Thomas Burnett of Kemnay, grandson of Craigmyle, is known in a sphere where few Scotsmen had entered.  He was a courtier of that remarkable little court of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, where he became the friend of the philosopher Leibnitz, correspondent of the poet Dryden, and his letters are full of curious gossip on the most various subjects—­theology, philosophy, literature, including poetry and the small talk of the day.  He was greatly employed and trusted by the Electress Sophia.  His son George was noted as an agriculturist, and his grandson, Alexander Burnett of Kemnay (by a daughter of Sir Alexander Burnett of Leys), was long British Secretary of embassy at Berlin, and attended Frederick the Great in the campaigns of the Seven Years’ War; remaining at the Prussian Court as Charge d’Affaires after Sir Andrew Mitchell’s death.

James, third son of Craigmyle the Covenanter, married a daughter of the family of Irvine of Monboddo, a scion of the house of Drum, and having so acquired that barony, he transmitted it to his descendants, of whom the most famous was his great-grandson, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, a Judge of the Court of Session, an eminent lawyer, and a man of rare accomplishments, with some whimsical peculiarities.  In a treatise on the origin and progress of language, he was the first seriously to assert the descent of mankind from the monkey, and that the human race were originally furnished with tails!  That and a hundred other whimsies were mixed up with a great deal of learning then very rare, and with a philosophy that dealt in free and daring speculation, of which the world was not yet worthy.

The first baronet of Leys, besides his brother James of Craigmyle, had yet another brother, Robert Burnett of Crimond, an eminent advocate, very learned, and of high moral and religious principle.  Though his wife was a sister of Johnstone of Warriston, he himself, unlike his two brothers, was an opponent of the Covenant, for which he went into exile until the Restoration, when he was made a Judge of the Court of Session as Lord Crimond.  He had three sons by the Warriston lady.  His eldest, Sir Thomas Burnett, was physician to royalty from Charles II to Queen Anne.  The third was Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury, of whom it is not my intention to give any detailed account.  His brilliant talents and great influence made him many friends, and even more enemies.  History is beginning to do justice to his character without concealing his weaknesses.  He seems to have been more honest than was the fashion in his time.

Such is the little gathering of family history, for the accuracy of which I am chiefly indebted to my kind friend the Lord Lyon—­himself a Burnett.  Perhaps I should apologise for saying even the little I have said of the Dean’s pedigree; but while I press into my service the country of his birth and breeding, and the local peculiarities amongst which his life was spent, as possibly having some influence