to the Abbey of Paisley in the year 1399. This family was raised to the peerage in the person of David Boyle of Kelburn by William, by the title of Lord Boyle, in 1699, and farther advanced by Queen Anne to the dignity of Earl in the year 1703. For the character of this exalted personage, I refer the reader to Memoirs of the reign of Queen Anne," &c. by the famous George Lockhart of Carnwath, published in 1714. The lineal heir of the family is George, Earl of Glasgow, Viscount Kelburn, Lord Boyle, Lord Dalry, Lord Stewarton, Lord Largs, and Lord Cumbra, Scotch titles, and Lord Ross of Halkhead, British. KERR of Kersland. This family was certainly head of the name, for the Roxburgh and Fernhirst Kerrs did not come to Scotland for a long time after 1205, in which year, William de Kerr, is a witness in the same agreement between Hugh de Eglintoune and the burgh of Irvine, to which David de Blare as formerly mentioned, was also a witness. He appears to have been succeeded by another William, who, along with nearly the whole of the Scotch Barons, found it prudent to submit to Edward's yoke. His lands of Kersland were erected at the same time with those of Boyle of Ryesholm into a barony in favour of one of the heads of the great family of Ardrossan, designed after the same, now represented by the Right Honourable the Earl of Eglintoune. This family continued in a flourishing state, intermarrying with the first houses in Ayrshire, till the male line failed in 15-Robert Kerr of Kersland died, leaving only one daughter, who succeeded him, and married the renowned Captain Thomas Crawford of Jordanhill, who took the castle of Dumbarton, in the minority of King James VI., a strength till that time thought impregnable. The issue of this marriage, were two sons, 1st, Daniel, who took upon him the name and arms of Kerr, and continued the Kersland family. 2d, Hugh, of whom the Crawfords of Jordanhill are descended. The male line failed again in 17-. The barony of Kersland, (and a very extensive barony, it is) is now parcelled out to a great many small proprietors, (some of them of the name of Kerr, though not, in the smallest degree, connected with the ancient Kerrs) holding of John Smith, Esquire, of Swineridgemuir, as superior. LYNNE of Lynnes. An ancestor of this family is also on the ragman roll. It was without doubt, one of the lairds of this family who was the hero of the lovely old ballad the heir of Lynne. Although it is not much above 150 years since they sold the property, there is at this time scarcely one of the name in Scotland. RALSTON of that Ilk. This ancient family derive their origin from Ralph, a younger son of one of the old Earls of Fife, who got some lands in Renfrewshire from Alexander II. for his valour at the famous battle of the Largs; which lands he called Ralphstown after himself. His son was Nicolaus de Ralphstown, who is witness to a donation which Sir Anthony Lombard made to the monks of Paisley in the year 1272. His successor, Hew de Ralston, swore allegiance to Edward on the 7th July 1292; and in the year 1346, his son, James Ralston, "dominus ejusdem,” is witness in an instrument electing an abbot for the monastery of Paisley. In the year 1488, John Ralston of that Ilk, is arbiter between the abbot and the burgh of Paisley; the twelfth in a direct line, from whom, is the present Gavin Ralston of Ralston, Esq. SIR, TO THE EDITOR OF THE COILA REPOSITORY. Sometime ago I observed in your entertaining Magazine, a letter signed H. C. addressed to a correspondent of yours, who had favoured your readers with a translation of part of Fordun's history, requesting him to publish the Latin of the part where it was said, " Godefrey de Ross, schereffe of Ayr," &c. H. C. alleging that this must be wrong, as he knew, from unquestionable documents he had beside him, that the office of schereffe was hereditary in the families of Loudon of Loudon, afterwards of Crawford of Loudon, and then Campbell of Loudon. Be this as may, the Latin is as follows: Godefredus de Ros vicecomes de Ayre, post tamen aliquam resistantiam cum universitato de Carrick Connynghame attractus seu coactus placuit senescalli se subdere legi," which is thus recorded by Wynton, one of our oldest Scotch poets: Schyre Gotheray ye Ross wes yan, And quhat for lawe and quhat for awe, Carryck, Cwnynghame, and Kyle. For farther information on this head, H. C. is referred to the "Rotuli Scotia" lately published. Although I am not the person who sent you the translation of Fordun, yet, as I think, the question was put to any of your readers who could give the information required, I have thought proper to explain it; and, I am, Mr. Editor, Your very obedient Servant, July 16, 1818. MARIA VON RICHTERSTEIN. N. E. The following striking narrative is translated from the MS. Memoir of the late Rev. Dr. Gottlieb Gosschen, a Catholic clergyman of great eminence in the city of Ratisbonne. It was the custom of this divine to preserve, in the shape of a diary, a regular account of all the interesting particulars which fell in his way, during the exercise of his sacred profession. Many a dark story, well fitted to be the groundwork of a romance,many a tale of guilty love and repentance,-many a fearful monument of remorse and horror, might we extract from this record of dungeons and confessionals.