BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 109
Mr. Forbes died at Edinburgh on the 21st June 1815. His figure, which
was tall and handsome, is excellently represented in a capital full-length portrait,
by Sir Henry Raeburn, which ornaments the dining-room at Callendar House.
A splendid mausoleum was erected in a dark recess of the wood to his memory
by his widow, a lady of considerable taste.’
Mr. Forbes was twice married-first to Miss Macadam of Craigengillan.
whose unfortunate brother’s fate made no little noise. She had no children, and,
being consumptive, went out to Madeira, where she died. To her fortune her
husband generously relinquished all claim. His second marriage, with Miss
Agnes Chalmers of Aberdeen, realised his fond wish to become “the founder
of a house.” By her he had two sons and three daughters, who survived him
-a sixth child dying in infancy. His eldest son, William, the successor to the
entailed property, was married to the amiable and accomplishcd Lady Louisa,
daughter of the Earl of Wemyss and March, and elected in 1835, and again in
1837, member of Parliament for Stirlingshire. Local animosities are now fast
dying away, and the descendants of Mr. Forbes bid fair to take their place amid
the aristocracy of the land.
No. CCVIIT.
DR. GREGORY GRANT.
THIS gentleman, long known as a respectable and eminent physician in Edinburgh,
was a brother of Mr. Colquhoun Grant, whose exploits, as an adherent
of Prince Charles Edward, have been noticed in a former article.
The education of DR. GRANT was carefully superintended, and perfected at
the most celebrated schools of the day. Having studied three years at the
1 “About a mile east of Falkirk [we quote from an article, written by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, in
the History of Stirlingshire 18171 stands Callendar House, the princely seat of William Forbes,
Esq. of Callendar. It enjoys a sheltered situation in a park containing four hundred Scottish acres,
of which two hundred are covered with a coppice wood, mostly oak, singularly luxuriant and
beautiful-a remnant indeed of the Caledonian Forest. The writs of the Earls of Linlithgow and
Callendar were, a we have been informed, lost about 1715, when the last Earl of Linlithgow and
Callendar lost his titles and estate by attainder. The park has been recently embellished by the
taste of Mn. Forbes, lady of the late owner, and mother of the present. She has erected a splendid
mausoleum in memory of her departed lord. It is circular, forty-five feet high, with a rustic cell
nineteen feet in height and thirty-six in diameter, on which stand twelve fluted Doric columns,
which, with the capital, are nineteen and a half feet high. Over a Doric entablature rises what
within is a dome, and without is covered with a stone tiling and rib-mouldings. Over the door, in
the north side of the cell, is a Greek inscription, of which the following is a translation :-
‘ All things we mortals call our own
Are mortal too, and quickly flown ;
But, could they all forever stay,
We soon from them must pass away.’ ”