 but life
had lost to him its salt and its savour. His whole course of ideas, his
feelings, whether of pride or of apprehension, of pleasure or of pain, had all
arisen from his close connection with the family which was now extinguished. He
held up his head no longer - forsook all his usual haunts and occupations, and
seemed only to find pleasure in moping about those apartments in the old castle,
which the Master of Ravenswood had last inhabited. He ate without refreshment,
and slumbered without repose; and, with a fidelity sometimes displayed by the
canine race, but seldom by human beings, he pined and died within a year after
the catastrophe which we have narrated.
    The family of Ashton did not long survive that of Ravenswood. Sir William
Ashton outlived his eldest son, the Colonel, who was slain in a duel in
Flanders; and Henry, by whom he was succeeded, died unmarried. Lady Ashton lived
to the verge of extreme old age, the only survivor of the group of unhappy
persons whose misfortunes were owing to her implacability. That she might
internally feel compunction, and reconcile herself with Heaven whom she had
offended, we will not, and we dare not, deny; but to those around her, she did
not evince the slightest symptom either of repentance or remorse. In all
external appearance, she bore the same bold, haughty, unbending character, which
she had displayed before these unhappy events. A splendid marble monument
records her name, titles, and virtues, while her victims remain undistinguished
by tomb or epitaph.
 

                                     Notes

1 Law's Memorials, 4to, 1818, p. 226.
 
2 See note to p. 7.
 
3 Memoirs of John Earl of Stair, by an Impartial Hand. London, printed for C.
Cobbet, p. 7.
 
4 The fall from his horse, by which he was killed.
 
5 I have compared the satire, which occurs in the first volume of the curious
little collection called a Book of Scottish Pasquils, 1827, with that which has
a more full text, and more extended notes, and which is in my own possession, by
gift of Thomas Thomson, Esq., Register-Depute. In the second Book of Pasquils,
p. 72, is a most abusive epitaph on Sir James Hamilton of Whitelaw.
 
6 This elegy is reprinted in the appendix to a topographical work by the same
author, entitled A Large Description of Galloway, by Andrew Symson, Minister of
Kirkinner (1684), 8vo; W. and C. Tait, Edinburgh, 1823. The reverend gentleman's
elegies