-Blackwood's Magazine. EDITOR. NEVER had a murder so agitated the inhabitants of this city as that of Maria von Richterstein. No heart could be pacified till the murderer was condemned. But no sooner was his doom sealed, and the day fixed for his execution, than a great change took placd in the public feeling. The evidence, though conclusive, had been wholly circumstantial. And people who, before his condemnation, were as assured of the murderer's guilt as if they had seen him with red hands, began now to conjure up the most contradictory and absurd reasons for believing in the possibility of his inno cence. His own dark and sullen silence seemed to some, an indignant expression of that innocence which he was too proud to avow, some thought they saw in his imperturbable demeanour, a resolution to court death, because his life was miserable, and his reputation blasted,-and others, the most numerous, without reason or reflection, felt such sympathy with the criminal, as almost amounted to a negation of his crime. The man under sentence of death was, in all the beauty of youth, distinguished above his fellows for graceful accomplishments, and the last of a noble family. He had lain a month in his dungeon, heavily laden with irons. Only the first week he had been visited by several religionists, but he then fiercely ordered the jailor to admit no more " men "of God,"-and till the eve of his execution, he had lain in dark solitude, abandoned to his own soul. It was near midnight when a message was sent to me by a magistrate, that the murderer was desirous of seeing me. I had been with many men in his unhappy situation, and in no case had I failed to calm the agonies of grief, and the fears of the world to come. But I had known this youth—had sat with him at his father's table-I knew also that there was in him a strange and fearful mixture of good and evil—I was aware that there were circumstances in the history of his progenitors not generally known-nay, in his own life-that made him an object of awful commiseration- and I went to his cell with an agitating sense of the enormity of his guilt, but a still more agitating one of the depth of his misery, and the wildness of his misfortunes, I entered his cell, and the phantom struck me with terror. He stood erect in his irons, like a corps that had risen from the grave. His face, once so beautiful, was pale as a shroud, and drawn into ghastly wrinkles. His black-matted hair hung over it with a terrible expression of wrathful and savage misery. And his large eyes, which were once black, glared with a light in which all colour was lost, and seemed to fill the whole dungeon with their flashings. I saw his guilt-I saw what was more terrible than his guilt—his insanity not in emaciation only-not in that more than deathlike whiteness of his face-but in all that stood before me— the figure, round which was gathered the agonies of so many long days and nights of remorse and phrenzy-and of a des pair that had no fears of this world or its terrors, but that was plunged in the abyss of eternity. For a while the figure said nothing. He then waved his arm, that made his irons clank, motioning me to sit down on the iron frame-work of his bed; and when I did so, the murderer took his place by my side. A lamp burned on a table before us and on that table there had been drawn by the maniac-for I must indeed so call him a decapitated human body-the neck as if streaming with gore-and the face writhed into horrible convulsions, but bearing a resemblance not to be mistaken to that of him who had traced the horrid picture. He saw that my eyes rested on this mockery-and, with a recklessness fighting with despair, he burst out into a broken peal of laughter, and said, "to-morrow will you see that picture drawn in blood!" He then grasped me violently by the arm, and told me to listen to his confession,-and then to say what I thought of God and his eternal Providence. "I have been assailed by idiots, fools, and drivellers, who could understand nothing of me nor of my crime,-men who came not here that I might confess before God, but reveal myself to them, and I drove the tamperers with misery and guilt out of a cell sacred to insanity. But my hands have played in infancy, long before I was a murderer, with thy gray hairs, and with reverence. Therefore my lips, shut to all beside, shall be opened unto thee. "I murdered her. Who else loved her so well as to shed her innocent blood? It was I that enjoyed her beauty a beauty surpassing that of the daughters of men,-it was I that filled her soul with bliss, and with trouble,-it was I alone that was privileged to take her life. I brought her into sin-I kept her in sin and when she would have left her sin, it was fitting that I, to whom her heart, her body, and her soul belonged, should suffer no divorcement of them from my bosom, as long as there was blood in her's, and when I saw that the poor infatuated wretch was resolved I slew her yes, with that blessed hand I stabbed her to the heart. مطلبف "Do you think there was no pleasure in murdering her? I grasped her by that radiant, that golden hair,-I bared those snow-white breasts,-I dragged her sweet body towards me, and, as God is my witness, I stabbed, and stabbed her with this very dagger, ten, twenty, forty times, through and through the heart. She never so much as gave one shriek, for she was dead in a moment,but she would not have shrieked had she endured pang after pang, for she |