360 Descriptive Notice of Blair- Adam. 



his wains still continue to hover round the romantic spot ; and 

 none has ever visited its vicinity without a desire to remain long, 

 and to return soon." 



Blair-Adam may be taken as a specimen of what cultivation, 

 combined with refined taste, can do to beautify, enrich, and adorn, 

 even a wild unsheltered moor. 

 Blair-Adam, June 1. 1842. 



[Sir Walter Scott, as member of the " Blair-Adam Club," 

 spent a few days here about midsummer every year from 1816 

 to 1831 inclusive. The club generally met on a Friday, and 

 the members returned to Edinburgh early on Tuesday to attend 

 the courts. The mornings were spent (Sunday excepted) in 

 visiting the scenes of high historical interest in the neighbour- 

 hood ; and to these visits we owe the splendour of many of Scott's 

 romantic descriptions, particularly of Loch Leven, Macduff's 

 Cross, &c, as well as the weightier obligation of the Abbot in 

 the dog-days of 1819. At the suggestion of Sir Walter, the 

 Lord Chief Commissioner arranged materials for (l The History 

 of Blair-Adam, from 1733 to 1834," in which he gives a most 

 instructive as well as entertaining history of the agricultural and 

 arboricultural progress of the domain in the course of a hun- 

 dred years. This liber rarissimus is unfortunately not open to 

 public inspection. — Life of Scott.~] 



The book above referred to is thus noticed in Sir Thomas 

 Dick Lauder's edition of Price on the Picturesque. The note is 

 long, but we quote it entire, because it is extremely interesting, 

 and also instructive. It will serve also as a specimen of the notes 

 which Sir Thomas Dick Lauder has added to Sir Uvedale Price's 

 work. 



" Before proceeding to plant the grounds of a place ornamentally, it is ne- 

 cessary carefully to study its character, to become thoroughly acquainted with 

 the various inequalities of its surface, to consider also the different soils which 

 present themselves, and, after well digesting all these particulars, let the 

 improver then bestow some thought upon the question how Nature would 

 have done the work, had she been pleased to have executed it. Here 1 am 

 presupposing the existence of two things ; first, that the place has some 

 variety of surface ; and secondly, that the improver has studied the wooding 

 of nature, which is still abundantly to be met with in all the wilder parts of 

 our own country, especially in Wales or in the Highlands of Scotland, as, for 

 example, in the valleys running down in all directions from the Grampians, 

 where the beauty of the natural woods is so very remarkable. If the place 

 is so utterly devoid of variety of surface as to be absolutely a dead flat, and if 

 it has no timber on it already, the existing arrangement of which might suggest 

 to the improver some design for ultimately producing intricacy and interest, I 

 should be disposed to advise the proprietor to fix his residence elsewhere. 

 But if he is reduced to the necessity of settling there, by having no other 

 choice, I should say that the best advice that can well be given him is, to plant 

 and spare not ; so that, although he may be able to do nothing very effectual 



