she had been familiar with our aborigines, who still dwelt in the neighbourhood of Albany; she had, in company with her father, visited a great Indian king or chief in his palace or wigwam on the Mohawk, and "went out of the royal presence overawed and delighted"; she was in a few years to become the wife of a Highland clergyman, and to dwell among another portion of mankind scarcely less peculiar, and not less romantic in their aspect, than our native Indians; and thence she was to be removed to associate familiarly with a highly cultivated and intellectual circle, that drew upon itself the gaze of the world.

On her return to Scotland, her father entered into some kind of business at Glasgow, and here she remained, without any particular incident to mark her life, till the commencement of her nineteenth year. She here, however, formed an intimate friendship with two young ladies, sisters, of the name of Ewing, and with another, Henrietta Reid. It continued with each of them till it was dissolved by death. The two former appear in the last collection of her letters under the names of Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Brown. To Miss Reid many of her earlier printed letters are addressed. This lady was soon, but not happily, married. Her husband was unfortunate in business, and other circumstances contributed to her discomfort. "She was," says Mrs. Grant, "a perfect model of patient meekness, always suffering, never complaining, frugal, industrious, and preserving not the equanimity only, but the dignity and delicacy of her mind, through all exigencies." Her family increased rapidly, and she died in giving birth to her eleventh child.*

In 1773, Mrs. Grant's father received the appointment of Barrack-master of Fort Augustus, in Inverness-shire, and removed his family thither. With her journey to that place commences the portion of Mrs. Grant's correspondence which was published under the title of "Letters from the Mountains." The first forty of them contain an account of the incidents of her life, with notices and sketches of friends and acquaintance, during the six years between her leaving Glasgow and her marriage (when twenty-four years old) in May, 1779. Her residence during this period was at Fort Augustus, where she formed a friendship with Miss Ourry,

afterwards Mrs. Furzer, to whom many of her letters are addressed. On the first evening after her arrival there, she met her future husband, the Rev. James Grant.

The account of the events and concerns of her life during the interval just mentioned, to be read with interest, must be read in her own letters. The society at Fort Augustus was, in general, far from being agreeable; and in her circumstances, there could, for the most part, have been nothing very gratifying. Whatever she effected for her own improvement it would seem that she must have done with little aid from without. Yet there is no repining in her letters. Her cheerfulness and alacrity of mind do not appear to have failed.

Her residence at Fort Augustus was terminated by her marriage. This connection, as regards both the character and the circumstances of her husband, seems to have been peculiarly adapted to make her happy. She was free from the cravings and sufferings of vanity and the love of display. She had no tendency to regard herself as an extraordinary personage, to whom her fellow-creatures were in danger of doing injustice by neglect. In her simplicity and true-heartedness, she was happy to be the wife of an obscure Highland clergyman, without the least thought of ever becoming famous; though pleased, without doubt, to gratify her friends by her talents in writing letters and making verses, and by the vivacity of her conversation. While she was faithfully performing her duties in the secluded parish of Laggan, of which her husband was the pastor, few things could have seemed less probable than that she should become known to the world. But for circumstances that could not be anticipated, she would probably have lived and died in the Highlands, one of those "of whom Fame speaks not," but

"gentle hearts rejoice

Around their steps, till silently they die."

In truth, the fame of Mrs. Grant, if it may be so called, was in great part only an expression of esteem for those admirable qualities of character, exercised in domestic and private life, which her vicissitudes and sufferings were accidentally the means of bringing into public view.

Somewhat more than two years after her marriage, she wrote to her friend, Miss Ewing, describing her situation. The letter is dated at Fort Augustus, where she was on a visit. She says:

"You will think I am talking very solemnly about travelling the twenty-five miles between here and Laggan; for I do not know that ever I told you how peculiarly we are situated with regard to each other. This district is divided from ours by an immense mountain called Corryarrick. That barrier is impassable in the depth of winter, as the top of it is above the region of clouds; and the sudden descent on the other side peculiarly dangerous, not only from deep snows concealing the unbeaten track of the road, but from whirlwinds and eddies that drive the snow into heaps; besides an evil spirit which the country people devoutly believe to have dwelt there time out of mind.

"I was rather urgent in requesting permission to make this visit, because my little daughter is here, who loves me and smiles on me irresistibly, and whom I must needs leave as a substitute for myself; and then I resolved to enjoy the last fading gleams of autumn here, and embrace my dear parents before I should be separated from them all winter by this dreadful barrier. The society is varied by some new characters; not military ones, but just such harmless, good-humored people as one takes a pleasure in pleasing, and leaves without a pang. My mate has chosen this time to visit his Strathspey friends. I am beginning to be on the spur homeward; snow is now beginning to fall; but though I should ride on clouds and skies,' I must get home immediately.

