tion of the Western Isles to emigrate. There is a letter from Miss Catherine Sinclairfamiliar to most of us now only by the depressing little monument in St Colme Street-in which she thanks Miss Bird for so much trouble taken for two protégés of hers. "I enclose what will perhaps be sufficient to embark the two emigrants, but if more be absolutely necessary I must not, to use a vulgar phrase, choke upon the tail."

I have met no one who actually knew Mrs Bishop as a child, but am told that her Sumner cousins found her rather trying! Once, at the age of six, having listened all too intently to a conversation on the subject of canvassing, she electrified her unhappy parents by going up to their would-be representative, who was admiring her small sister Henrietta, "Sir Malpas de Grey Tatton Egerton," she said, "did you tell my father my sister was so pretty because you wanted his vote?"

Mr and Mrs Bird had only two children, Isabella, afterwards Mrs Bishop, and Henrietta, so very lovely a child that really Isabella's inquiry of Sir Malpas was exceptionally gratuitous. Neither of these girls ever had any other teachers than their parents. The greatest thing that Mr Bird ever did for his daughters was to teach them to observe. Every summer they went for a driving tour, and were taught geography and history without effort as they went, and with such pleasant interludes as

luncheons in hotels and exciting nights in vast four-post beds in old-fashioned inns. One thing only we can imagine darkened the sheltered life of Isabella Bird's childhood,—an almost constant and most distressing amount of illness. Her mother used to say that when she was scarcely more than a baby the words most frequently on her lips were, "Me tired, me very tired."

The first of all her many journeys was undertaken to try to break a habit of sleeplessness. She went with some cousins to Canada, and after that travelled by herself from one set of friends to another. Once, in a train going to New York, she was dreadfully tired, and yet she had a feeling that, if she went to sleep, the man sitting next her would pick her pocket. She struggled for some hours against her inclination, but having for a moment given way, she awakened to feel the hand of her neighbour gently withdrawing her purse from her pocket. Young and inexperienced in travel though she then was, she considered slowly what course she should pursue. In her purse, besides some money, which was comparatively speaking of small moment, there was her baggage-ticket. That was the only thing that really mattered. If she accused her neighbour of theft, nothing was simpler for him than to drop the purse out of the open window beside which he was sitting. No; she determined she would leave any interference until they arrived at their destination. She secured the

services of a porter, and, with apparent calmness, followed her travelling companion down the platform. Having described her luggage to the porter, she at the critical moment bowed slightly to the pickpocket, and, with an airy smile, said, "This gentleman has my baggageticket," which he immediately presented for her. I wonder whether the money in the purse paid his travelling expenses!

The letters to her sister Henrietta, in which she described this visit to America, were published in 1856, under the title of An English woman in America.' She used merrily to describe their publication as due solely to the fact that she was staying with Bishop Sumner when she sent the manuscript to the publisher, and that her letter which accompanied it was dated from "The Palace." Between it and her next book, written from the Sandwich Islands, there was an interval of more than fourteen years. This, like its predecessor, was in the form of letters. Her sister, to whom they were again addressed, was staying then with a friend in Moray Place, who can recall the tender forethought with which the absentee would write on the outside of the envelope, "No bad news in this packet; may be read little by little." It was extraordinary the effect which the fresh air and exercise had on her delicate health. A missionary from the Sandwich Islands, with whom she had stayed, when she afterwards saw her in her Edinburgh lodgings, found it difficult

to recognise in the exhausted invalid the adventurous, highspirited, lively, and amusing traveller of Hawaii.

For the sister whom she left behind she always had a most tender affection. They were very unlike each other: while Miss Bird seemed to require the stimulus of literary society, travel, or fresh experience, Miss Hennie, as the younger one was called, was never more content than in the little cottage at Tobermory, where she spent many years amongst her humble friends. To reach the cottage you have to go up from the lower village to the very top of the upper village. It was hardly more than a four-roomed cottage, for which they paid a rent of £5 a-year; but from the upper window, round which a seat was fitted, a most beautiful view of the bay was always to be had, and no flower-garden in Tobermory could ever match the gaiety of hers. From her quiet dwelling the younger sister kept the traveller in touch with all that went on at home. In the journeys which she took after her sister's death she felt the blank keenly. "I never knew so little about home things on any former journey, and realise more and more the infinite trouble that Hennie took to prevent me from falling behind in knowledge of things in general." After each separation they met with, if possible, greater affection, and severe indeed was the sorrow when at the end of a trying illness the last parting came. Through this time of trouble both the

