with which we have been kindly favored, of copies of her letters, addressed to two American friends, only one of which letters appears in the present collection. To the volumes of her correspondence just published a brief memoir is prefixed, partly autobiographical, the conclusion being furnished by the editor. But the events of her earlier life are principally to be gathered from her "Memoirs of an American Lady."

The maiden name of Mrs. Grant was Anne Macvicar. She was born at Glasgow, on the 21st of February, 1755, — the daughter of Duncan Macvicar, whom she describes as "a plain, brave, pious man." Of her mother, who survived till 1811, dying in her daughter's house in Edinburgh in her eighty-fourth year, there are but few notices in her writings; and those few may lead one to think, that she was not in all respects qualified to instruct and open the mind of her child. "I dearly loved idleness," says Mrs. Grant, in her" Memoirs of an American Lady," "and the more, because my mother, who delighted in needle-work, confined me too much to it." This was when she was five years old; and she mentions more than once "the long tasks and close confinement," which she had to endure in her childhood.

Her father was a subaltern in a regiment ordered for America, and sailed for this country in 1757. He was followed by his wife and child the next year. These he established at Claverack, on the Hudson, about thirty-five miles below Albany, at board with a "worthy, wealthy, and most primitive" Dutch family. Here little Anne was taught to read by her mother, and learned to talk Dutch; and learned too, as at a later period she believed, "among the primitive worthies of the settlement, that love of truth and simplicity which she afterwards found a charm against artifice and pretension of every kind." Her only books were a primer and the Bible. She grew in time familiar with the Old Testament; and, in addition to her books, a Scotch sergeant brought her the ballad of "Blind Harry's Wallace." He assisted her to understand its broad Scotch; and the ballad filled her with youthful enthusiasm for Scotland and its hero.

In 1760, when Anne was five years old, her father, who had been stationed at Oswego, rejoined his family. She represents herself as having been strongly impressed by his

religious character, in comparison with that of other military men with whom she had been acquainted. He did not swear, and he prayed. His family accompanied him, on his return to Oswego, whither he was conducting a company to join the garrison at that place. A great part of the journey was through an uncultivated wilderness. It was full of romantic incident, and presented a succession of picturesque scenery, rendered more striking by the passage of soldiery forcing their slow way through those lonely retreats of nature. The mind of a lively and imaginative child could not but be strongly affected by it; and Mrs. Grant has given a vivid description of it in her "Memoirs of an American Lady." "I am convinced," she says, "that I thought more in that fortnight, that is, acquired more ideas, and took more lasting impressions, than ever I did in the same space of time in my life."

Anne, with her parents, remained the succeeding winter and spring in the fort at Oswego; and no particular incident seems to have diversified what must have been to her a dull life in that remote garrison. But in the summer of 1762, when she was seven years old, her father returned, with his wife and child, to join a body of troops stationed at Albany. Anne left nothing behind her which was near her heart, but a tame partridge and six pigeons.

On the journey back, occurred one of the most eventful incidents of her early life. The party arrived in the evening at a fort on the Mohawk, where Captain Campbell, an old friend of her father, was stationed. The rest of the story must be given in her own words.

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"On that evening we returned to Fort Bruerton. I found Captain Campbell delighted with my reading, my memory, and my profound admiration of the friendship betwixt David and Jonathan. We staid the most of the next day. I was much captivated with the copperplates in an edition of Paradise Lost, which, on that account, he had given me to admire. When I was coming away, he said to me, Keep that book, my dear child; I foretell that the time will come when you will take pleasure in it." Never did a present produce such joy and gratitude. I thought I was dreaming, and looked at it a hundred times, before I could believe any thing so fine was really my own. I tried to read it, and almost cried with vexation when I found I could not understand it. At length I quitted it in de

spair; yet always said to myself, I shall be wiser next year.”Memoirs of an American Lady, p. 238. American Ed.

This volume was the means of introducing her to the most distinguished woman of the Province of New York, Madam Schuyler; who, though she herself continued a Royalist to the last, was aunt of the eminent and excellent General Schuyler, to whose services in our American Revolution due honor has not yet been paid. At Albany, in a wasteroom, where she found a tattered dictionary, Anne, by the aid of this, and with occasional assistance from those who were able and willing to help her through her difficulties, studied out the meaning of her Milton, feeling an absorbing interest in the pursuit, which a student of riper years might well envy. This is the kind of study which benefits the mind. Impressions thus received are ineffaceable. "Time ran on," is her own account, given in after life; "I was eight years old, and quite uneducated, except reading and plainwork. When company came, I was considered as in the way, and sent up to my waste-room; but here lay my whole pleasure; for I had neither companions nor amusement."

Meanwhile, the fame of Madam Schuyler reached her ears, and she was earnestly desirous of seeing her. The opportunity at last arrived. Her father took lodgings in Albany, in a house next to that lady's; and she, being pleased with what she heard of his character, sent an invitation to the family to pass the evening with her. "With no little awe and agitation," says Mrs. Grant, "I came into the presence of Madame." But she was now about to receive a great reward for her faithful study of Milton. She says:

"In the course of the evening, dreams began to be talked of; and every one in turn gave their opinion with regard to that wonderful mode, in which the mind acts independent of the senses, asserting its immaterial nature in a manner the most conclusive. I mused and listened, till at length the spirit of quotation (which very early began to haunt me) moved me to repeat, from Paradise Lost,

'When nature rests,

Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes,

To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft.'

