I called on the Duchess of Gordon yesterday: she and I having a joint interest in an orphan family in the Highlands, which creates a kind of business between us. She had a prodigious levée, and insisted on my sitting to see them out, that we might afterwards have our private discussion. Among other characters at her levée, I saw Lord Lauderdale, who made me start to see him almost a lean slippered pantaloon, who, the last time I saw him, was a fair-haired youth at Glasgow College. He was really like a "memento mori" to me: had I much to leave, I would have gone home and made my will directly. More gratified I was to see Sir Brook Boothby; though he, too, looked so feeble and so dismal, that one would have thought him just come from writing those sorrows sacred to Penelope, which you have certainly seen. Being engaged to dinner, I could stay no longer. The Duchess said that on Sunday she never saw company, nor played cards, nor went out in England, indeed, she did so, because every one else did the same; but she would not introduce those manners into this country. I stared at these gradations of piety growing warmer as it came northward, but was wise enough to stare silently. She said she had a great many things to tell me; and as I was to set out this morning, I must come that evening, when she would be alone. At nine I went, and found Walter Scott, whom I had never before met in society, though we had exchanged distant civilities; Lady Keith, Johnson's Queeney, and an English lady, witty and fashionable-looking, who came and went with Mr. Scott. No people could be more easy and pleasant, without the visible ambition of shining; yet animated, and seeming to feel at home with each other. I think Mr. Scott's appearance very unpromising, and common-place indeed; yet though no gleam of genius animates his countenance, much of it appears in his conversation, which is rich, various, easy, and animated, without the least of the petulance with which the Faculty, as they call themselves, are not unjustly reproached.

There is, we think, penetration, besides nice female discrimination in Mrs. Grant's estimate of the two Mrs. Baillies.

Mrs. Baillie (for so her elder sister chooses to be distinguished) people like in their hearts better than Mrs. Joanna, though they would not for the world say so, thinking that it would argue great want of taste not to prefer Melpomene. I, for my part, would greatly prefer the Muse to walk in a wood or sit in a bower with; but in that wearisome farce, a large party, Agnes acts her part much better. The seriousness, simplicity, and thoughtfulness of Joanna's manners overawe you from talking common-place to her; and as for pretension or talking fine, you would as soon think of giving yourself airs before an Apostle. She is mild and placid, but makes no effort either to please or to shine; she will neither dazzle nor be dazzled, yet, like others of the higher class of mind, is very indulgent in her opinions: what passes before her seems rather food for thought than mere amusement. In short, she is not merely a woman of talent, but of genius, which is a very different thing, and very unlike any other thing; which is the reason that I have taken so much pains to describe her. Joanna's conversation is rather below her abilities, justifiying Lord Gardenstone's maxim, that true genius is ever modest and careless. Agnes unconsciously talks above herself, merely from a wish to please, and a habit of living among her intellectual superiors. I should certainly have liked and respected Joanna, as a person singularly natural and genuine, though she had never written a tragedy.

I am not at all sure that this is the case with most others.

a

These ladies were at this period, June 1820, on visit in Edinburgh. Proofs of Mrs. Grant's sound common-sense are scattered throughout the whole correspondence; and many of her letters, as those to Mr. Henning the artist, and to Miss Anne Dunbar, along with this display very friendly feelings, and a generous interest in the well-being of her correspondents; though with Mr. Henning

Your scruples in detaching yourself, in the duties of public worship, from your family, must have been, to your feeling mind, of much weight, and, I am sure, unmixed with any lower motive. But I think you are well aware that I do not extend this indulgence of opinion to all females who choose a separate path; my observation of life having warranted me in the opinion, that a love of distinction and consequence, among a certain set, has more to do with it than the subjects of this censure of mine are at all aware of. Nothing can be further from applying to you, who are diffident to a fault: but you may observe, that most people who separate from their family in this manner, are of the tribe distinguished for self-opinion; and that when once they do set up a standard of purer doctrine and stricter practice, their charity and goodwill become very much limited to those who hear the same preacher, and very much alienated from the friends of early life.

You know my dislike to very conspicuous goodness among females, which makes me shrink a little from Female Societies formed with the very best intention; not by any means as doubting the purity of the intention, or, in many instances, the beneficial results: but such societies so often include in their number officious gossiping characters, who derive a certain imagined consequence by overruling and interfering, and are so officious in raising contributions on all their acquaintance, and have so little of the charity of opinion, that I could never feel congenial with many of them, though there are some I hold in reverence. I think if I were wealthy, however, I should gladly "shake the superflux to them," as not doubting of their faithful administration, and intimate knowledge of those on whom they bestow; but having little to give, I bestow that little on the poverty with which I am well acquainted.

