e tall larches and magnificent horse-chestnuts, and even a
few immemorial Spanish chestnuts planted by the old Peterboroughs, now
all gone. Along that river bank were some of the broadest haughs with
which I am acquainted, and some of the best salmon streams, then woods
and sheep pastures and a dozen miles of heather hills--up to
Cairn-monearn and Kerloach--giving the best grouse-shooting in the
country. It is in truth a charming water-side even in the eyes of a
critical old man, or of a tourist in search of the picturesque; but for
a boy who lived there, shot, and fished there, while all the houses
round were the dwellings of cousins and friends, while game was not yet
let for hire, it was a place to win that boy's heart, and I loved it
very heartily. We were the nearest neighbours on one side of that
cluster of residences of the Burnetts and Douglases and Russells which I
have tried to describe. We were all very good friends, and thus the Dean
and I were early acquainted.

I have said little of the Dean's ancestors, merely named the Burnetts
and Bannermans. Indeed I would guard against loading my memoir of the
Dean with anything like mere pedigree. I take no interest in his
ancestry, except in so far as they may have given a character--so far as
he may have inherited his personal qualities from them. I will not dwell
then upon Alexander de Burnard, who had his charter from Robert the
Bruce of the Deeside lands which his descendants still hold, nor even on
the first Lairds of Leys. When the Reformation blazed over Scotland, the
Baron of Leys and his kindred favoured and led the party that supported
the new faith; but, even in that iconoclastic age, two of them are found
protesting against the destruction of religious places at Aberdeen. One,
Gilbert Burnett (he was grand-uncle of the Bishop of Sarum), enjoyed
considerable reputation abroad for certain philosophical writings. He
was Professor of Philosophy, first at Basle and afterwards at Montauban,
and a general synod of the French Protestants desired that his works
should be printed at the expense of the synod. These _Dissertationes
Ethicae_ were accordingly published at Leyden in 1649; but his death
prevented his other writings from being published. Two brothers of the
same generation, Thomas and Duncan, settled in England as physicians,
and seem to have been men of literary eminence. Pedigrees of both are to
be found in the Herald's Visitations of Essex and Norfolk.