‘Dear Sir,—I am favour’d with yours by the last post, and am not a little surprized to understand by it that Mr Robison should have wrott either to Mr Drummond or you that I intended to dispose of my nephew contrar to the present system of moral education, all I said to Mr Robison that if I sent him abroad I could have him educated for nothing, but that I did not myself aprove of this frugall method, but that I would advise with Mr Drummond how to Dispose of him when I would be at Edinburgh, that if he inclin’d a military life, I might have interest to get him a pair of Colours, but then I would insist the best _moitié_ of his patrimony should be assigned to his sister, but that what I inclined he should follow was the law, if he had genius for that profession, and that in that case if Mr Drummond aprovd of it, I would send him for the sake of the language to some country schooll in England. This was all that passed upon honour, and Desired to send over the boy that I might make him acquaint in the country, and should only Detain him two months, I had a Double view in this as I had the countrey about that time all convened, it would have been fifty pounds in his way, and this I told Mr Robison; and at the same time, as the lassie had no English, I would Keep her all winter with my sister so that in spring she might be presentable, when I would send her for a little time to my sister’s Dr Chisolme at Inverness. Mr. Robison approved of all this, particularly of the lassy’s coming, and, that he might not be blamed for retaining them, sent them to their Mother’s, where the Girle has ever been, and laid the whole blame to her charge. I have still Mr Robison’s letter, but he has his views which I am resolved to frustrate.... I will shew you my brother’s discharge to my father, and I have living witnesses that delivered him Cattle in payment of interest, and part principall, and as one of them is his father’s brother, how would go all lengths for him, that there can be no objection to his evidence as Discharges have been burned or Destroyed after the Castle was blown up.... ‘Your affect. Cousine and humble servant, ‘MACKDONELL.’ Burt says that ‘to have the English’ was the mark, among the Highlanders, of a gentleman’s children. Glengarry’s niece had as yet no English; her education had doubtless been neglected in the distresses consequent on the Rising. Probably, too, her mother was poor, her husband’s portion having been partly paid in cattle. These very cattle may have been among the 20,000 plundered by Cumberland’s men after Culloden, as a volunteer writes in his little book of ‘A Journey with the Army into Scotland’ (1747).