110 Notes and Sketches. 



and by got to be well known as a zealous and suc- 

 cessful agricultural improver.* And it is in this 

 phase of his character that we have to look at him. 



That Laird Hacket of Inveramsay was decidedly in 

 advance of his time in his general notions of agricul- 

 ture, the traditions of the place, and even the outward 

 aspect of the home farm which he cultivated, testified 

 long after his day. He had been at pains to lay out 

 the land in well-arranged fields, which he duly en- 

 closed with fences, planting rows of ash and other 

 hardwood trees, where he thought it suitable and 

 necessary for shelter or ornament. And the more elderly 

 natives of the generation following that to which he 

 belonged had ever so many stories about Laird Hacket. 

 He was a Jacobite, as has been said, as well as an 

 ardent farmer, possessing in full measure the Jacobite 

 habit of swearing ; and so there came the long-lived 

 local bye-word " Like Laird Hacket : that bann't a' 

 the ouk an del't dockens on Sunday." He had a 

 portrait of the Pretender over the fire-place in his 

 sitting room, which he would gaze upon and apos- 

 troph^se, not always with perfect placidity, when he 

 thought of his own sufferings as a Royalist. Yet when 

 he went to chapel, being a faithful adherent of the 

 Episcopal faith, as prayer for the reigning sovereign 

 was offered up, his response would be an audible 

 groan in place of the orthodox Amen. At times, it is 

 said, his feelings found vent in even a more emphatic 

 form of expression. 



Let us sketch the personal appearance of this last 



* Among the local rebels taken prisoner in December, 1745, was 

 Mr. Smith, Junior, of Inveramsay ; and in the list of excepted 

 persons against whom an ignoramus verdict was returned in 1748 

 was David Smith of Inveramsay. 



The obituary notice of Mr. John Smith, Senior, which appeared 

 on October 30, 1750, ran thus : " Last week, died at Inveramsay, 

 aged near 100, John Smith of Inveramsay ; a gentleman who thro' 

 the various scenes of a long life, in all its different stations, had 

 the deserved character of an upright, honest man." His decease 

 allowed Hacket to succeed to the life-rent of the estate. 



