Village.-The village of Alva is situated near the base of the Westhill. It does not appear certain when it was begun to be built, but we learn from the chartulary of Cambuskenneth, that Alva was a parish nearly 550 years ago, and probably a village of minor consequence existed at the same time. In the year 1795 the village was only about one-half its present size, and contained 130 Families, including a few single persons, each of whom occupied part of a house. Towards the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century, Sir John Erskine, then proprietor, granted feus of a small parcel of ground to several inhabitants, on which they built cottages and laid out gardens. A plan seems to have been formed by Sir John, to build a village in the form of a square, two sides of which appear to have been actually completed, but the other houses have been set down at random, or wherever a convenient spot for a garden could be obtained. About the year 1767, Lord Alva, resolving to enlarge the village, granted feus to those willing to build, and in one season a complete row of new houses, amounting to 20, was erected, each house having a small garden of a few falls, equal in breadth to the "extent of the front of the house. A few years afterwards, another row of houses, parallel to the former and with gardens laid out in the same manner, was completed. The rate at which the ground was feued, was at first 13s. 4d. per fall, or 36 square yards, but it advanced by degrees to 15s. and 16s. per fall, as the premium or purchase-money, together with fourpence the fall of annual feuduty. Taking the medium rate of 15s. it will amount to L. 120 Sterling per acre, as the price of the ground, and L. 2, 135. 4d. as the annual rent to the superior.

House of Alva.-The house of Alva, the seat or James John-stone, Esq., is about a mile east of the village, and is delightfully situated on an eminence projecting from the Woodhill near its base. The height of the projecting part where the house stands, is 220 feet above the level of the Devon, and Woodhill rises behind it to the height of 1400 feet higher, making in all 1620 feet. The Woodhill is richly ornamented with plantations, and its summit affords a most extensive prospect to the south, east, and west. The north-west view is interrupted by the hill of Dalmyot ; but the mouth of the Frith of Forth, the Bass, North- Berwick Law, with the windings of the Forth, the coasts of Fife and East Lothian, can easily be descried from the top of Woodhill, behind the house of Alva.

Proprietors of Alva.-The estate of Alva was anciently possessed by the Stirlings of Calder in CIydesdale. From Nisbet's first volume or Heraldry, we learns that "Sir J. Menteth, son of Sir Walter Menteth, of Ruisky, married Marion Stirling, daughter and coheir to Sir John Stirling, of Calder in Clydesdale, and with her he got ye lands of Kerse and Alveth (Alva), for which ye family carried ye buckler for the name of Stirling, and flourished for many years." -Sir William Menteth or Menteath of Alva, married Helen Bruce, daughter to the laird of Airth, and his son, Sir William Menteth, married Agnes Erskine, daughter to Alexander Lord Erskine, whose successors afterwards, through the right of their mother, inherited the Earldom of Mar. The Countess of Mar and of Kelly is a descendant of the family of Menteth of Rusky. By the intermarriage before alluded to, it is highly probable the Alva property went to the Bruce, and afterwards to the Erskine family. In A. D. 1620 it went to Sir Charles Erskine, fifth son of John sixth Earl or Mar. His great grandson, Sir Henry Erskine of Alva, father to the present Earl of Rosslyn, sold it in 1759 to his uncle, Lord Justice-Clerk, called Lord Tinwald, whose son, James Erskine, a Senator of the College of Justice, inherited it, with the title of Lord Alva. He was one of the most energetic proprietors, with the exception of the Bruces, who founded the present mansion and church. Lord Alva sold the estate in 1775 to John Johnstone, Esq. son of Sir James Johnstone, Bart., of Westerhall, Dumfries-shire, (brother to Sir William Pulteney,) whose grandson is the present proprietor. Sir John and Sir Charles Erskine, two of the Alva proprietors were both killed when abroad A. D. 1746. In the church-yard of Alva, there is a mausoleum built by the first proprietor of Alva, of the Westerhall family, similar to one which he had erected in Dumfries-shire, to the memory of his father Sir James Johnstone. The ancestral vault in the church still belongs to the Erskine family, together with several marble monuments. One to the Lord Justice-Clerk is characterized by classic taste and purity of style.

Antiquities.-Near to the church several of those large stones often found in Scotland, supposed to be the relics of Drudical days, were seen to a late date, and in the neighbouring parish of Logie some of these memorials of other times are still standing. Our forefathers, we know, were wont to set up a stone of remembrance to commemorate any battle or signal event, or more frequently to mark the grave of a hero. In the works ascribed to 0ssian, this custom is often alluded to, as when the bard, and Tosca; his brother, were sent by Fingal to signalize a victory by raising up the "grey-stone on the heath," One of these records of the past was dug up, some years ago, in a field adjacent to the glebe, lying on its flat surface, and beneath it was found a human jaw-bone So large as to be attributed to a giant. Another of these stones was long to be seen in a neighbouring enclosure, standing erect, with an inscription, so indistinct as not to be legible. The village vulcan, in his vain attempts to decypher it, got into a towering passion, and with his forehammer completely destroyed the inscription, already almost worn away by time's effacing fingers. The spirit of the Vandals is not yet dead. A few years since, while some persons were digging in the northern part of the parish, probably the site of the earliest buildings here, and called Strude, they excavated a number of human remains. The rubbish in this spot led to the belief that a cemetery, and probably a Roman Chapel, had once stood there, in times now lost in the mists of ages.

" Pulvere vix tectae poterunt monstrare ruinae."

At the northern extremity of Queenshaugh, St Ninians, a curious relic was, about A. D. 1790, dragged out of the river. It was a brass collar with the inscription, " Alexander Stewart found guilty of death for theft at Perth, 5 December 1701, and gifted by the Justiciary as a perpetual servant to Sir John Aresken of Alva," This relic is in possession of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland.