BOOKS.

THE JACOBITE LAIRDS OF GASK.* THIS is not a novel, as some might conjecture from its title ; on the contrary, it has what people enervated by much novel-reading may think the disadvantage of being true. The Oliphants of Gask were an old Perthshire family, akin to the now extinct peerage of the same name, who suffered many things for their active support of the losing Stuart cause in the '45 ; and their his- tory in those times is now set forth from their own papers still preserved at Gask, the writings being generally allowed to speak for themselves. The memoir does not throw any particular light on any important matters of historic doubt, but it is decidedly worth reading, because it brings very clearly before us the men and the times, and represents faithfully the style and manner of what was done and said and thought by Jacobites of the worthiest type,—during the long years of foreign exile, as well as amid more active scenes, when the game was yet being played. Jacobitism lingered as long in this family as in any. The second of these Jacobite lairds, who died in 1792, is identified by the editor as the "well-known Perthahire gentleman" to whom George III.

• The Jacobite Lairds of Gast. By T. L. Eington Oliphant. 1'111)1181nd for the Grampian Club. London: Griffin and Co.

sent his compliments as Elector of Hanover. He was the father of dy Nairne, the sweet singer to whom we owe so much for " Auld Robin Gray " and other ballads, and who wrote Jacobite songs down to 1820. While reading these contemporary records of the '15 and the '45, one cannot repress a feeling of wonder at finding these Lowland gentlemen, shrewd, capable men, with perfect honesty and chivalrous self-sacrifice devoting their entire energies to placing Charles Edward and his father on the throne of Great Britain. Their case is so different from that of the unreasoning unstable Highlanders, who saw little beyond each day's fighting, and had never owed any practical allegiance to either dynasty. Almost all our motives of action are highly composite. In this case there would be manifold ingredients. Though the Union which James I. coveted a hundred years before had been legally completed in 1707, the nationalities north and south of the Tweed were still two peoples; the sympathies of the Scotch had been rather with the French than with the English, and there was still a soreness and jealousy against England. It was their own Royal family which had been trans- planted from Holyrood to St. James's, and thence twice rudely flung away. Moreover, the Lowland Scotchmen (the Highland tribes are, of course, out of the calculation entirely) had not tasted, as the

English had, the unpleasant fruits of the instinct of misgovern- ment displayed by the Stuarts from the day when James VI. was promoted to be James I. Twice had the Stuart passed the bounds of national endurance, and yet all that while the people between Forth and Tweed, lying remote from the Imperial Court, and with their own separate Parliament, were beyond the reach of much that galled the English to the very quick. The Scotch- man, had supplied, at the Englishman's instance, a family of Scotch kings to reign over Scotland and England together, and now, by some arrangement hatched up at London, the Scotch dynasty was thrust out and a German one installed.

The Oliphants came pretty easily out of the '15, because, though other members were active enough, the then head of the family took no part in that rising. Laurence Oliphant, his eldest son, rode as lieutenant in the Perthshire squadron of horse, under the Earl of Mar, and was in hiding for a short while after. The family were yet to get badly scotched in the '45. Among the papers printed here is the rough draft of a Royal Proclamation never issued, addressed by James to his Scotch adherents upon his retreat to France. It is a dismal qui s'excuse-s'dccuse sort of document, and a great contrast to the declaration formally promulgated from Commercy in October, 1715. His only wish is and ever has been for their freedom and happiness ; he would have come to them before, but for unlucky accidents. He was not discouraged by the " dismall prospect " at his arrival, but affairs grew daily worse ; friends slow of declaring, the defeat at Preston, no succours, the sea-ports lost, the enemy well placed,— all convinced him there was no present hope. His only aim then was to secure their lives, " in such a manner as to be put again in a more favourable occasion." His stay among them could only be their destruction ; therefore he repassed the seas, leaving General Gordon in command, obliged by " cruel necessity to leave them, but only to prosecute their welfare. Nothing but positive command prevented the Earl of Mar from staying to share their misfortunes, but "his probity and experience make his presence absolutely necessary with me."

