fond superstition of ancient race, to which the Scot in all his developments is prone, may be accepted as an excuse for this unfortunately somewhat vague and not very brilliant passage of history. We have not, I fear, been very remarkable as a race. After the first somewhat misty heroes of the past, the house appears only in the occasional mention of a name here and there,—when a Lord Oliphant witnessed a royal charter, or lent his silent support to a protest or revolt of the Scots nobility of his time. There is a page in a manuscript of the seventeenth century, preserved in the Heralds' College, which sums up their dispositions in words very quaint and graphic, and very satisfactory in the point of view of the domestic virtues, but not, perhaps, indicative of

much greatness. "The Lord Oliphant.-This baron," says that anonymous authority, "is not of great renown, but yet he hath good landes and profitable; a house very loyal to the Kings of Scotland; accounted no orators in theyr wordes nor yet foolish in theyr deedes. They do not surmount in theyr alliances, but are content with theyr worshipful neighbours." "As for the antiquity of the family and sirname," says Nisbet in his 'System of Heraldry,' in the chapter which treats of "Celestial Figures; the Sun, Moon, and Stars," to which the bearings of the family belong,

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"there was an eminent baron of that name who accompanied King David I. to the siege of Winchester in England in the year 1142, named David de Oliphard; and the same man or another of that name is to be found frequently a witness to that king's charters; and particularly (says Mr Crawfurd, in his 'Peerage') in that to the Priory of Coldingham, whereto his seal is appended, which has thereupon three crescents, which clearly prove him to be the ancestor of the noble family of Oliphant, who still bear the same figures in their ensign armorial.”

In the Scottish War of Independence, Sir William Oliphant of Aberdalgy, in Forfarshire, the acknowledged head of the house, held Stirling Castle against the English; but was not, I fear, quite free of the intrigues of the time, and those occasional changes of side which even the great Bruce himself, before he settled into his noble career, was sometimes betrayed into. His son was, however, rewarded for their exertions in the cause of their country by the hand of Elizabeth Bruce, the king's daughter, who was not indeed a legitimate princess-but the distinction counted for little in those days. A generation or two later, the heir of the house acquired some portion of the estate of Kellie in Fifeshire, upon which he settled his second son, Walter Oliphant, my own

ancestor, and the founder, it is believed, of the picturesque old house called Kellie Castle, in the rural parish of Carnbee, still standing in perfect repair, and most admirably restored by its late inmate, Professor Lorimer of Edinburgh. The barony was conferred afterwards upon the head of the house in 1467. It was renewed on failure of the direct male line by Charles I. in 1657, and became extinct in 1751. In the meantime the family threw off many branches, one of the latest of which was that of Condie, which bears the three crescents, "within a bordure counter compony gules and argent," and changed the original crest of a Unicorn's head to that of "a Falcon volant," and the old thrifty motto A Tout pourvoir, which, I am proud to say, was retained by the Kellie branch, into the newer fashion of a Latin proverb, Altiora Peto, of which, the reader will remember, the most brilliant descendant of the house of Condie made in after days a whimsical use.

I am grieved to say that none, of the many branches of the house have done anything very remarkable in life. The Jacobite Lairds of Gask have supplied an interesting volume to Scots family history by means of their present representative, Mr Kington Oliphant, whose own achievements in philology and cognate subjects

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are not small; and Caroline Oliphant, afterwards Lady Nairne, of the same family, was one of the band of women-poets, full of the native music and delightful natural sentiment of their country, who have left so pleasant and so bright a tradition behind them. Perhaps no work of genius ever gained a more universal or delightful fame for its author than the song, "The Land o' the Leal," written by this accomplished woman, has done. Otherwise the record of the name is like the shield of Sir Torr--void of achievement. The house of Condie was no exception to this law country gentlemen, Scots lawyers, a soldier brother now and then, have maintained the worthy tradition of one of those plain Scotch families, in whose absence of distinction so much modest service to their country is implied. Anthony Oliphant, a second son of the house, went farther afield than to the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and found his fortune in the colonies, where he held various dignified posts. Sixty years ago he was Attorney-General at the Cape, where he married Miss Maria Campbell, the daughter of Colonel Campbell of the 72d Highlanders, and his wife, a member of the large and important family of Cloete; and there, at Cape Town, in the year 1829, Laurence was born. He was the only child of a pair both of

whom were notable in their way: she, full of the vivacity and character which descended to her son; he also a man of much individual power and originality, an excellent lawyer and trusted official. Both were deeply stamped with the form of religious feeling which was most general among pious minds at the time. There is no scorn of religion implied in the fact that it too has its fashions, which shape in successive waves the generations as they go. This couple were evangelical in their sentiments, after the strictest fashion of that devout and much-abused form of faith. The constant self-examination, the minute and scrupulous record of every little backsliding, the horror of those gaieties and seductions of the world (much modified, in fact, by that considerable share in them which their position made necessary), which were but too agreeable to the social instincts of both, is characteristically evident in a letter which Sir Anthony, then Chief-Justice of Ceylon, addressed to his little son Laurence, ten years old, at that time in England with his mother, and whose tender mind the parents were so anxious to train into the ways of godliness. The glimpse this letter gives of the natural man, a little warm of temper, a little rash in ejaculation, underneath the cloak of the conscientious Christian, who felt that for every idle word he would be called to