prived of all instruction of this and almost every other kind; but then it was intended to send me to a convent in Canada, where officers' daughters got some sort of superficial education. This was deferred from year to year, and then dropped, because we thought of coming home, where I was to learn everything; but by that time I was grown very tall, very awkward, and so sensitive that a look disconcerted me, and I went to no school except that where dancing was taught, which I very soon left, from the same miserable conscious awkwardness." She adds that she then used to exercise her handwriting principally in little poems of her own composition, in noting down which, with no one to direct or overlook her, she employed the first spelling that came to hand.

After she returned to Scotland she spent part of three summers at a country house of a family of the name of Pagan, on the banks of the river Cart, near Glasgow. Her visit to these friends she declares that she looks back upon as a valuable part of her mental, or rather perhaps moral education. "Minds," she observes, "so pure, piety so mild, so cheerful, and influential, manners so simple and artless, without the slightest tincture of hardness or vulgarity, such primitive ways of thinking, I have never met with, nor could ever have supposed to exist, had I not witnessed. Here were the relics of the old Covenanters all round us; and here I enriched my memory with many curious traits of Scottish history and manners by frequenting the cottages of the peasantry, and perusing what I could find on their smoky bookshelves. Here was education for the heart and mind, well adapted for the future lot which Providence assigned to me."

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In 1773, when Anne was eighteen, her father accepted the office of barrack-master at Fort Augustus, in Inverness-shire, and removed thither with his family. Here she first met Mr Grant, who held the appointment of chaplain to the garrison, and whom she describes as connected with some of the most respectable families in the neighbourhood, possessing great personal advantages, and adding that of much refinement of mind, sound principle, and a most correct judgment." The young clergyman was appointed to the neighbouring living of Laggan in 1776; and three years after, he and Miss Macvicar were married.

"His popularity," says his widow, was secured by his manners and conduct; mine was of more difficult attainment, because I was not a native of the country, and Highlanders dislike the intrusion of a stranger. However, I had both pride and pleasure in overcoming difficulties. Thus, by adopting the customs, studying the Gaelic language, and, above all, not wondering at anything local and peculiar, with the aid of a most worthy and sensible mother in-law, I acquired that share of the goodwill

My

of my new connections, and the regard of the poor, without which, even with the fond affection of a fellow-mind, such a residence would have been scarcely supportable. father soon after removed to Fort George, near Inverness, and had generally one or two of my children residing with him and my mother. I acquired a taste for farming, led a life of fervid activity, and had a large family of children, all promising, and the greater number of them beautiful. I felt much at home among our neighbours and the tenantry, and many things occurred that might give interest to a more extended biography, but must be here passed over. I generally passed some weeks of every summer at Fort George with my parents, and kept up a constant correspondence with my friends in the South."

It is a

In this way life passed not only happily, but, as matters turned out, in the constant though imperceptible and unconscious accumulation of what was to prove to be the very means of existence in other circumstances. striking illustration of the remark that, let one acquire any branch of useful knowledge or skill whatever, and a day will come when it will be of service. The rule is, to take advantage of every opportunity of making any such acquisition. Everything that Mrs Grant was now doing was growing, without her being aware of it, into a fund for the future-the correspondence she kept up with her friends, her study of the Gaelic language, and of the character and customs of the Highlanders, even more than, what might have seemed at the moment to be of more immediate utility, the knowledge which she attained of agricultural operations and the habits of activity to which she inured herself. The "pride and pleasure in overcoming difficulties," of which she speaks, and whatever other present gratification or profit attended her exertions, were only the promise of the full repayment they were eventually to bring her.

Many years thus flowed on, not in unclouded sunshine, but with no more than the usual human allotment of shadow and vicissitude. They had been married about twenty-three years, and of eleven children had lost three in early infancy, when their eldest son, a most amiable and promising boy, for whom the interest of a friend had already obtained a commission in the army, was carried off by consumption in his sixteenth year. His father, whose health had always been precarious, and from whom his children seem to have inherited the insidious disease that was to steal them all away, one after another, in the spring of their days, from their mother's eyes, sank under this blow; and after eighteen months more, Mrs Grant was a widow. This was in 1801, when she was in her forty-sixth year. Another boy had been born a fortnight after the death of his brother.

