three hundred words, "This is a great stretch for my eyes, and I have had to make many a pause to rest them.'

Personal commendation, and that from experienced critics, such as Joanna Baillie, Granville Penn, and others, Miss Ferrier received in plenty. Sir James Mackintosh wrote that on the day of the dissolution of Parliament and during its most critical hours he was "so occupied with her little colony in Argyllshire" that he did not "throw away a thought on kings and parliaments.'

Nevertheless the greater critics were silent. Scott, their great leader, was gone, Jeffrey was in public silent, the Quarterly Review only incidentally mentioned "that excellent novel Marriage," and the Edinburgh Review said nothing for some seventeen years, when Mr. George Moir wrote a pleasant and discursive article, but one which, as it seems to those of us whose perspective is at a different angle, entirely misses the whole point of the excellence of Miss Ferrier's work. Christopher North praised, but his praise was of just those episodes, such as the return of Ronald, which now we rank no higher than "Lucy Gray," or the death of Little Nell.

In spite of all that may be urged, the loss of a father who was the centre of her life-the failure of eyesight, later too of health-the entire, though in part voluntary, change in her social conditions and surroundings-despite all this, one cannot but

marvel that after meeting with so much success and appreciation, not only from those who judged of her work as literature and art, but also of those who believed she had a message to deliver to her times, Susan Ferrier should have been content to spend nearly a quarter of a century in silence. Some effort indeed she made to meet the wishes, repeated and urgent, of the publishers, but she wrote, “I made two attempts to write something, but could not please myself and would not publish anything."

To the very last, however, as is evident from her letters, she kept up all kindly interest in friends and relatives, and though writing was increasingly difficult, never failed in the expression of kindly sympathy alike with joy and sorrow. There does not seem to be the slightest foundation for the accusation brought against her by Mr. Brimley Johnson of "harshness and general oddity," nor of being a 66 very formidable personage much dreaded by her younger relations.'

After the Disruption of 1843 Miss Ferrier joined the Free Church, and though one cannot but note a marked increase in her religious phraseology, her natural breadth of mind seems to have saved her from any great degree of conventionality, and indeed her views seem to have been very much those she expressed in Inheritance (vol. ii. chap. xi.)

"Even in the Christian world there are great varieties there are narrow minds as well as great minds there are those who pin their faith upon

the sleeve of some favourite preacher others who seem to think salvation confined within the four walls of the particular Church in which they happen to sit. But, as has been well said by the liberalminded Wesley, 'how little does God regard men's opinions!' What a multitude of wrong opinions are embraced by all the members of the Church of Rome; yet how highly favoured have many of them been. "

In her later letters, despite her disabilities as to health and sight, we find her much interested in philanthropic work of all kinds - temperance, missionary labours, and negro emancipation. She even went so far as to say that she found nothing readable after Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is surprising even in one who "could not abide" "Tales of My Landlord," and thought Miss Austen's Emma totally lacking in plot.

In politics, Miss Ferrier seems to have been catholic and indifferent. She could be the personal admirer of Scott with all his interests of poetry and medievalism, and yet the friend of the Campbells, whose sympathies were so wholly different. As a child she played with Lord Brougham, but it is recorded that in later life she banished his bust from her house. It is possible, however, that this was less on political than on moral grounds. She is described by her biographer as being "as free from external prepossessions as Fielding or Thackeray ;" and, in truth,

what she had of prejudice, of class feeling, seems to have been, at least latterly, of the moral type imposed upon her by the rigidity of her religious. opinions.

At no time of her life was she the person to suffer fools gladly, and indeed it is to her very power of observing and recording the small failings and weaknesses of her acquaintances that we owe most of the pleasure, one may perhaps even add, the profit, of her books. It can only be with the deepest sympathy, in which impatience or thought of "harshness" can have no just share, that remembering the gaiety and brightness of her youth one reads such passages as this (speaking of a friend who had hoped to visit her), "though the very sound of her voice is music in my ear, I could not admit her; there are days when I am unable to speak without pain and difficulty, so you cannot wonder that I should decline all introductions and confine myself entirely to relations and old familiar friends; and again, "I can still discern objects as clearly as ever, but I cannot look steadily at anything for more than a very few seconds without a great effort, so I often shrink from the touch of a pen as though it were a torpedo."

Of her last days we know only that after many years of semi-invalid seclusion Susan Ferrier died on 2nd Nov. 1854, and was buried in the family resting-place of St. Cuthbert's Church, Edinburgh.

A. G. F.

IF

MISS FERRIER

F there had existed in the early years of the century to which we have so recently said farewell an order to which distinguished female novelists were admitted, it is certain that Miss Ferrier would have attained to its highest rank. Its Grand Cross would have been allotted to her, and if the order had been designated as that of the Pen we should now be speaking of her familiarly as Susan Ferrier, G.C.P. Miss Burney and Miss Edgeworth would have been among her colleagues, and Miss Austen herself might possibly have deigned to honour the institution by allowing herself to be enrolled as a member. To an imaginary list no limits need be fixed, and the admirers of Mrs. Radcliffe, or any other authoresses, are welcome to add the names of their favourites, but when every possible addition has been made the list must remain a short one, and Miss Ferrier must find herself in a truly select company.

It is a trite enough saying that it takes many folk to make a world, and it is equally trite to say that it takes many tastes to make up a reading