Young ladies of ostentatious piety, and consequently of weak understanding, began, at this period, to carry about Bibles in their reticules, on which practice Mrs. Grant remarks:

To have the Scriptures laid up in the heart, and influencing the heart and conduct, would be just as well as carrying them about: neither Lady Rachel Russell nor Hannah More, nor any other of those illustrious women that did honour to Christianity and their country, ever carried about a Bible as a spell to protect them, or as a Catholic relic. .... I am grieved to find in some high professors, and in those who are rather boldly termed advanced Christians, such inconsistencies, such a want of candour and charity, as makes me at a loss how to estimate these professions. This produces a painful distrust both of myself and others: I accuse myself of having less reverence for high professors than formerly, and considering some of them as self-righteous and uncharitable; while I find others, who have walked softly under the same fears and doubts as myself, more constant and upright.

Edinburgh, as may be expected, figures at large in Mrs. Grant's correspondence. Nor does she at all underrate the many advantages of "Scotia's darling seat," when she states, what however may be perfectly just of one of its circle :—

One high preeminence, however, that Edinburgh holds above other towns, and more particularly above London, is the liberal style of conversation. All the persons of respect and kindness of each other, no petty animomost distinguished and admired here speak with a degree sities nor invidious diminutions, even though differing much on political or other subjects. Then, there is no Sinstances to be met with in what is accredited as good scandal, no discussion of people's private affairs or cir society. life are constantly talking of their superiors, and talking Now, in England, people in middle

would make him eminent in a profession. I always think of him with much kindness, and rejoice not a little to hear of his being likely to cast anchor.

Mrs. Grant often played the critic in her letters, and could not well avoid it, while her friends were continually inquiring her opinion of the new books that appeared, as that of one who sometimes looked in the living face of Mr Jeffrey,-and who had authority in literature herself. One of her most pointed critiques is this, on Peter's Letters, though it is not perhaps one of the most just :

You would know what I think of Peter's Letters? I answer in a very low whisper-not much. The broad personality is coarse, even where it is laudatory; no one very deserving of praise cares to be held up to the public eye like a picture on sale by an auctioneer: it is not the style of our country, and is a bad style in itself. So much for its tendency. Then, if you speak of it as a composition, it has no keeping, no chastity of taste, and is in a high degree florid and verbose. Some

depth of thought and acuteness appears now and then like the weights at the tail of a paper kite, but not enough to balance the levity of the whole. With all this, the genius which the writers possess, in no common degree, is obvious through the whole book: but it is genius misapplied, and running riot beyond all the bounds of good taste and sober thinking. We are all amused, and so we should be, if we lived in a street where those slaves of the lamp had the power of rendering the walls so transparent that we could see everything going on at our neighbours' firesides. But ought we to be so pleased?

In general, however, she is an indulgent critic, protesting against the frequent severity and petulance of The Edinburgh Review, and Mr. Jeffrey's denial of the existence of female genius, save in Miss Edgeworth. Though Wordsworth's Religion and Metaphysics do not appear to have pleased her, she liked his poetry. We consider the following unstudied praise an offset for whole reams of technical critical condemnation :

There is something so pure and lofty in his conceptions; he views external nature so entirely with a poet's eye, and has so little of the taint of worldly minds, that I grieve when I find him wandering through the trackless wilds of metaphysics, where I cannot follow him, or in the lower and too obvious paths of childish inanity, where I wish not to accompany him. Yet he is always morally right; and his pictures in the Excursion delight

me.

It is next to profanation to read that book in town, unless at midnight: its purity and simplicity, and occasional elevation of thought, make us all, with our note-writing and everlasting door-bells calling us to talk nothings to mere nobodies, seem like puppets on wires, without a thought beyond our daily trifles, which are worse than his worst; the radiance of the White Doe excepted. What a treasure the Excursion would have been at Laggan! How often, even amidst this senseless hurry, have I read the account of the eccentric clergyman, who removed his family in panniers to the mountain parsonage. People come in here constantly with new books, that take up one's time: dear Laggan, where we conned over those we had till they grew like old friends!

This series of Letters has a use, and perhaps its highest and most permanent use, in the manner in which it shows how the deepest affliction may be borne by a pious and reasonable mind. On the death of a third or fourth daughter, and soon after hearing of the death of her eldest son, Mr. Duncan Grant, whose prospects in India were of the most cheering kind, and his conduct and character all that the fondest mother could have wished, we find Mrs. Grant writing to her

eldest daughter, then in England, in the true spirit of Christian philosophy. This fondly-loved brother, suddenly snatched away, had been the pride and stay of his sisters.