invalid and her sister were the recipients of most constant care from Dr John Bishop, who in 1881, after the death of Miss Henrietta, married Miss Isabella Bird. As early as 1877 his name begins to appear in her letters, but her engagement came as a great surprise to most of her circle. Their married life only lasted five years, and was much broken into by ill - health, both

on her part and on his. His death, at Cannes in 1886, was an irreparable loss, not only to his wife but to his friends, who ever held him most wise in counsel. Many years after his death I have heard men regret that they could no longer go to him for advice, which was always sincere and often illuminating. The year following his death she was much at Tobermory, and from this time onwards her letters are full of expressions of her sorrow and loneliness. "I succumb in spirit and strength," she writes, "to the sorrowful contrast between this New Year and last, and have truly sunk in deep waters. The entering on a year which cannot be shared with my husband, and which has no promise but of loveless loneliness, has been overwhelming."

Gradually she comes to project another journey, and begins a correspondence with Edwin Arnold, who lent her a unique copy of a blue-book on Thibet, which, he said, he had with difficulty secured from Lord Cross and Sir Monier Williams, who were much engrossed in it. "Dear Mrs Bishop," he writes,

"I hear with admiration of your heroic plan of travel. Heaven only knows what is impossible to such courage and experience as yours.' Her plan included Persia, Korea, Manchuria, and Thibet, all of which countries she visited and wrote about before 1900. She came straight to our house from her long Persian journey, and although we had from time to time received letters from her

telling us of her progress, nothing nothing she had written, and nothing in the book which she afterwards published, ever came up to the gorgeous description which she gave to us as we sat round the fire. Persia will never be mentioned to me without recalling her picture of the great gravel lands, only glorified at sunrise and sunset, of the wonderful decorated architecture of the Persian interiors, of the attar-of-roses fountains, and, alas! of the terrible misery, suffering, and degradation of the people. Towards the end of the evening she told us the story of a man called Chigakhor, a chief in the Bakhtiari country. He had come to her asking for medical help-for her servants always announced her as a hakim or doctor. Before she left England she had taken a three-months' course in simple surgery, and among her baggage was a large store of medicine. Mrs Bishop gave Chigakhor what he wanted, but still he lingered, and at last inquired of her, through her interpreter, why she gave away help to an unknown people? Mrs Bishop told him the story

of Jesus the divine Healer, in whose dear steps we seek to follow. When she stopped speaking the chief looked up, and in a voice full of entreaty said, "Send us a hakim in the likeness of Christ.'

From the time of this journey through Persia, with an intensity which grew with every fresh excursion into unchristian lands, she worked for medical missions. Far from the beautiful picture of Islamism drawn by certain people, Mrs Bishop could only tell of the horrible wickedness of the lands in which this religion flourishes. "I think it the most blighting, withering, and degrading influence of all the false creeds." Buddhism was to her almost as terrible. In the women's quarters which she visited in the East she was asked more than two hundred times for drugs with which to disfigure the favourite wife or take away the life of an infant son. She founded a hospital at Srinagar in memory of her husband, and it was a sweet surprise to her once, when reading in a newspaper, to come upon the statement of how the John Bishop Memorial Hospital had reduced and almost banished the plague from the neighbourhood of Islamabad. Another hospital founded by her was one in memory of her sister Henrietta. It was at Beas in the Punjaub. Her way of living became, if possible, simpler as the years went on. Nothing worried her more than the thought of money "thrown away," as she would say, upon herself. This was the case even in the ill

Her life as an authoress was very successful, but how little success meant to her when there were none left to share it! "People congratulate me,' she writes in a letter from Mull, "on my successful career, as if anything external could fill a heart which has known love and its loss. I would gladly give all I have had of success and all else to have my husband or Hennie back for one five minutes.'

Winter life in Tobermory, while giving her freedom and peace, left much to be desired. The garden, her great delight in summer, was then brown and unresponsive. The mild days and the nights seemed almost interminable, for she had few companions-most of them "suffering from brainrust!" (eight out of ten all over the world was her crushing estimate in a fit of depression). She had many speeches and addresses to make, but she found it difficult to prepare for them at Tobermory. Possibly she felt fear without any corresponding excitement when she looked forward to the great opportunities offered to her on all sides to plead the cause of foreign missions, for although she apparently spoke with great ease, she seldom if ever addressed an audience without previously suffering acutely from nervous apprehension.

The following is an example of the vividness of description and simplicity of appeal which she used as a speaker :