In 1719 the quondam Lieutenant of Perthshire horse married a daughter of the second Lord Nairne (another staunch Jacobite house), through whom his descendants might claim lineage with William the Silent. On his father's death, in 1732, he became " Gask." As a landlord, this sturdy and honourable gentleman seems to have been of rather an arbitrary turn, though, consider- ing the amount of feudalism in Scotland, perhaps not unusually so. About 1740, he had a difference with the parish of Gask respecting the appointment of a minister, he being bent on giving them one Mr. McLeish, and the parishioners not desiring the same ; on this the laird wrote that " common sense must tell them that it is madness to oppose their master and disoblige him, when that minister whom the Earl of Kinowl and Gash are for settling will be placed here, whether they will or not." They manage these things differently in Scotland now-a-days. It was an ill day for the family at Gask when its laird rammed Mr. McLeiah down the throats of the congregation ; a few years more and the minister wrought the retribution himself. In the '45 Gask and his son (another Laurence) were " out " among the foremost; the father was hard-worked as deputy-governor and treasurer to the forces at Perth, and the son became one of the Prince's aides-de-camp. Some of hic tenants not coming out as fast as he wished, the old laird, by wayof forcing them to his will, actually laid an inhibitionontheir crops, forbidding them to reap or feed their beasts with the dead-ripe grain. Here was feudalism indeed ! Young Mr. Laurence was at Preston Pans and Falkirk, and describes Johnny Cope's rout with his own pen. Immediately after the last-named engagement he was despatched into Edinburgh, " to get out surgeons and cause shut ye ports against straglers," &c. Then, while the father stayed North, providing the sinews of war by getting in taxes and customs and forwarding troops and cannon, the son marched to Derby with Charles Edward. Young Oliphant suffered all his life from the effects of the hardships endured on this march. Unfortunately he seems to have left scarcely any account of this part of the rebellion. Writers have speculated much on what would have been the upshot if the Prince's army had pursued their march on London, in that December, 1745, instead of turning back at Derby. Lord Mahon, for instance, thinks the result would have been reversed ; the Chevalier Johnstone, an eye-witness, seems to have thought differently. But speculation on what might have been is an endless task. If Henry Stuart had lived, Cromwell might have remained " guiltless of his country's blood ;" and if Henry Cromwell had succeeded Oliver instead of Richard, there might never have been a Restoration in 1660, to lead to the Revolution of 1688. This volume is well-nigh silent as to the march into England, but the general impression which it gives us of the rising is of plenty of enthusiasm within a small circle and very little real strength.

The slaughter among the Highlanders at Culloden is usually attributed to the Duke of Cumberland's device of getting inside their targets by ordering his front rank to thrust bayonets diago- nally, instead of each man stabbing at the Highlander straight opposite him. But it seems from a MS. quoted here that the Highlanders had flung away their targets before the battle, to lighten their march. Still the Duke may have bit on the plan. As to the reliance to be placed on these undisciplined levies, with all their dash and hardihood, the editor observes that a victory was commonly as fatal as a defeat to a Celtic host, and quotes a remark made at the time by one competent to judge, that " every man that knows the Highlanders might lay his accounts with their marching home after a scuffle." They had not been burdened by obedience to Sovereigns of either dynasty, and can have cared but little for the ultimate object of the marching and fighting.

After Culloden, the Oliphants, father and son, both having been attainted, lay in hiding up and down the Highlands, till at last, with a cargo of other refugees, they managed to get across to Gottenburg, whence they travelled by land to Paris. Their exile endured for seventeen years, during which time the old laird jotted methodically in his diary all sorts of matters which struck him,- e.g., that in Sweden " the Ladys have their heads and hair much after the British way. When you'r introduced to them, they never salute you by giveing a Kiss," and that at Toulouse he saw " the Electrical Machine," and " a large Foul called the Assifrago, begote by a Sea-Eagle, and brought from Africa." It seems that after the final disaster, he had been urged to attempt some illusory con- veyance of the estates, to preserve them if possible from the impending confiscation. But this he could not bring himself to do. He wrote to his wife :—" If I should be robbed of my all, I'll never give a lie under my hand. It, however, does not a little vex me that you and the girls should share in the misfortunes of the times." The estates were confiscated, and for a time the family were penniless ; a plan, however, was carefully matured, by which a part was preserved to them. Some relations made a contract among themselves to buy (on secret trust for the family) at the Government sale. Their bidding was not opposed ; part of the purchase-money was raised by a resale of portions, and the rest was borrowed, to be liquidated by a sinking fund. For immediate subsistence there was nothing but the French "gratifi- cations." The French Court seems to have been liberal, but the exiles found themselves pinched, and Gask was not a man fond of asking. In 1748 he writes :—" My funds of subsisting I doubt will soon turn low ; but rather than be in the least a burden to my Prince, I'll choose to half starve." And a few months later, to one who had advised him to put forward his claims :- " My going to dun and solicite for subsistence is quite cross to my complexion. If we have done nothing worth being considered or thought of, we should not be provided for ; and if it's belived we were of any service in our Master's cause, I'l hope something may be done for us ; but I'l be reduced very low before I use Importunitys."

Lady Gask, who remained to keep matters together in Perth- shire, was sorely annoyed by the course taken by Mr. McLeish. As soon as the Government soldiers appeared at Gask, this minister " left off praying for the family in church," insisted on cutting his peaty in the Gask bogs, was impertinent to poor Lady Gask, and did all in his power to add to the family misfortunes.

Of course, the house was soon searched by the troops. It was known to contain some colours taken at Preston Pans. Mr.

