resort of ambitious cattle, who did not even risk life or limb on its rounded eminences.

Yet the narrow bounds of the glen by no means shook the fidelity of Highland attachment or the steadfastness of clanmanship; probably it rather intensified them. Mary Aldour, who had been as far as the town of Inverluig, reckoned no place in the world, not the yale of Tempe, to be compared to Glen Aldour, and considered every soul within its marches her bloodrelation, only more or less removed, and, says the Highland proverb, 'All the waters of the sea could not wash out your blood from mine.' There was merit as well as bigotry in this notion. The modern theoryFeed the poor if he be distant from you, but discountenance all who approach too near your worship, or have any special claim on your notice and regard-a circumstance which might render your charity a little less conspicuous, and might interfere with a few of your loud pretensions-is not quite so Christian as we are apt to suppose.

Mary Aldour was Highland to the heart's core-a true representative of her glen, yet the Highland woman of a particular class and era; not the Highland woman of the Rebellion-that was well over, only houses in ruins, wasted territories held by connivance for absent families, and the stories of the old, lingered as its traces; not the daughter of a great northern noble or chief, with far more state and sway to that day than an English peer. A good Protestant, though a Church of England woman, was Mary,

the sensible, independent daughter of a laird of long descent, but moderate acres even of heather, powerful more from precedent and personal popularity than from fortune. But here ends any classification of Mary with a commonplace modern young lady.

Mary Macdonnel of Aldour belonged to Aldour, with its dozen women servants, its gillies, or 'youths of the girdle' without number; its paucity of chariots, represented only by the canvas car; and its multiplicity of horses and dogs-its plough horses, cart horses, riding horses, trusty shelties, rough unshod colts and fillies roaming over the moors, and its stag-hounds, otter-hounds, terriers, and collies; its seventy cows with their complement of calves; its sheep and goats by thousands; the temporary swarms from the parent hive of its domestic economy in the shape of summer shealings, bothies, milking stations, hay grounds, with every article of foreign origin—that is, what was not sown, and grown, and ground, and brewed, and baked, and tanned, and moulded, and spun, and woven in Aldour-to be drawn in stores from Inverluig by quarterly instalments, and if the stock ran short and the stormy weather set in, no sugar or tea, or brandy, or silk, or cloth, or lace to be had for love or money till the sky cleared, and Mary Aldour rode, and baited, and boated for a long day with Dugald Roy or Callum More, and brought them home at night behind her saddle and his.

Mary led a life peculiar to the time and country, not only the Scotch country and the Highland

country, but the individual country' to which her branch of the great clan Macdonnel belonged-the little glen, of which she too would have exclaimed, in her magniloquent simplicity and ardour, ' How populous, how vital is the strath!'

Possibly, had Mary lived in the present day she would have broken the hearts of scores of low-country sportsmen, not because her beauty was marvellous, or her virtue transcendant, but because she was so thoroughly Highland, that she must have been fresh as the heather, and racy and pungent as the pinewoods and the peat smoke. However, when Mary lived, no shoals of Saxons flocked northwards; all men of means, or aspirations to means, did not shoulder guns and fishing-rods, they rather hankered after flageolets and haunted mineral waters. The North to the southern had still much of the horror with which it appalled the unhappy Hessians; they took Dr. Johnson's word for it, and imagined it a savage and barren country which caused the great scholar rather to shudder with aversion than hold up his hands with delight. And if any poor finical, quaking, or grumbling fine gentleman had crossed Mary's path, it is to be feared she too would have been quite ready to have turned up her nose at him and dubbed him Smelfungus.'

Mary had less of her father than her mother in her. For Aldour, you may see his outward man in the graphic sketch, 'He was now sixty-two years of age, hale and well-proportioned, with a manly

countenance tanned by the weather, yet having a ruddiness in his cheeks, over a great part of which his rough beard extended. His eye was quick and lively, yet his look was not fierce, but he appeared at once firm and good-humoured. He wore a pair of brogues-tartan hose, which came up only near to his knees and left them bare; a purple camlet kilt; a black waistcoat; a short green cloth coat, bound with gold cord; a yellowish bushy wig; a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button.' In mind he was a frank, manly, simple fellow, simple in his greatest strength, simple in his greatest weakness and worst deceit brought up, like King George, to be king in Aldour, and not so wise and prudent as royal George in his safe domesticity and sober dreams. He had uttered too often the dear old, clumsy, shy, but most cordial Scottish phrase, 'As you have found your way once here, you must see that you find your way back again.' Open-handed, like most of the old Highland lairds, as long as a head of cattle or tree top lasted; entertaining gentle and simple who came by Aldour, and travelled by the glen for the express purpose of benefiting by the Laird's hospitality at his own free charges; enlivening his years by great brimming, not over-wise or over-beneficial, feasts at every rural epoch-sheep-shearing, corn-cutting, potato-digging, flax-scutching, wool-teasing, and seedsowing-besides his full 'fifteen' clansmen and their 'tails' to share his Christmas, and protract their festivities through the first month of the new year.

Mrs. Macdonnel was a woman of another stamp-a big woman every way, what was called in those days 'a strapper,' a figure in large mould, almost rising to a level with her husband's, a face, the regularity of whose strongly marked features was only spoilt by the over-width of the mouth, a common national fault—a woman of keener intellect, and quicker, not softer feelings, and far superior energies to Aldour's -and she had been won to wed him by this very superiority. Unmarried, she was not held the most amiable daughter among the spinsters in her father's house; a single woman, she would have proved one of those shrewd, humorous, snappish ladies with their lasses,' curious personages, moving, or rather standing still in the population of old Scotland-delightful to know by report-awful to encounter face to face, yet invaluable for their truth and fidelity to their nature, their nurture, and their principles. But Providence was kind to Mrs. Macdonnel; when she was still young, gay, and handsome, Aldour, then somewhat sheepish as well as transparent in his candour, though well up in years, fell in her way, became enamoured of a fair lady, not very like his heavy, hearty self, and, fortunately for his suit, being at the time somewhat of a cat's paw and butt of sharper and younger people, went in, prospered in his wooing, won his prize, and afforded his spouse an open space for her talents, and a wide field for her affections.

Mrs. Macdonnel's peculiarity was a great tenderness for the weak, and an active inclination to set