THE DUCHESS-COUNTESS. 91 



and accomplishments, and of exceptional beauty, and has 

 left behind her hundreds of water-colour drawings, which 

 are far superior to the efforts of most amateurs. She was 

 also a great friend and supporter of many of the artists of 

 her day, and in every way must be regarded as one of the 

 grandes dames of her age. She had the proud distinction 

 of being descended from the Royal House of Scotland, for 

 one of the Earls of Sutherland wedded a daughter of the 

 Bruce, and consequently it was her right to bear before 

 the Monarch, when crowned King of Scotland, the great 

 sword of state, and through the Duchess-Countess the 

 present Duke has the right to quarter the Royal Arms with 

 his own. There is a lovely portrait of the Duchess-Countess 

 at Trentham.* The second Marquis and first Duke was 

 not, apparently, a man of ambition or of striking talent, 

 but he was evidently a model landlord, a good friend to 

 art and artists, and deserves to be remembered as having 

 presented to the nation the finest Rubens now in the 

 National Gallery, and as having, at his own expense, 

 formed no less than four hundred and fifty miles of capital 

 public roads in Sutherlandshire, where none had previously 

 existed at all. He died at Dunrobin in 1833, only a few 

 months a^ter the creation of the dukedom. 



The Duchess-Countess survived the first Duke nearly 

 six years, dying at an advanced age in the year 1839. It 

 was through this marriage that Dunrobin Castle, the 

 " lordly castle by the sea," of which we reproduce a 

 photograph in this volume, came into the possession of 

 the Leveson-Gower family. Of this castle Lord Ronald 

 Gower well says — 



" Both for its beauty and its site, Dunrobin is lilce a poet's dream realized. 

 Though far grander are the historic castles on the Loire, ro^^al Pau, and imperial 

 Heidelberg, and richer in legend, lore, and story a hundred castles on the Rhine, 

 yet none of these has, like the home of Macbeth, ' a more pleasant seat ' than 

 the old stronghold of the thanes and earls of Sutherland. So far back as the 

 end of the eleventh century, Dunrobin — then but a kernel of the present pile — was 

 inhabited by the ancestors of the race who still pass the close of summer within 

 its walls. It even claims to be the oldest inhabited building in the British Isles. 



* By Romney. She also sat to Reynolds, Hoppner, and Lawrence. 



