ARDGOWAN 



the country has altered since his day. That was an 

 age when an English traveller returning to London 

 from a tour in Scotland, described his impressions 

 thus succinctly : 



" Bleak mountains and desolate rocks 



Were the wretched result of our pains ; 



The swains greater brutes than their flocks, 



The nymphs as polite as their swains." 



At the close of the eighteenth century, the greater 

 part of Renfrewshire was brown moorland. Grey rocks 

 were too common to be thought picturesque ; the 

 landscape gardener's business was to make his em- 

 ployer's park appear like a smooth oasis in the 

 surrounding wilderness. In these our days, when 

 every farmer's ambition is to make two blades of 

 grass, or two turnips, grow where one grew before, 

 we have changed our feeling in this matter. We 

 pile up mimic crags and miniature alps in feeble 

 imitation of the boulders and heather which our 

 ancestors were at so much pains to get rid off, and 

 pronounce that part of our pleasure grounds most 

 delectable which most nearly resembles the primaeval 

 wild. Rockeries, water-gardens, wild-gardens, bog- 

 gardens all are symptoms of reaction from excessive 

 trimness and formality. 



Upon the new house was bestowed the name 

 of Ardgowan, as the lands were called which Robert 

 III. bestowed in 1403 upon his natural son Sir 

 John Stewart, having previously given him the 

 estates of Auchingoun and Blackball in 1390 and 



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