”; John Patoun, whose portrait of Thomson the -poet is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London; John Alexander, -the portrait-painter, who engraved the family group of his grandfather, -George Jamesone of Aberdeen; and William Denune, known by his portraits -of Thomas and Mrs. Ruddiman, of Professor Robert Simson of Glasgow -(1746), and of the Rev. William Harper, Episcopal clergyman in Leith -(1745). - -There is one other of the contents of the Charter-room to which we must -refer, a volume containing a complete set of Turner’s “Liber Studiorum” -prints, evidently an original subscriber’s copy; most of the plates are -in excellent impressions, and some are proofs. - -For permission to examine these, and all the other Art Treasures at -Penicuik House—to many of which we have been unable even to refer—we -have to express our grateful thanks to Sir George Clerk, the owner of -the mansion, and to the Dowager Lady Clerk, its present occupant. - - -NOTE. - -(_See_ page 30.) - -We have just had an opportunity of examining the portraits of Sir James -Clerk, the third Baronet, and Elizabeth Cleghorn, his wife, in the -possession of Miss Eliott Lockhart, at 17 Rutland Street, Edinburgh. -In each the figure is seen to the waist, within a painted oval. The -Baronet is clad in a yellowish pink gown, worn over a red vest, with -the shirt unbuttoned at the throat. The face, turned slightly to the -right, has clear-cut features, full blue eyes, and dark eyebrows, the -hair being entirely concealed by a blue cap. The left hand is laid on -the top of a folio volume, resting on a table to the right, which is -covered with a brilliantly patterned cloth; and a green curtain appears -behind to the left. In the portrait of Lady Clerk the face is seen in -three-quarters to the left, and has pale yellow hair and eyebrows, -and blue eyes. The costume is a white dress worn low at the throat, -and a blue mantle. A tree-trunk appears behind the head, and a wooded -landscape to the right. Each picture is signed with the name of a -portrait-painter which we have not elsewhere met with—“_Gul: Mosman -pingebat 1739._” The handling of the works is hard and definite. - - -THE END. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON THE ART TREASURES AT -PENICUIK HOUSE MIDLOTHIAN *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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