"I was thus," she says, "left with eight children, not free from debt, yet owing less than might be expected, considering the size of our family and the decent hospitality which was kept up in a manner that, on looking back, astonishes even myself, as it did others at the time. I was too much engrossed with my irreparable loss on the one hand, and too much accustomed to a firm reliance on the fatherly care of Him who will not abandon the children of a righteous man on the other, to have any fears for the support of so many helpless creatures. I felt a confidence on their account that to many might appear romantic and extravagant."

Yet, apparently, it was upon what she might be able to earn by her own exertions, woman as she was, that she had mainly to depend for bread to herself and her children, for her father had nothing to give her or to leave her his American property had been swallowed up in the gulf of the revolution. All the certain income that she had was a small pension from the War Office, to which she was entitled in consequence of her husband having obtained a military chaplaincy a few years before his death. She says nothing of any allowance from the Widows' Fund, to which it is now obligatory upon every clergyman of the Scottish Church to subscribe, so that her husband had probably neglected to secure her that benefit. At all events, the £30 or £40 a year which she might have had from that source would have afforded a very insufficient support for so numerous a family. One additional source of income only she had for a short time after the loss of her husband, in a cheap farm which they had rented from the Duke of Gordon, and which his Grace kindly allowed her to retain at the old rent, not only for the year after that in which Mr Grant died, but for the ensuing one also. Here she her self remained with the younger portion of her children, her elder daughter finding, meanwhile, a home with her father and mother, who had some time before this returned to Glasgow.

spending some months among my friends at Glasgow. All these occasional scraps I gave away, never having preserved a single copy. My friends were more apprehensive of pecuniary distress for me than I was for myself, and well knew how reluctant I should be to appear before the public as a writer-this, perhaps, as much from pride as from modesty. I had been often urged by partial friends to write for the booksellers, but, in the first place, I had more dread of censure than hope of applause; and, besides, I could not find leisure, devoted as I was to a tenderly affectionate husband, whose delicacy of constitution, and still greater delicacy of mind, made my society and attendance essential to him. It still is gratifying for me to think of my steadiness in this refusal. I had, during some of the years which tasked my faculties of every kind to intense exertion, much aid and comfort from a young lady (Miss Charlotte Grant) related to my husband's family, whom particular circumstances had separated from her nearest relatives; yet, owing to her absence during winter in town, my duties grew every day more arduous. Nothing, indeed, but the deepest gratitude to the invaluable friends of my early days would have induced me to carry on the frequent correspondence now known to the public. It was only in early summer mornings and late winter ones that I could find time to write. An excellent constitution, and equal, cheerful spirits, for which I could never be thankful enough, bore me through a great deal.”

But the brave exertions, thus originally made from a disinterested motive, were now, as often happens, unexpectedly to become productive in the hour of need. The bread cast upon the waters was about to return after many days. The friends among whom Mrs Grant had scattered her verses had carefully treasured them, though she herself had kept no copies; and it was now determined that steps should be taken for having a volume of them published by subscription. The zeal with which they set about the good work, and their extraordinary success, are honourable both to themselves and to her. Before she had herself even heard of the pro

publication were collected, the proposals were dispersed all over Scotland. "My personal friends," she says, "were not only zealous themselves, but procured new friends for me, who afterwards showed the warmest interest in my welfare. Being very much attached to my humble neighbours, I had at one time written, as part of a letter, a page or two of poetical regret at the hard necessity that forced so many to emigrate. The friend who had preserved this effusion sent it home, and advised me to enlarge and complete the sketch. I did so, and thus was finished The Highlanders,' the principal poem in the published collection; the rest I did not see again till I saw them in print."