I sat silent when my bolt was shot; but so did not Madame.
Astonished to hear her favorite author quoted readily by so

mere a child, she attached much more importance to the circumstance than it deserved; so much, indeed, that, long after, she used to repeat it to strangers in my presence, by way of accounting for the great fancy she had taken to me. These partial repetitions of hers fixed this lucky_quotation indelibly in my mind." — Memoirs of an American Lady, pp. 243, 244.*

The connection thus formed grew stronger, and had an important influence on Anne's happiness and improvement,

.....

* It is remarkable, that of the manner of her introduction to the notice of Madam Schuyler Mrs. Grant has given three different accounts, each inconsistent in its details with both of the others. That quoted above has the appearance of being the most correct. In the autobiographical memoir, prefixed to the posthumous collection of her letters, she says: "Some time after our arrival at Albany, I accompanied my parents one evening to visit Madame Schuyler. The conversation fell upon dreams and forewarnings. I rarely spoke till spoken to, at any time; but, of a sudden, the spirit moved me to say, that bad angels sometimes whispered dreams into the soul. When asked for my authority, I surprised every one, but myself most of all, by a long quotation from Eve's fatal dream, infusing into her mind the ambition that led to guilt. After this happy quotation I became a great favorite, and Madame Schuyler never failed to tell any one who had read Milton of the origin of her partiality."

But the quotation given above, which Mrs. Grant supposed to have been indelibly fixed in her mind, is not a long quotation from Eve's account of her dream, but is taken from Adam's reply to her; and nothing is said in it about bad angels whispering dreams into the soul.

Again; in her "Letters from the Mountains," (Letter XXI.,) she says: "My father attracted Madame Schuyler's notice by his piety, not very frequently a distinguishing feature in the military character. I will not tire you with the detail of all the little circumstances that gradually acquired me the place in her favor which I ever continued to possess. She saw me reading Paradise Lost with delighted attention; she was astonished to see a child take pleasure in such a book, and no less so to observe, that I loved to sit thoughtful by her, and hear the conversations of elderly and grave people.'

These three passages strikingly illustrate the fact, that a story may be unquestionably true in all its essential characteristics and bearings, though individuals who have been placed in the best possible circumstances for knowing the truth eye and ear witnesses may differ from each other irreconcilably in their details of it. We have here three narratives of a single individual relating to an incident adapted to make a deep impression on her memory, and they are irreconcilable.

The general truth just mentioned has not often been very grossly disregarded, except by those who have objected to the essential truth of the facts recorded in the Gospels on account of the unessential discrepancies in the narrations of them by different Evangelists. But it is a truth which does not appear to have dawned upon the minds of some of the modern German writers of this class. Adopting their style of criticism on the Gospels, and applying it to Mrs. Grant's narratives, we should undoubtedly conclude, that the whole story about Milton was a myth, and that Mrs. Schuyler was probably a mythical personage; especially as, in immediate connection with one of the narratives quoted, Mrs. Grant expressly says, that she "regarded her as the Minerva of her imagination."

during the remaining four years which she spent in America. Mrs. Schuyler, who had no children of her own, appears to have become much attached to the intelligent little girl who loved and revered her, and to have found her often her most pleasant companion.

She now obtained access to more books, and among them to Shakspeare, and was not a little mortified when she found herself unable to appreciate his merits. "I thought his plays," she says, "very inferior to Cato, whom Aunt [Madam] Schuyler had taught me to admire." But she persevered in their study.

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"I remember,' she relates, 'reading Hamlet the third or fourth time, in a frosty night, by moonlight, in the back porch. This reiterated perusal was not in consequence of any great pleasure it afforded me; but I was studiously laboring to discover the excellence I thought it must needs contain; yet with more diligence than success.'" Memoirs of an American Lady, p. 288.

She

Her mind gradually unfolded, and Shakspeare became to her a new source of delight. But her efforts at intellectual improvement were pursued under great disadvantages and discouragements. At one time, a terrible decree went forth, that she was to read no more "idle books or plays.' had, it may be feared, neglected her sewing tasks. She was driven to read books of divinity, probably Calvinistic divinity. But, with a degree of casuistry, in which young people are apt to display their talents on such occasions, she persuaded herself that the spirit of the prohibition did not exclude the reading of the historical plays, because they were true; and in the lapse of time, she evidently regarded the decree itself as having become obsolete.

In 1768, when she was thirteen years old, her father, who had been suffering much in his spirits and health, determined to return with his wife and child to Scotland, and Anne left America never to see it again. Thus ends one epoch of her long, eventful, and changing life, during which she had to do and to suffer much, and was brought into close connection with very different forms of life, and very different classes of mankind. In America she had become acquainted with the primitive manners of the Dutch settlers on the Hudson, she had spent months in a garrisoned fort on Lake Ontario,