t the period of the first insurrection, John
Forbes, a worthy representative of an honourable, consistent, and
spirited family. The younger brother of John Forbes was the celebrated
Duncan Forbes, a man whose toleration of Lord Lovat, not to say
countenance of that compound of violence and duplicity, seems to be the
only incomprehensible portion of his lofty and beautiful character.

"Duncan Forbes was born," observes a modern writer, "of parents who
transmitted their estate to his elder brother, and to all their children
an hereditary aversion to the house of Stuart, which they appear to have
resisted from the very commencement of the civil wars, and upon the true
grounds on which that resistance ought to have been made."[200] By a
singular fortune the hereditary estates of Culloden and Ferintosh had
been ravaged, the year after the Revolution, by the soldiers of Buchan
and Cannon, on account of the Jacobite principles of the owners. A
liberal compensation was made in the form of a perpetual grant of a
liberty to distil into spirits the grain of the Barony of Ferintosh,--a
name which has become almost as famous as that of Culloden. It was the
subsequent fate of Culloden to witness on its Moors the total
destruction of that cause which its owners had so long resisted and
deprecated.

Duncan Forbes, who, during a course of many years, was bound by an
inexplicable alliance with Lovat, was at this period about thirty years
of age. He had already attained the highest reputation for eloquence,
assiduity, and learning at the Scottish bar, and during his frequent
opportunities for display before the House of Lords. But it was his
personal character, during a period of vacillating principles, and
almost of disturbed national reason, which obtained that singular and
benignant influence over his fellow-countrymen for which the life of
Duncan Forbes is far more remarkable, far more admirable, than for the
exercise of his brilliant and varied talents. He had "raised himself,"
observes the same discriminating commentator on his life and
correspondence, "to the high station which he afterwards held by the
unassisted excellence of a noble character, by the force of which he had
previously won and adorned all the subordinate gradations of
office."[201] He adorned this unenvied and unsullied pinnacle of fame
by virtues of which the record is ennobling to the mind. "He is,"
observes another writer, "in every situation, so full of honour