The volume, under the title of "Original Poems, with some Translations from the Gaelic," appeared in 1803, with a list of subscribers extending to the unprecedented number of three thousand. "Some of these," says Mrs Grant with her characteristic frankness, "I owed to esteem, but certainly the greatest number to compassion or to influence, so that my gratitude was mingled with a sense of humiliation." But although something of the latter feeling was natural enough in the circumstances, the same good sense, and even the proper pride from which it sprung, would protect her from being too much depressed by it. The view that she took of the fact was no doubt the correct one, and evinced a just appreciation of the really slight merit of her verses; but she would be thereby only the more roused to endeavour to produce something on another occasion which would have more intrinsic value, and be more deserving of the public patronage on its own account.

Her troubles and sorrows, however, were far from being yet over. She had already, indeed, been menaced with a new blow. A short time before the publication of her poems, her eldest daughter, Mary, had been invited by an English lady, Mrs Protheroe, wife of Edward Protheroe, M. P. for Bristol, to come and reside with her as a friend, receiving at the same time such an allowance as would put it in her power to assist her family. Her mother did not feel justified in declining this proposal, and Miss Grant was accordingly sent to Bristol, where everything conduced to make her feel herself most agreeably established in a new position. But before very long, news came to her mother that she was dangerously ill, and that it was absolutely necessary she should herself go to take charge of her. "I was obliged," she writes, "to set out immediately, in a state of mind impossible to describe, and to leave my family under the care of two trusty and most attached servants and a daughter of eighteen-that incomparable daughter Isabella, who, while she remained on earth, was like a guardian angel to us all."

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for retaining her situation. "It was the end of April 1803," says Mrs Grant, "when we arrived in Glasgow. I found my father suffering from an illness in that city, which proved his last; and I left my daughter with him. Returning to my home at Laggan, after seeing all the luxury that wealth affords, I set out, mounted on a horse that was sent to meet me, on a dark showery day, and travelled over the black unvaried heath of Drumochter with unspeakable delight. I was going from a world where I was a sorrowful unknown wanderer to a place where every countenance brightened at my approach, and where affectionate children were to meet me with rapture."

A few weeks after this, Mrs Grant removed with her family from Laggan to a house called Woodend, near Stirling, having attached to it some garden ground and a lawn, on which she could feed a couple of cows. About the same time her father died, upon which her mother came to live with her. She thus describes her life at Woodend, in a letter to a friend, written in 1804: "I live in a great hurry, notwithstanding my aide-de-camps, whose diligence in performing their several duties I have no reason to complain of; but I have dedicated this summer to making certain arrangements in the way of gardening and household affairs, which will leave me at leisure to apply to a new literary task when these beautiful days shorten; for I really cannot think of shutting myself up with my own gloomy reflections while all nature smiles invitation around me. You can't think, too, how many little rural employments I create to myself by the help of three cows which I graze this summer, and which constitute no contemptible dairy. The love of farming is cousin-german to the love of nature. No person that has ever tasted the sweets of weeding turnips and pulling lint, not to mention the transports of marking the first bloom nodding on potatoes no such agricultural enthusiast can give up these pursuits without a pang like that of a defeated general or a neglected beauty."

But, as she remarks in her autobiographical sketch, she never was long without a trouble of one kind or another. In the end of the year 1804, she was suddenly summoned away to the South. The eldest of her two surviving sons, Duncan, had, much to his mother's regret, chosen the army for his profession; and having been shortly before appointed a cadet for Woolwich, had, within a few days of completing his preparatory course of study at the military academy at Marlow, become involved in a mutiny of a number of the young men, which had

pears, he had taken no active part in the affair, but only, having unfortunately had the design confided to him, had, from a feeling of honour, kept the secret, and afterwards refused to give

up the names of the others. "Until," says the mother, "I heard the circumstances truly explained by his patron, Mr Charles Grant of the India House, I was inexpressibly wretched; for disgrace was new to me, and I could not support it." Meanwhile, through Mr Grant, who was then chairman, an East Indian cadetship had been obtained for her son-the Duke of York, the commander-in-chief, being persuaded to remain quiescent.

