Except one of Archbishop Leighton, the letters are of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Several are addressed to the Mures of Caldwell; others to Archibald Constable. Among the writers are Dr John Moore, Hugh Blair, David Hume, Bishop Percy, John Pinkerton, Dugald Stewart, Lord Jeffrey, Joanna Baillie, James Hogg (writing to 'M.L.', the anonymous author of two songs in ‘Jacobite relics’, second series (Edinburgh, 1821)), Mrs Grant of Laggan, Lord Cockburn, and John Gibson Lockhart. There is also a poem, "Love's Album", 1805, in the hand of Thomas Moore; an extract by Miss Mitford from her 'Christina', 1847; proposals for the establishment of the British Stereotype Company, 1808; and a copy by William Motherwell of a ballad beginning:
"One king's daughter said to another
Brurne blumes bonnie and grows sae fair
We'll gae ride like sister and brother
And we'll ne'er gae doun to the brume nae mair".
