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DALHOUSIE CASTLE—THE EARL AND COUNTESS—ANTIQUITY OF THEIR FAMILY.

Edinboro’ has extended to “St. Leonard’s,” and the home of Jeanie Deans is now the commencement of the railway! How sadly is romance ridden over by the march of intellect!

With twenty-four persons and some climbers behind, I was drawn ten miles in the hour by a single horse upon the Dalkeith railroad, and landed within a mile of Dalhousie Castle. Two “wee callants” here undertook my portmanteau, and in ten minutes more I was at the rustic lodge in the park, the gate of which swung hospitably open with the welcome announcement that I was expected. An avenue of near three quarters of a mile of firs, cedars, laburnums, and larches, wound through the park to the castle; and dipping over the edge of a deep and wild dell, I found the venerable old pile below me, its round towers and battlemented turrets frowning among the trees, and forming with the river, which swept round its base, one of the finest specimens imaginable of the feudal picturesque.^[1] The nicely-gravelled terraces, as I approached, the plate-glass windows and rich curtains, diminished somewhat of the romance; but I am not free to say that the promise they gave of the luxury within did not offer a succedaneum.

I was met at the threshold by the castle’s noble and distinguished master, and as the light modern gothic door swung open on its noiseless hinges, I looked up at the rude armorial scutcheon above, and at the slits for the port-cullis chains and the rough hollows in the walls which had served for its rest, and it seemed to me that the kind and polished earl, in his velvet cap, and the modern door on its patent hinges, were pleasant substitutes even for a raised drawbridge and a helmeted knight. I beg pardon of the romantic, if this be treason against Della Crusca.

The gong had sounded its first summons to dinner, and I went immediately to my room to achieve my toilet. I found myself in the south wing, with a glorious view up the valley of the Esk, and comforts about me such as are only found in a private chamber in England. The nicely-fitted carpet, the heavy curtains, the well-appointed dressing-table, the patent grate and its blazing fire (for where is a fire not welcome in Scotland?) the tapestry, the books, the boundless bed, the bell that will ring, and the servants that anticipate the pull——oh, you should have pined for comfort in France and Italy to know what this catalogue is worth.

After dinner, Lady Dalhousie, who is much of an invalid, mounted a small poney to show me the grounds. We took a winding path away from the door, and descended at once into the romantic dell over which the castle towers. It is naturally a most wild and precipitous glen, through which the rapid Esk pursues its way almost in darkness; but, leaving only the steep and rocky shelves leaning over the river with their crown of pines, the successive lords of Dalhousie have cultivated the banks and hills around for a park and a paradise. The smooth gravel walks cross and interweave, the smoother lawns sink and swell with their green bosoms, the stream dashes on murmuring below, and the lofty trees shadow and overhang all. At one extremity of the grounds are a flower and a fruit garden, and beyond it the castle farm; at the other, a little village of the family dependants, with their rose-imbowered cottages; and, as far as you would ramble in a day, extend the woods and glades, and hares leap across your path, and pheasants and partridges whirr up as you approach, and you may fatigue yourself in a scene that is formed in every feature from the gentle-born and the refined. The labor and the taste of successive generations can alone create such an Eden. Primogeniture! I half forgive thee.

The various views of the castle from the bottom of the dell are perfectly beautiful. With all its internal refinement, it is still the warlike fortress at a little distance, and bartizan and battlement bring boldly back the days when Bruce was at Hawthornden (six miles distant,) and Lord Dalhousie’s ancestor, the knightly Sir Alexander Ramsay, defended the ford of the Esk, and made himself a man in Scottish story in the days of Wallace and the Douglasses. Dalhousie was besieged by Edward the first and by John of Gaunt, among others, and being the nearest of a chain of castles from the Esk to the Pentland Hills, it was the scene of some pretty fighting in most of the wars of Scotland.

Lord Dalhousie showed me a singular old bridle-bit, the history of which is thus told in Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather:

“Sir Alexander Ramsay having taken by storm the strong castle of Roxburgh, the king bestowed on him the office of sheriff of the county, which was before engaged by the knight of Liddesdale. As this was placing another person in his room, the knight of Liddesdale altogether forgot his old friendship for Ramsay, and resolved to put him to death. He came suddenly upon him with a strong party of men while he was administering justice at Harwick. Ramsay, having no suspicion of injury from the hands of his old comrade, and having few men with him, was easily overpowered; and, being wounded, was hurried away to the lonely castle of the Hermitage, which stands in the middle of the morasses of Liddesdale. Here he was thrown into a dungeon (with his horse) where he had no other sustenance than some grain which fell down from a granary above; and, after lingering awhile in that dreadful condition, the brave Sir Alexander Ramsay died. This was in 1412. Nearly four hundred and fifty years afterward, that is, about forty years ago, a mason, digging among the ruins of Hermitage Castle, broke into a dungeon, where lay a quantity of chaff, some human bones and a bridle-bit, which were supposed to mark the vault as the place of Ramsay’s death. The bridle-bit was given to grandpapa, who presented it to the present gallant earl of Dalhousie, a brave soldier, like his ancestor, Sir Alexander Ramsay, from whom he is lineally descended.”

There is another singular story connected with the family which escaped Sir Walter, and which has never appeared in print. Lady Dalhousie is of the ancient family of Coulston, one of the ancestors of which, Brown of Coulston, married the daughter of the famous Warlock of Gifford, described in Marmion. As they were proceeding to the church, the wizard lord stopped the bridal procession beneath a pear-tree, and plucking one of the pears, he gave it to his daughter, telling her that he had no dowry to give her, but that as long as she kept that gift, good fortune would never desert her or her descendants. This was in 1270, and the pear is still preserved in a silver box. About two centuries ago, a maiden lady of the family chose to try her teeth upon it, and very soon after two of the best farms of the estate were lost in some litigation—the only misfortune that has befallen the inheritance of the Coulstons in six centuries—thanks (perhaps) to the Warlock pear!

[1]	“The castle of Dalhousie upon the South-Esk, is a strong and large castle, with a large wall of aslure work going round about the same, with a tower upon ilk corner thereof.”—Grose’s Antiquities.