It was this affair that led to her next literary adventure. "I was detained," she says, "heavy-hearted enough, for some months in London, to see him prepared for going to India. The equipment of my son was a new and heavy expenditure, for which I was not well provided. In this situation, my friends strongly advised me to publish my letters, a resource in which I had little faith; and, had I thought it available, such a disclosure was very grating to my feelings, for two reasons. First, because I always thought it extremely indelicate to publish letters in the lifetime of the author; and next, because, to suit them for public perusal and avoid misconstruction in my own circle, I saw that I should find it necessary to exclude the most amusing and interesting passages, namely, those that related more particularly to my friends and their friends, as well as much harmless badinage and veritable narrative."

She was, however, prevailed upon to overcome her scruples and prepare her letters with a view to publication, and herself tells the story of the success of the venture: "I was at the utmost loss, knowing no bookseller, how to dispose of my defective and ill-arranged manuscripts. Happily, I met with a Scotch friend, who knew something of Messrs Longman & Rees, and promised to introduce me. I went to them with no enviable feelings, being fully as much ashamed of my shabby manuscript as Falstaff was of his ragged recruits. Mr Longman, however, took it graciously, submitted it to his invisible critic, and in a few days I heard the glad sound that it would do very well for publication. I was told that it would be set about immediately, and would be ready in three or four months, it being arranged that I should receive half of the profits, the booksellers bearing the risk of printing. This was in spring 1805. Summer and autumn passed, winter came, spring returned, still not a word of my book. I thought my papers had been lost or thrown aside as useless, and, occupied with a thousand other cares, I had almost forgotten them, when I received at Woodend a letter informing me that my book was printed, and nothing was wanted but the preface, which, it seems, was the last thing required. Certainly never was preface more expeditiously written. In half an hour after the letter was received the preface was away to Stirling to overtake the evening post. I had declined to give my name to the

public as the author of the letters, and therefore could not be much affected, further than a pecuniary disappointment, by their being overlooked. Yet I have been seldom so much surprised, as when my kind neighbour, Lady Stewart, casually mentioned her hearing from London that a book, called 'Letters from the Mountains,' divided with some other new publications the attention of readers that summer. No person, I believe, was so astonished at their success as myself. My booksellers dealt liberally with me, and many persons of distinguished worth interested themselves in me, and sought my acquaintance in consequence of perusing those letters."

Thirty years before, when she was a girl of seventeen, Mr Hatsell, afterwards principal clerk of the House of Commons, had, when on a visit to Fort Augustus, resided in her father's house, and taken some notice of her. When her new book was about to make its appearance, she wrote to that gentleman, with a copy of her poems, expressing a hope that he might not altogether have forgotten her, and briefly detailing what had befallen her since they had met. She seems to have had no answer at the time; but nearly a year after, we find her again writing to him: "Sir, I have just been greatly surprised, as well as deeply affected, by your very kind letter. The pressure of very peculiar circumstances emboldened me to solicit your protection for my most unwilling publication when I was in London; but I was so little satisfied with myself for thus exposing my motives to the mercy of unkind conjecture, that I endeavoured to forget that I had written. So far I succeeded, that for months I have not recollected this indiscretion, for such indeed I accounted it. Judge, then, besides being dazzled by generosity and soothed by delicacy, how much I am relieved to find I have not been misconstrued. So far from refusing,

from a mistaken notion of dignity, your offered kindness, I am proud to owe an obligation conferred by such a character, and in such a manner."

But Mr Hatsell's exertions in her behalf were not confined to the present in money he had made her in the first instance. He so used his influence among his most influential friends, that many persons of high rank took an active interest in the welfare of Mrs Grant and her family; and her daughter Charlotte, who was then staying at Richmond, received many visits from ladies of high fashion, who questioned her as to her mother's appearance, whilst the Bishop of London offered to forward another edition of the letters. Her publishers, too, dealt with her in a manner that gave her great satisfaction. Writing to Mr Hatsell, she says: "If gratitude were payment, you should be as liberally dealt with as I have been by my booksellers. Further I cannot proceed, without