tribe as could well be found. Nothing was safe from him-my dear father's toilet accessories, the maids' thimbles and Sunday brooches, the butler's tea-spoons-no Fenian head-centre could be more regardless of the rights of property than Watty. A dear cousin, who often stayed with us, suggested that as most of us were musical, we might have a domestic performance of the Gazza Ladra,' with Watty's assistance. I must give an anecdote, characteristic of the child. Searching once in vain for her troublesome pet, she observed Moidart, the beautiful Skye, worrying what turned out to be a bird's head. Convinced that the puppy had avenged the public wrongs upon Watty, and anxious for his own education, she took a ridingwhip and soundly thrashed him, giving herself the worse pain of the two. Like a well-bred pup, he endured the lash in silence, save for the eloquence of his Cairn-gorm hued eyes. She had barely finished when a loud 'sqwawk' was heard in the passage. On opening the door, there sat Watty, winking and wicked as ever. Of course, Moidart was in her arms directly, showing, as only a dear dog can, his delight in his full exculpation; but she had plenty of brotherand-sister wit to endure about 'poor Gelert's dying yell,' over which poem she had cried many a time. In vain the household protested against Watty's larcenies, great and small, insisting on banishment or even severer legal proceedings; he kept his hold on his little mistress's heart till he came to the favourite's proverbial bad end, I really forget how. Not wholly unwept, unhonoured, and unsung, she and her little brother made attempts at an elegy in the CockRobin style, Who killed poor Watty?' Some years after, she preferred Barnaby Rudge' to Dickens' other stories, declaring that in Grip the raven, his wit and wickedness, was the only parallel to her dear Watty.

Adela's love for and sympathy with animal life, was, however, no mere childish fondness for pets. One of her strongest characteristics from her earliest years, was her love and reverence for God's visible creation, and it extended over scenery, flowers, and the whole world of dumb creatures. The first time she was taken to church, her nurse asked on her return if she could recollect anything she had heard. 'O yes! the clergyman says a good man loves his beast!'

We remembered that Prov. xii. 10 had been read in the Daily Lesson. No one who knew Edinburgh a few years ago will be surprised at her great mutual friendship with Dr. John Brown, author of Rab and his friends.' Any one who appreciated animals won her heart. I do not think she would ever have made a friend of any one who wantonly or carelessly misused a dumb creature. Many years later in our lives, she was holding my arm in the Edinburgh Exhibition Gallery, while we hung entranced over Sir Noel Paton's weird but beautiful Nickar the Soul-less.'

It positively pains one,' she said, 'as if one saw an animal cruelly treated.'

We further discussed the legend in its many forms, and she said: 'It may be heterodox, but in place of that old belief in elemental creatures longing for souls, I am inclined to put animals; I believe love of a human being gives them souls.'

I replied:

As if the ocean and the sky
Within him had lit up and nursed
A soul God gave him not at first
To comprehend their majesty.'

Yes,' she said, 'something like that; I like to cultivate friendship with an animal,' and turning again to the tear-stained face in the picture, I could no more have been cruel to you, poor Nickar, than to my dear dog! I hope the abbot penanced that monk well!'

Her education was desultory, of course. She never was fit for regular schoolroom routine, and might do her lessons lying down, sitting on her governess' lap, or any way she pleased. But she had the inborn love of books which is in itself an education, and among other mental powers, one of the best verbal memories I ever knew. Children in my day learnt by rote far more than they do at present, and with such a capacity as Adela's, the resource and pleasure of her wellstocked memory lasted for life. She knew the Psalter by heart at nine years old, besides quantities of poetry sacred and secular, and even as a little child, her aptness in quotation used to amuse us greatly. To save fatigue, she learnt neither music nor drawing regularly, though I feel sure she would have excelled in both. Her ear was correct, and her pleasure in good music very great. If we were at a concert together, she would ask me to sit by her and 'explain the music.' She had an excellent eye for colour, which was shown in her dress, in her taste in pictures, and especially in her appreciation of Nature's colouring. I know she might have been a good artist, from the way in which she selected the points of view she wanted one to sketch for her, and no effect of storm or sunshine was lost upon her quick eye. I always wished she might draw; but it was not till she was grown up, and could not be made more or less crooked, that she was allowed even to write much, she learnt in fact with her left hand. But as years brought us all to the equality of womanhood, it was delightful to M. and myself-her two next eldest sisters-to find in our dear 'youngest princess' one far beyond the average in acquirements; while by steady reading and perseverance in her pursuits, her mental store gathered year by year. She was a good French and German scholar, and learnt a little Italian and Latin.

Our mother used laughingly to say, that if Sir Walter Scott had written only for the delight of her children, he would not have written in vain. Although it is difficult to name her favourite author-she had so many-Sir Walter was certainly her earliest love. His prose and poetry, border minstrelsy and ballads, she really knew

by heart, with every note and historical comment, and Lockhart's Life to crown the whole. Perhaps her love for him received fresh stimulus from his life-long friendship with former generations of her own family, and from one of our many homes having been in the beautiful Border country, in the neighbourhood of Abbotsford. But she laughed at the modern pedantry which depreciates him, declaring that people who neglected Scott's works had a mental vacuum nothing else could supply. Shakespeare was quite as familiar, and as to the other standard English poets young people seem to find unreadable nowadays, Adela not only read, she knew them in a way few modern girls do. Often when I have pointed out to her with pleasure some beautiful passage I was reading, I found she knew it already better than I did. Tennyson was certainly her favourite living poet, each fresh publication of his was hailed with delight, and all but learnt by heart, by our Tennysonian,' as some friends called her. How we used to enjoy getting her into a discussion of his merits with a dear friend of great talent and taste, owning himself too old-fashioned to understand these 'new lights,' and drawing her out by reading bits in a mock-heroic and ludicrous style!