"Now I will give you a sketch of our situation, and you will say 't is time. After crossing this awful mountain, we travel eastward through twelve miles of bleak, inhospitable country, inhabited only by moor-fowl, and adorned with here and there a booth, erected for a temporary shelter to shepherds, who pass the summer with their flocks in these lonely regions. On leaving this waste, you enter a vale six miles in length, and half a mile broad, which wants nothing but wood to be beautiful; it has indeed some copses, or what the Scottish bards call shaws. This vale consists entirely of rich meadow and arable lands, and has the clear and rapid Spey running through the middle of it. About the centre of this vale, at the foot of a mountain which screens it from the north wind, stands our humble dwelling." Letters from the Mountains, Vol. 1., pp. 222 – 224.

This residence she elsewhere describes as a "comfortable cottage, consisting of four rooms, light closets, and a nursery and kitchen built out by way of addition."

"You will wonder," she continues, "we have not the good house to which the pastor's office entitles him. That should be

built on the glebe, and can be nowhere else, and this glebe is a nook which none but a hermit would inhabit. Then we are so far from market, that, unless the ravens were commissioned to feed us, we could not do without a farm; which affording us every necessary of life, we send to Inverness (only fifty miles off) for elegances and superfluities; elegant sugar, and superfluous tea, for instance. The last incumbent preferred getting this farm at an easy rate and living in a cottage of his own building, to a more elegant mansion without that advantage; and we have made the same sacrifice of vanity to convenience. We have a great extent of moor and hill grazing, where they say we may feed some hundreds of sheep, a very suitable flock for a person who ought to be much detached from secular cares, having a shepherd kept purposely to attend them. They require even in winter no food or shelter, but what the hills afford. Our neighbours abound in courtesy and civility, and many of them, having been abroad in the army, are sufficiently intelligent."-Letters from the Mountains, Vol. 1., pp. 224, 225.

During her married life, her principal sufferings seem to have arisen from that severe calamity which pursued her through her after years, the sickness and death of her children. But she was about to meet with a still heavier loss. The following simple and affecting narrative of her afflictions is from her autobiographical memoir. A gentleman, Mr. Mackintosh of Dunchattan, who was uncle by marriage to Sir John Moore,

"procured a commission in the army for our eldest son, John Lauchlan, then a mere boy, but a most amiable and promising one he died in Glasgow, of consumption, in his sixteenth year. This was a great blow, and bore heavy on his father, whose health had been always very precarious. I had mourned over three children, who died previously, in early infancy. The birth of my youngest child, a fortnight after the death of his brother, carried off my thoughts, in some degree, from this affliction. The daily decline of Mr. Grant's health, though I was unwilling to see it, now forced itself on my attention. He outlived his son eighteen months. -I cannot go through details ever painful to memory suffice it that he was removed in 1801, after an attack of inflammation of three days' continuance; and I was thus 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." - Memoir and Correspondence, Vol. 1., pp. 13, 14.

From this time till the close of her long days, Mrs. Grant continued to be a traveller between life and death. She had said of herself, at a much earlier period, in a letter to her friend, Miss Ourry,

"My meditations hover so constantly about the confines of the world unknown, where my aching eyes are continually exploring the departing footsteps of those who still live in my remembrance, that I now see this world and all its vanities, as the Apostle says we do futurity, through a glass, darkly.' These frequent excursions of the mind into the trackless ocean of vast eternity contribute not a little to throw a dim shade over every thing that dazzles and attracts in this valley of vision." Letters from the Mountains, Vol. 11., p. 32.

At her husband's death, she was left in circumstances above absolute want. "But my friends," she says, "were more apprehensive of pecuniary distress for me than I was for myself." Some of them, during her married life, had urged her to write for the booksellers; but for this she had had neither inclination nor leisure. Her family duties and interests pressed too much upon her thoughts and her time to allow her to engage in mere literary labor. It was during the nights of winter or in the dawn of summer mornings, that she found time to write those letters to the friends of her early days, that first made her advantageously known to the world. At the same time she distrusted her abilities for the proposed task. Of her powers, no one, from first to last, seems to have formed a more correct estimate than herself. Her mind was too sound, and she was too free from vanity, to be deluded by the partiality of those who loved her while yet generally unknown, or by the celebrity which she afterwards obtained.

But it was her lot to become an authoress. "I had early," she says, "discovered a faculty of rhyming, scarcely worthy to be dignified with the name of poetry, but easy