Some instruction, as well as amusement, may perhaps be obtained by the reader, from the perusal of what the celebrated William Gilpin said of this place, then called Queensberry House, in his Observations relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty in Scotland, &c., published in 1776. "The garden front of Queensberry House," he observes, "opens on a very delightful piece of scenery. The ground falls from it, near a quarter of a mile, in a steep sloping lawn, which at the bottom is received by a river; and beyond that rises in lofty woody banks. All these objects are in the grandest style, except the river; which, though not large, is by no means inconsiderable. It is amazing what contrivance has been used to deform all this beauty. The descent from the house has a substratum of solid rock, which has been cut into three or four terraces, at an immense expense. The art of blasting rocks by gunpowder was not in use when this great work was undertaken. It was all performed by manual labour; and men now alive remember hearing their fathers say, that a workman, after employing a whole summer day with his pickaxe, would carry off in his apron all the stone he had chipped from the rock. How much less expensive is it, in general, to improve the face of nature, than to deform it. In improving, we gently follow; in deforming, we violently oppose. The Duke of Queensberry of that day, who carried on these works, seems himself to have been aware of his folly. He bundled up all the accounts together; and inscribed them, as I have been informed, with a grievous curse on any of his posterity who should ever look into them." (p. 84.) The other observations made by Gilpin on this place are excellent, as, indeed, is all that he has written on picturesque beauty; always, however, making allowance for his almost exclusive admiration of that kind of beauty.