My Dear Mary, I have just read your letter, and with every allowance for human frailty, sisterly affection, and the sinking effect of many sorrows, I must affectionately reprove you for indulging, under any circumstances, the feeling, or expressing the language of dear brother, to extreme poverty, and deprived of the despair. Had we been reduced, by the death of your daily society of a beloved relative, as has been the case with many other more deserving persons, we would not be entitled to speak of "the extinction of every hope;" because, even then, the gates of a blessed immortality would have been still more visibly open to us for our transient, though severe sufferings. But here we had no right to rest any hopes on him so early taken from us, but those of knowing at a distance that he loved and remembered us. I never meant that we should subsist upon the price of blood, as I think all do who live at ease on what prolongs the exile of their relatives in that fatal Indian climate. We have the same worldly views of subsisting by our own exertions as we had before; and our views of futurity, if we improve and patiently submit to the Divine will, are improved by this severity, from that fatherly hand which chastens in love. You know my reliance on Bishop Taylor, who asserts, from close observation of God's providence, and deep study of his word, that where the vial of wrath is poured out in this world, without any visible cause why the punished should be distinguished by superior inflic tions, there is reason to hope that a treasure of divine mercy may be reserved in the next. This is a rich source prevented! Riches are a great snare; and he who once of comfort. Then, what may not this dispensation have sets his mind on making money is apt to forget the just uses of wealth. Great prospects of worldly advantage were opened to the beloved object of our sorrow; but it is impossible to know whether he, or we, should have borne this well: if otherwise, we are best thus. that of rash despair, that we ought to speak. Much, It is the language of humility and submission, not much remains that we may still be deprived of: you have relatives to lose, whose value would be trebled in your estimation, were you deprived of them; you have my firmness of mind and exertion to lose, which has hitherto been almost miraculously preserved to me, for your general good; and you have the means of subsistence to lose, which fruitless and sinful excess of sorrow may deprive you of. Do not think me harsh: the excuse you will all make to yourselves for a sinful indulgence of sorrow is, that we have suffered so very much. The very contrary inference should be drawn by a chastened and well-regulated mind. Why did we suffer so much! God has no ill-will towards his creatures; no delight in giving them pain. If He has so often broken, with a strong hand, those ties that bound us to the world, should we not, by this time, be loosed from it, and prepared for all that the vicissitudes of life can bring to those whom sorrow should have sanctified? We are permitted to weep, but we must not lie down in the dust and forsake each other; but rather consider ourselves as a remnant of a once large and promising family, left to soothe and support each other, and do honour, by our patience and submission, to the religion we profess. Comfort, comfort me, my child! and may the God of consolation visit you with light and many blessings.

All here are rather mending, and support is given to your affectionate mother, ANNE GRANT.

Those who have read the "Superstitions of the Highlands," must be aware, that there was a little tinge of something deserving a softer name than superstition, apparent in Mrs. Grant's mind, as there is, perhaps, in every imaginative mind. One proof of it, and nearly the only thing of the sort in the entire correspondence, occurs at the end of one of the above letters, in which she says, that she will

not recur again to her daughter's death, feeling the wound too deep to expose it to indifferent eyes.

I only add what I must tell you, that Anne, for a few days before her death, when waking confused from unquiet sleep, exclaimed three or four times, "Duncan is in Heaven!" Strange, this gave us no fear or alarm at the time; now it is balm to my sad recollections: he died about ten days before her. Accept poor Isabella's love, and believe me, with affection, your attached friend. We shall cite but one more proof of the sacrificing strength of this mother's mind, her power to control her own emotions, when receiving the severest chastisement, and to sustain the less disciplined minds of her young daughters. She was on a visit with her eldest daughter, at Rokeby Hall, whence she got a little boy, the heir of that place, as a pupil. She had left one of her daughters at home, in a very delicate and precarious state of health, though immediate danger was not apprehended: and the daughter who accompanied, was also in indifferent health. When she had returned to Glasgow, on her way home, she thus wrote Mrs. Hook :

Now, my dear friend, after wearing out my very soul and spirits with communicating sad tidings to others, I come to claim your sympathy and gratulation at once; for you will both feel my distress, and duly estimate my consolations. Catherine, my admired and truly admirable Catherine, is at rest! My old attached friend, the Rev. Mr. Hall, who, with his whole family, were partieularly fond of Catherine, had lodgings near her, and some of them saw her daily. I found a letter addressed, by my desire, to Fellfoot, in which they told me that she had not at any rate been worse than when I saw her, and that they hoped she would be better by the time I returned. Some days after, I got a letter at Rokeby from Mr. Hall. I opened it, and found the first lines a preparation for some wounding intelligence. I feared it might affect me so powerfully as to force me to distress a house full of strangers, and particularly alarm Mary, whose mind had suffered so much from former distress,

that she was ill prepared for a new shock. I put the letter, unread, in my pocket, and feigned indisposition to Mary, to account for the tremours I felt, which shook me every now and then almost to fainting. I sent Mary to bed before me, and when she was asleep, opened the fatal letter. I will not describe my anguish on finding the dear creature had got beyond my cares and tenderness, at the very time I was languishing to clasp her to my breast. Nothing could be more sudden or more quiet than her departure.

who caused it.

