Castle of Dunottar, the chief seat of the family-a mansion perched on a tremendous rock, overhanging the German ocean, and which, as well from the extent of its ruins, as its picturesque position, is one of the most remarkable objects in the north of Scotland. In her sleep she saw a long procession of ecclesiastics, clad in the habit of the Cistercian order, issuing from the Abbey of Deir, and advancing to the strong and steep rock on which Dunottar Castle is situated. She saw them set themselves round the foot of the rock, and taking penknives out of their pockets, begin to pick and cut the hard rock, as if with the intention of demolishing it. The Countess, in her sleep, wondered at the folly of these poor monks, who were attempting so great a work with such inadequate instruments, and she went to call her husband, in order to join with her in deriding them, and in calling on them to cease their fruitless labour. When, full of mirth, she brought him along with her to see the poor monks at their foolish work, behold, the entire rock, with the strong and stately castle, had already been undermined by the work of their penknives, and had toppled over into the ocean; so that there remained nothing but the wreck of their rich furniture and tapestries floating on the waves of a raging and tempestuous sea. Dunottar had sunk, and the very place on which it stood had perished for ever. The Earl mocked the popular superstitions, and his wife's foreboding vision. He inscribed on a tower which he built at the Abbey of Deir, this defiant motto "They have said; what say they, let them say." He seems to have regarded his munificent foundation of Marischal College, in Aberdeen, with its principal and four professors of philosophy, whom he richly endowed, as a sort of salve to his conscience for the church lands which he had acquired. He founded this college immediately after he had become possessed of the Lordship of Altrie, with the Cistercian temporalities, and he repeated the same legend that he had inscribed on the abbey tower, on the walls of his new college. The riches and grandeur of the house of Keith-Marischal probably appeared to the Earl to be as firmly established as the Castle of Dunottar on its lofty rock beetling above the North Sea. What would he have thought, if he could have foreseen that in little more than ninety years from the time of his death, his descendants would be deprived of their lands and titles, and were to be wandering exiles in a foreign country; and that in somewhat more than half a century later, the last male descendant of the Earls Marischal was to close his long, lingering existence in the service of a German prince, leaving behind him no direct heir male of his illustrious family to claim even the empty honour of representing the house of Marischal: while the ancient and strong fortress of Dunottar should stand roofless and grass-grown, and, except as a melancholy landmark to the ships sailing beneath its walls, might as well be crumbled beneath the waves that beat against the cliffs on which it is reared. The two next generations of the family of Keith matched with the houses of Marr and Kinnoul. William, ninth Earl Marischal, the great-grandson of the fifth Earl, married the eldest daughter of James, Earl of Perth, Lord High Chancellor, created Duke by the exiled monarch at St. Germains, by whom he had, with a daughter who carried on the blood of the family, two sons, the last of their line-George, tenth Earl Marischal, and James Keith. These two brothers achieved an European reputation through their own merits, and were even more conspicuous in exile than they might have become in possession of their hereditary lands and honours. A rash participation in the Stuart rising in 1715, deprived them of their family inheritance, and sent them into a life-long exile. They, however, prospered in a foreign land, and rose to high consideration in the Prussian service, where the Earl Marischal became one of the most intimate friends and trusted diplomatists of Frederick the Great; and James Keith was his most distinguished Field Marshal. The former died at Potsdam, aged eighty-six, in 1778, and the latter was killed twenty years earlier, at the battle of Hochkirchen. Neither of these distinguished brothers having been married, the great house of Keith Marischal ended in them; for although several Scottish families of Keith are derived from cadet branches of this great house, their descent is remote, and the representation of the Earls Marischal devolved on Lady Clementina Fleming as their heir general. She was daughter of John, sixth Earl of Wigton, by Lady Mary Keith, elder sister of the last Earl, and of Field Marshal Keith. This lady possessed the purest blood of the highest aristocracy, unmixed with even a drop of minor nobility; her eight great-great-grandfathers being Earls or Marquesses, and her eight great-great-grandmothers being the daughters of Earls or Marquesses. She was heir of line, or heir general, of the Earls of Wigton, Marischal, and Perth; and she carried this high descent, by marriage, into the family of Elphinstone, in 1735. She died in 1799, leaving issue I. John, eleventh Lord Elphinstone, grandfather of John, thirteenth, and John, fourteenth Lords Elphinstone, and of Clementina Viscountess Hawarden, now heir of line of Elphinstone, Wigton, Marischal, and Perth. II. William, grandfather of William, present and fifteenth Lord Elphinstone. ⚫ III. George, a distinguished Admiral, created Viscount Keith, father of Margaret, Baroness Keith and Nairne, wife of Count de Flahault, and of Georgiana, wife of the Honourable Augustus Villiers. I. Eleanor, wife of the Right Honourable William Adam, Baron of Exchequer, and Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court of Scotland, and Lord Lieutenant of the county of Kinross, mother of Admiral Sir Charles Adam, K.C.B.; the Right Honourable General Sir Frederick Adam, G.C.B., Governor of Madras, and Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Isles; and of Clementina, wife of John Anstruther Thomson, of Charleton. II. Clementina, wife of James Drummond, Lord Perth, mother of Clementina, heiress of the Perth estates, wife of Lord Willoughby de Eresby. Self-Reliance. "L'histoire que je vais vous conter est simple, tellement simple, que jamais plume peutêtre n'aborda un sujet plus restreint. La verité des faits est toute sa valeur."-DUMAS. MR. MANSERGH, of Macroney Castle, a country gentleman of the South of Ireland, has communicated to me a very interesting instance of the fall of a distinguished family which came within his own immediate knowledge; and he has accorded me the permission to publish his letter, which tells the simple story so clearly and so feelingly, that I am sure my readers will value it the more, as coming directly from the person to whom all the circumstances are familiar. DEAR SIR, Macroney Castle, Kilworth, About twenty years ago, I was intimate with a gentleman of whose name I must, for obvious reasons, be excused from giving more than the initial. Mr. C was a man of high position in his county; he was a magistrate and deputy lieutenant, and represented |