in my imperfect manner that I was going to America to seek papa. Soon after this event, Mrs. MacVicar and her daughter sailed for the New World and settled at Claverack on the Hudson, where her husband was stationed with a party of Highlanders. Here Anne was taught to read by her mother, and learned to speak Dutch. An intelligent sergeant of the company made her a proficient in writing, and observing her eager thirst for knowledge presented his precocious little pupil with an appropriate soldier's gift,- even the poem of Wallace by the patriotic Scottish Homer, Blind Harry. The quaint and almost forgotten language in which this work is written, as well as its obsolete orthography, would have made it a sealed book to the half Scottish, half American child, had it not been for the kindness of the sergeant, who taught her to decipher words and to understand the meaning of the ancient minstrel. From this source she in part derived that enthusiastic love of her native land, "Where blooms the red heather and thistle sae green," which ever afterwards was a distinguishing feature in her character. In 1760, Captain MacVicar, who had taken part in the disastrous expedition to Ticonderoga and been stationed at Oswego, was sent back to Claverack to conduct a company to the former place. 1 "Mrs. Grant's Memoirs and Correspondence," 3 vols., London, 1844 His wife and daughter accompanied the detachment on the picturesque and perilous journey through the wilderness to Oswego, concerning which Mrs. Grant remarks in her " Memoirs of an American Lady," "I am convinced 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." The commandant of the post was our old friend Major Duncan of Lundie,' whose portrait is given in Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans," and also by Mrs. Grant, who describes him as an experienced, humane, judicious yet obstinate officer, and somewhat of a humorist withal. In her sixth year Anne was familiar with the Old Testament, and read with eagerness and pleasure Milton's "Paradise Lost," a poem which has daunted so many youthful readers at the outset. Her talents, in the summer of 1762, attracted the attention of Madame Schuyler, with whom she resided at Albany for several years, acquiring during her sojourn among her hospitable friends an additional knowledge of the Dutch language at that day much spoken by many of the best families. A few years after the conquest of Canada, MacVicar resigned his position in the army, going on the half-pay list in 1765, and became a settler in Vermont, where he received a grant of land from the British government, to which he made large additions by purchase from his brother officers. While 1 Afterwards Colonel Duncan, elder brother of Lord Camperdown. here, his worth and agreeable manners won for him and his family the esteem of all the neighboring settlers. His career of prosperity was, however, interrupted by ill-health and low spirits, and in 1768 he decided to return to his native land. Anne accompanied her parents, and at the age of thirteen she left America never to see it again. Unfortunately for MacVicar, he took his departure from the country without disposing of his property, which, upon the breaking out of the Revolutionary War soon after, was confiscated by the new republican government. He was therefore compelled to depend chiefly upon his limited pay as a barrackmaster of Fort Augustus, in Inverness-shire, to which position he had been appointed in 1773, and his daughter was no longer looked upon as a young American heiress. With her journey from Glasgow to that place, which she could reach only by riding on horseback, commences the portion of Mrs. Grant's correspondence that was published under the title of "Letters from the Mountains." On the first evening after her arrival at the fort, she met the Rev. James Grant, the military chaplain, an accomplished scholar of somewhat romantic character, connected with several of the first families of the district. residence at Fort Augustus was terminated by her marriage to this gentleman in the year 1779, when they removed to the parish of Laggan, in Invernessshire, to which Mr. Grant had been appointed. VOL. 1.-2 Her On becoming the wife of a Highland clergyman, Mrs. Grant desired to aid her husband, but a difficulty opposed her progress at the outset. Although a Mac, she was not a Highlander, and she did not possess the most essential passport to a Highland heart, a knowledge of their language. Undeterred, however, by an obstacle which few Lowlanders comparatively except enthusiasts like Professor Blackie have ever surmounted, she, by great application, soon acquired a sufficient knowledge of Gaelic to converse freely with the people in their own tongue, and was successful in translating the poetry of the Highlands. One of her earliest translations, "The Aged Bard's Wish," is a composition of singular elegance and pathos, remarkable for certain allusions to the age and imagery of Ossian. With the Celtic language she studied the manners and feelings of the Highlanders, and was soon able to identify herself with the parishioners among whom her lot was cast; and they on their part appreciated these kind labors of a stranger with true Highland enthusiasm, and felt that she was their own countrywoman in heart and soul as well as in tongue and lineage. Mrs. Grant studied their "folklore," and was successful in relieving much distress among the peasantry of the surrounding district. Her lines had fallen in pleasant places. In the simple life of a secluded Highland parish, many happy and tranquil years passed in Laggan, and |