My dear friend, I can write no more. When I arrive at Stirling, and settle quietly, I will tell you at large of my Catherine, that you may know how valuable she was. And yet how much fitter her fervid spirit was for the bliss of angels than for the struggles of suffering humanity. Adieu ! my grief will in time be tranquil as she Shall I complain, whose mind had suffered so much from former distress, while conscious that angels hover round me, and while those that still on earth love me so tenderly are themselves so worthy of love? The fire of heaven has indeed seathed my branches; but while the stem is bound by saeh tendrils as these, life will still remain in it. How tender, how interesting were those eight days we passed together! The dear souls live in a voluntary seclusion, that they may cherish the precious memory of my beloved children, and indulge those aspirations after a happier state, so natural to the wounded heart.

I am apt to say, in some moments of "anguish unmingled and agony pure," "O Catherine, Catherine, thou hast split my heart"; and I think I hear her melodious voice reply, Then live the purer with the other half." Sure I must have told you of Catherine's voice; the day that we parted, she sang the Judgment Hymn to me like a seraph. Angels hear that angel sing." There is no speaking of that admirable creature without soaring into rapture, or

sinking in anguish. "Turn, hopeless thoughts, turn from her!"

We have been beguiled by Mrs. Grant's letters into exceeding our allotted space, and must abruptly leave off with a passage in a letter to her son in India, which we earnestly commend to the attention of the many British mothers who have sons in that country.

I must now tell you of an additional and very strong motive that I have for keeping your sisters independent of you. I regard with very great compassion_most men who are destined to spend their lives in India. Far from home and all its sweet and social comforts, and burdened perhaps with relations-who keep them back in the paths of independence, they seek a resource in forming temporary connexions with the natives. These, I am told, are often innocent and even amiable creatures, who are not aware of doing anything reprehensible in thus attaching themselves. In the meantime, the poor woman who has devoted herself to him secures his affection by being the mother of his children: time runs on; the unfortunate mother, whom he must tear from his heart and throw back to misery and oblivion, is daily forming new ties to him. The children, born heirs to shame and sorrow, are for a time fondly cherished, till the wish of their father's heart is fulfilled, and he is enabled to return to his native country, and make the appearance in it to which his ambition has been long directed. Then begin his secret but deep vexations; and the more honourable his mind, and the more affectionate his heart, the deeper are those sorrows which he dare not own, and cannot conquer. This poor rejected one, perhaps faithfully and fondly attached, must be thrown off; the whole habits of his life must be broken; he must pay the debt he owes to his progenitors, and seek to reing, with little previous acquaintance and no great atnew the social comforts of the domestic circle by solicittachment, some lady glad to give youth and beauty for wealth and consequence. The forsaken children, once the objects of his paternal fondness, must be banished, and have the sins of their fathers sorely visited upon

them.

All

picture, which you must know to be a likeness, not of an I will spare myself and you the pain of finishing this individual only, but of a whole tribe of expatriated Scotchmen, who return home exactly in this manner. This, my dear son, is what I dread in your case, and that remains for me is, in the first place, not to burden would fain avoid, that is, prevent it if I could. you with encumbrances that may check the freedom of your will; and in the next, to assure you, that if any person, whom it would be decent or proper for you to connect yourself with by honourable ties, should gain your affections, your mother and your sisters will be ready to adopt her to theirs. Difference of nation, or even of religion, would not alienate us from any wife that you would choose. Doubtless, we should much prefer that you were married to one that we knew and esteemed;

but we should far rather make room in our hearts for a

stranger, who was modest and well principled, than see you in the predicament I have described.

We fear that Mrs. Grant's liberality as to religion might only extend to the Episcopalian form, and of nation, to the English, and, perhaps, the Irish. She showed that strong prejudice against the French which was the feeling of her Anti-Gallican age.

But Mrs. Grant was, on principle, a friend to early marriages; and, in contradistinction to Mrs. Trollope and others, thought the young married people of America justified in living in boardinghouses for a time, if they could not afford, all at once, "the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious housekeeping." "How much is affection," she says, "curbed in this country, and how much happiness delayed, by the ambition for style!”