They were a Jacobite family to the core. The Laird and his father had been out in the Rebellion of 1745; they had suffered much in consequence and been long in exile; and not till a year or two before the birth of this little girl had they been permitted to return and settle on their shattered estates. They were true to their Jacobitism even then, acknowledging no King but the one “over the water,” praying for him, corresponding with him, and keeping up the recollection of him in their household as almost a religion. Carolina was named Carolina because, had she been a boy, she was to have been named Charles, and she used to say that her parents had never forgiven her for having been born a girl. But two boys were born at last, and there were sisters both older and younger; and so, among Oliphants, and Robertsons of Struan, and Murrays, and other relatives, all Jacobite, and all of the Scottish Episcopal persuasion, Carolina grew up in the old house of Gask, hearing Jacobite stories and Highland legends from her infancy, and educated with some care. The mother having died when this, her third, child was but eight years of age, the Laird was left with six young ones. “A poor valetudinary person,” as he describes himself, he seems, however, to have been a man of fine character and accomplishments, and to have taken great pains with his children. King George III., hearing somehow of his unswerving Jacobitism and the whimsicalities in which it showed itself, is said to have sent him this message by the member for Perthshire: “Give my compliments, not the compliments of the King of England, but those of the Elector of Hanover, to Mr. Oliphant, and tell him how much I respect him for the steadiness of his principles.” Somewhat stately and melancholic himself, and keeping up the ceremonious distance between him and his children then thought proper, the Laird of Gask had those liberal and anti-morose views of education which belonged especially to Scottish nonjuring or Episcopalian families. A wide range of reading was permitted to the boys and the girls; dancing, especially reel-dancing, was incessant among them,—at home, in the houses of neighbouring lairds, or at county-balls; in music, especially in Scottish song, they were all expert, so that the rumour of a coming visit of Neil Gow and his violin to Strathearn, with the prospect it brought them of a week extraordinary of combined music and reel-dancing, would set them all madly astir; but the most musical of the family by far was Carolina. She lived in music, in mirth, legend, Highland scenery, and the dance, a beautiful girl to boot, and called “the Flower of Strathearn,” of tall and graceful mien, with fine eyes, and fine sensitive features, slightly proud and aquiline. And so to 1792, when her father, the valetudinary laird, died, some of his children already out in the world, but this one, at the age of twenty-six, still unmarried.