brought that name into such fashionable repute that in 1173 Sir William de St John and Sir William Fitz Hamon gave a dinner-party at the Court of Henry II. to which only knights bearing the name of William were invited. No fewer than one hundred and twenty guests sat down to table. So William the son of Freskin having great possessions in the province of Murmhagh 1 or Moray, it was natural that he should become known officially as Gulielmus de Moravia, and familiarly as William of Moray.

From this William of Moray the Scottish houses of Tullibardine and Abercairney trace their descent. William Murray, second Earl of Tullibardine, married, first, in 1602, Cecilia, eldest daughter of Sir John Wemyss of that ilk; and second, Lady Dorothea Stewart, eldest daughter of John Stewart, fifth Earl of Athol. On the decease of this earl without male issue the earldom reverted to the Crown; but John Murray, eldest son of the Earl of Tullibardine and Lady Dorothea, afterwards obtained a new grant from Charles I., whereby in 1629 he became first Earl of Athol of the house of Murray. He was suc

1 Pronounce "Muragh" a Gaelic compound, signifying land beside the sea. The Manx word mooiragh is used at this day to denote "a waste by the sea," and there are several seaside farms in Lowland Scotland called Morrach.

ceeded by his son John, who in 1676 was created Marquis of Athol. He married Lady Amelia Stanley, only daughter of James, seventh Earl of Derby, by his famous countess, Charlotte de la Tremouille. The marquis's eldest son, John, was created Duke of Athol in 1703; his second son, Lord Charles Murray, Master of the Horse to Queen Mary, having been raised to the peerage in 1686 by the titles of Lord Murray of Blair, Moulin, and Tillymott, Viscount Fincastle, and Earl of Dunmore. Fourth in descent from this earl came George, fifth Earl of Dunmore, born in 1762, and created a peer of the United Kingdom in 1831 as Baron Dunmore of Dunmore. He married on 3rd August 1803 Lady Susan Hamilton, daughter of Archibald, ninth Duke of Hamilton, by whom he had three sons-Alexander Edward, who succeeded him in 1836 as sixth Earl of Dunmore; Charles Augustus, the subject of the present memoir; and Henry Anthony, afterwards Rear - Admiral in the Royal Navy.

Charles Augustus Murray was born on 22nd November 1806. Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, sixth son of George III., stood sponsor to him, being his uncle by marriage with Lady Augusta, daughter of the fourth Earl of

Dunmore. The earliest historic allusion to the child occurs in a letter to his mother, then Lady Susan Fincastle, from Samuel Rogers. It is a long letter, for in those days letters had to be made to compensate for heavy postage by being filled in every corner of the large sheets with news of every description. Here is an extract from it :

Samuel Rogers to the Countess of Dunmore.

"WOOLBEDING, November 8th, 1807. "I hope the little boys are growing all day long -they have now, you know, nothing else to do. What an age it is since Mr M.1 threw his little round person into the sofa in Berkeley Square! He and his brother Charles together must now be more than a match for the turkey-cock, and must by this time be learning to dance, ride, and flirt with the ladies, as men of fashion ought to do. . . . Pray kiss them both for me, though Mr M. has now, I daresay, no recollection of any of us.

"You are so kind as to ask after my poem. It was in the press the other day, when, as good luck would have it, a fire broke out at the printer's, and consumed it among other precious MSS. Perhaps you will ask how I have spent the summer -in visiting about, I believe. I could almost wish I had gone to Tunbridge, if it was but to see Mary Godfrey's pas seul upon the Pantiles."

1 Alexander Edward Murray, afterwards sixth Earl of Dunmore.

The Same to the Same.

"ST JAMES'S PLACE, May Day, 1808.

"I saw a young man yesterday who has just spent a month with Madame Potocki while Lord D. was there (who is now gone, he says, to Vienna). By his account she is a very beautiful woman of fifty, her children are cherubs, and she lives in a style of magnificence of which we have no idea. Apropos of cherubs, so Mr Murray is no longer one-he is a man grown, it seems, and buttons his coat and wears his hat as fiercely as other men. Well, I shall never forgive him if he loses a look he had once-but that is impossible. And his little words, No, mama-Yes, mama-How d'ye do, horses?' are they as sweet as ever? As for his brother-Cupid, your picture of him makes me mad to see him; but whenever that great event takes place, we shall meet, alas! like two strangers from distant planets. Poor little M. himself must have now no more remembrance of our friendship than of those he contracted some years ago in a pre-existent state. Pray, what is his father the Laird about just now? Is he walking deck or is he climbing a mountain? Is he draining or planting, or enclosing or damming or building? Everybody I meet has received a letter from him as long as the road to Edinburgh. Seriously speaking, I do believe he never vouchsafes a line but to Lady Barbara, who is as proud of it as Lucifer, and if it was not for you who give signs of life now and

then, we might conclude he had gone to explore Africa or the moon, or anything else."

The friendship between the Fincastles and Samuel Rogers was very close and enduring. The following notice of the poet occurs among the fragmentary notes which Sir Charles Murray, at the repeated instance of his family, began to put together in his eighty-sixth year :—

"One of the earliest things that I can recollect, when I was, I suppose, six or seven years old, was a visit from a very dear and old friend of my parents-Samuel Rogers, the poet-who has himself recorded that visit in some very pretty lines, which have since been reprinted in the well-known volume called The Pleasures of Memory.""

At that time Lord and Lady Fincastle rented a lovely place, Glen Finart, on the northern shore of Loch Long, in Argyleshire. The Highlands had not come into fashion yet, though the tide of tourists was shortly to begin to flow-the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel' having been published in 1805. But so far, whatever curiosity people might have to explore the mountainous west was severely kept in check by the physical difficulties of travel. To realise how complete was the seclusion of Glen Finart in those far-off days, one