Biggar and the House of Fleming

588 BIGOAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING.
support in their declining years ; but alas, how uncertain are
all worldly comforts ; it pleased God to take him to Himself.
" This heavy affliction his father bore with great seeming
composure and pious resignation. He often set himself to
comfort his family with the most heavenly consolations. The
blessing he asked, or I should rather say, the prayer he put
iip to Almighty God a little before he was seized with his fatal
disease, was uncommonly elevated and heavenly, and the dis-
course he had with his family the most desirable exercise in
which a good man could be employed. In this frame and in
these exercises, he was suddenly struck with that disease, which
in a few hours put a period to his valuable life. They were
lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were
not divided."
John Brown, before the Sheriff of Lanark, 3d July 1795,
was served heir to his father, John Brown, Laird of Coulter-
mains, and minister of the Gospel at Coulter, to whom we have
just referred. He married Miss Cecilia Grizel Bertram, a
daughter of the old House of Nisbet and Kersewell. Mr Brown
was a Deputy-Lieutenant of the county of Lanark, and a free-
mason, hailing from St Luke's Lodge, Edinburgh. He was
admitted an honorary member of the Lodge of Biggar Free
Operatives in April 1796, and on the occasion presented the
Lodge with a donation of two guineas. On the 19th of Febru-
ary 1817, Mr Brown sold Coultermains to the late David Sim,
merchant, Glasgow. The present representative of this old
family is John Brown, Esq., W.S., Edinburgh, a gentleman
well known and universally respected.
The present proprietor of Coultermains, Adam Sim Esq., in
1838, erected an elegant mansion on the estate. It is in the
Elizabethan style of architecture, from a design by Mr Spence,
architect, Glasgow. It stands on a lawn at a short distance
from the right bank of the Clyde, and is finely embowered
amid luxuriant plantations. Recently a tasteful porter's Lodge
i.nd gateway were erected on the approach from Coulter
village, and the house itself was surrounded by a handsome
balustrade. Within the space enclosed by the balustrade
have been placed some carved stones from the old Cathedral
of St. Giles, Edinburgh, several antique dials, a number of old
stone implements, two large fossils brought from a quarry at
Wishaw, &c. Internally the house is fitted up in a style of