McLeish was eagerly on the look-out for these, but a maid had stuffed them down the pump as the soldiers came in, and they remained undetected.

The father and son retained all their lives their, chivalrous devotion to the family whom they deemed their rightful Sovereigns, and they joined during their exile in a little plot designed to raise Charles Edward from the unhappy state of moody gloom into which he fell, and to induce him to declare himself a Protestant and marry a Protestant wife. Young Oliphant got snubbed by Lord Alford for his handling of that matter. Gask, however, obtained from the Prince an assurance that,—" I shall live and

die in the religion of the Church of England, which I have embraced." At length, in the seventeenth year of their exile, the Oliphants began to think seriously of returning. The reasons for and against Gask's going home again are set out in a terse, busi- ness-like manner, which has become scarcer in these days, when writing is cheaper and folks do not find so much occasion to weigh their words. Among the cons are :- "Leaving his Superior [the Prince] when everybody seems to abandon him, and when he stands in need of Honest men to be near him."

" The danger of often being shagreen'd and his temper ruffled at finding his Planting, Dikes, Hedges, Enclosures, Gardens, and House in a decayed situation, and funds wanting to repair them."

"Living at home without enjoying ye Priviledges of a Native, or freedom of Sentiment, and in most of his affairs must act by others, and wait their motions."

"The Purchasers [the trustees who had secured the estate for him] perhaps differing with him in opinion about selling more land, a proper Settlement of the estate for their security, &c. He not altogether satis- fied with them, not being able easyly to help freating at their not manageing some Transactions better • which, on the other hand, would disgust him, as on the whole he is highly obliged to them, and no doubt they think so."

The pros carried the day ; the Oliphants came back. George III. was now king, and their countryman, Lord Bute, in power. They had lost much of their estate and position, but they suffered no further disturbance. The old laird died in 1767, and from thence to 1792 young Laurence reigned in his stead. In 1769 he visited his prince, now "king," for the last time, at Rome; he found him not comfortably situated about religious matters, though well and well off in other respects, and once more renewed, but in vain, the old solicitation that Charles should take a Protestant wife.. In the next generation the Oliphant politics softened down from high Jacobitism to high Toryism. The grandson of the Lieu- tenant of Perthshire horse of the '15 joined a regiment of Perth- shire horse under George III. But Lady Nairne, the poetess, kept alight the flame of Jacobitism even after the failure of James' issue. In 1847 the Oliphant family of Gask became extinct in the male line.

Like many other writers, Mr. Kington Oliphant is severe on the Duke of Cumberland. In 1746 the Duke was lauded to the skies ; taverns were named after him, church-bells were inscribed in com- memoration of his triumph ; then came a revulsion. Macaulay has explained how in their new found sympathy for the High- landers, a people hitherto unknown and almost mythical, " those very Londoners who, while the memory of Derby was still fresh, had thronged to hoot and pelt the rebel prisoners, now fastened on the prince who had put down the rebellion the nickname of Butcher." Mr. Kington Oliphant repeats from Brown's History and Johnstone's Memoirs the charge against the Duke that, the rebels having released their prisoners on parole of not bearing arms against Charles Edward again, the Duke ordered the officers to rejoin their regiments on pain of being cashiered. Brown and Johnstone are such biassed writers that we should hesitate to call names on the strength of their innuendoes. But assuming that the Duke did command those officers to resume service on pain of losing their commissions, that does not suffice to support the accusation. Charles Edward's followers were never recognized by the Imperial Government as belligerents, or as any other than rebels in arms. If a hundred and twenty years ago a commander-in-chief refused to recognize a parole so passed by his officers to rebels in arms, that is not enough to fasten on him such epithets as " infamy," " meanness," and " blackest stain that ever sullied the honour of the British Army." The Duke certainly behaved well enough to the unfortunate ladies who were left alone at Gask just before Culloden ; there being a suspicion that one of his officers had demanded and taken moneyfrom the ladies, theD uke was at some trouble to insist on a aiftingof the matter, and the charge being substantiated, the officer was promptly court-martialed and

broke. We do not undertake to be Cumberland's apologists; we are only anxious that he should get justice, and all the more so, because he is a character whom it is fashionable to use rather scurvily. Charles Edward is not an exalted character, but the picturesque hardships which he underwent have earned for him a large amount of sentimental sympathy where his conqueror gets only hard measure,—very bard indeed, and not just, from Mr. Kington Oliphant. However, we can excuse a man for imbibing a bias from the suffering of his own immediate ancestors, and all con- sidered, Mr. Kington Oliphant writes very fairly and impartially. Without wearying the reader with matters of merely personal interest, he has made a very interesting selection from the Oliphant papers, and his own part of the narrative is written tersely and happily, and with a thorough knowledge of the history of the period.