Untitled - Electric Scotland

6 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. i.
to him the estate of Harviestoun in Clackmannanshire, with a
tolerably good house, and in addition to this, and to the house
in Edinburgh, a beautiful property on the shores of Loch
Fyne, which he had named Cumlodden, after the family place
of the Murdochs. This he had purchased with the express
intention of its being resold if ever the estate of Castle
Campbell, adjacent to Harviestoun, should be offered for sale
by its owner, the Duke of Argyll. The addition of this to
Harviestoun would make a consolidated instead of a divided
property. The unfortunate result was, that when his son became
the proprietor, he did indeed purchase Castle Campbell, but he
was so attached to the romantic shores of Loch Fyne that he
could not persuade himself to part with Cumlodden, and kept the
two, borrowing a large sum of money
to enable him to do so."
At Cumlodden he threw himself with enthusiasm into
the improvements which his imagination already saw
transforming the habits and lives of the Highlanders.
He devised a new order of things, building model
cottages, and apportioning to each its garden and its fouracre
field of arable land. Immense sums of money were
thus spent in vain. The whole scheme was foreign alike
to the desires and the capabilities of those whom he tried
to benefit. The soil and its inhabitants successfully united
their efforts to baffle his plans, and he retired discomfited
and impoverished to Harviestoun. There, in like manner,
but on a more congenial soil, he lavished money on im
provements on the largest scale. The house was half
rebuilt
"The high-road," says Lady Wake, "ran too near the house,
so it was lifted, as if by magic, half a mile lower down the glen.
A garden was laid out with Milton s description of Eden for
the model. And surely no garden ever was like it ! Of
immense extent, it enclosed the lower part of the glen ; a dell
of green turf led right through it, while a bright and noisy burn
leaping from the rocks above danced merrily through
its entire
length, speeding through ferns and wild-flowers till it suddenly
disappeared, to emerge with a bound from a cave many yards