When the question of her going into society really had to be faced and settled, it was to me a great evidence of my sister's mental superiority how quietly and practically she settled it herself, taking the position she meant to hold for life. She never grew beyond the height of ten years old, but had good health, was able to walk and ride, besides being an excellent traveller. At twenty, with her expressive countenance, limpid complexion, eyes the colour of her favourite wild blue-bell, and sunny hair, few could look unmoved on the sweet face, accompanied by the hopelessly-crippled figure. Some would have urged keeping her secluded, for fear of shocks to the sensitiveness common to the deformed. They little knew her strength of character. She was aware of her condition, knew its life-long privations, and that she must take the world as she found it, not always sympathetic, nor in its sympathy always well-bred. But looking on society as a duty as well as a pleasure, she faced all disagreeables at once. With good sense and tact she avoided awkward situations, never claimed help or notice, and was soon as easy and happy abroad as at home, welcome everywhere, and forming valuable life-friendships, which to a nature gifted like hers, constituted a large part of her usefulness and happiness. Never exacting sympathy she excelled in the giving of it; reminding one of the luminous crosses which take in God's sunshine, to pour it forth in darkened hours. Many have said, since her death, Well, it was long before I observed she was deformed, I could look at nothing but that face!' and 'I could not talk to her for five minutes, without forgetting all but her conversation.' A man's brain, and a woman's heart, but cased in the form of a delicate child. No wonder the blade cut through its fragile sheath.'

Our country homes were various, often in beautiful districts;

though our father's official duties kept him within railway access of Edinburgh. Adela's delight in scenery was not merely love of the beautiful, the way she caught its undertone and spirit was remarkable. Wherever we went, she got up the local history, legends, songs, and of course, any Waverley Novel connected with the place. She was the most delightful travelling companion, and if she was not of the party, the next best thing was to write to her and get her charming replies, full of witty comments on the adventures. She and I once paid a long visit to relations in Sutherlandshire, where railroads had not then reached. Her delight was intense at the amount of folklore and legend still lingering in that wild and beautiful region. By blue fiords of sea, on golden sands, in rolling fir-woods, on breezy moorlands, with the Assynt mountains in the distance, there were tales of second-sight, wraiths, apparitions; every loch was tenanted by its Vuagh or water-spirit, and the moors were haunted by a phantom horse, that lured the unwary on to his back, and sank in a peat-moss with them. To find a real live superstition!' she exclaimed, when I was turned off a grey stone on the shore of Loch Migdal, where I was sketching; because the Vuagh did not approve of such a use of her favourite seat. Years afterwards, M. and I were at Killin, and wrote to her of our scrambles, and of our having discovered, on ascending Meal-nan-Ptarmachan, a wild tiny lake, which we hoped to visit and bring her a sketch of--the Lake of the Water-Bull.' 'Go and see it by all means,' she wrote, and sketch it; but don't exasperate the bull. Do you remember Loch Migdal? The bull must be worse than vuaghs and wild horses all together.' We spent a pleasant time once at the English lakes, and she thought them as beautiful in their own style as the Highlands. Nevertheless, she utterly deplored their lack of legends. Such rocks! such tarns! and not a single fairy to be heard of! What's the use of scenery to such stupid people?' We were sitting by the tarn at the top of the Sty Head Pass, our ponies resting, I sketching at her request. 'In the Highlands, this place would be bristling with legends. I must go and poke about at the water's edge and see if I can find a kelpie,' she said.

'Keep him quiet till I have finished drawing,' I replied.

She was better satisfied with the Vale of St. John and Gyneth's Castle; but declared that they were indebted to Sir Walter Scott for telling their beautiful story. She delighted in flowers, and would talk to me about their faces. She maintained they had a physiognomy, to which I quite agreed. On summer visits, before settling down to business or letters, she liked a stroll after breakfast among flowerbeds and greenhouses. Just to get my button-hole,' and a bit of heliotrope or sweet verbena with a single carnation, a rosebud or geranium would be stuck in her dress for the morning. Now just sit in the shade a few minutes and let us make out what the birds are saying.' She never would connect anything evil with a flower.

Sitting near a brilliant bed of tulips, she said to a friend, who remarked they looked proud and stiff: 'Oh, no, not so stiff as lilies; and why proud? God has painted them so exquisitely, they like to hold up their heads to show us His work.' She was very fond of Mrs. Gaskell's novels, and declared that reading her descriptions had the same effect on one's mind as the pure fresh scent of springflowers. I have often thought, on looking at her as she watched the sunset or revelled in woods and flowers-Who talketh with thee, Adeline?'-the spirit emanating from herself, as Coleridge says,* seemed to respond to all beautiful visible things and draw forth their spiritual meanings. The strain upraise of joy and praise,' was one of her favourite hymns.

6

Some few years after our father became Registrar-General, we fixed our home in Edinburgh, making excursions in the summersome of them abroad. Foreign travel was a new delight to her, and her letters a real treat. The Alps are more than all that you said,' she wrote to me from Milan, after crossing the Simplon and seeing the Lakes. I do not know whether mountains or "towered cities" please me most. I know it is wrong to admire bad Gothic; but when the white marble flashes in the evening light, I keep repeating:

6

"Think ye the spires that glow so bright,
In front of yonder setting sun, etc.'"

In 1871, on my way with some friends from Italy to the PassionPlay (interrupted in the previous year by the war), we spent a fortnight among the Adamello Alps. I wrote to her that beautiful as the sunsets were, I thought the dawn more unearthly, when the daffodil light first touched the highest snows. 'I understand that,' she wrote; 'it must be like the Transfiguration, and the garments such as no fuller on earth can white them.' I kept a minute journal for her and M., and they delighted in the account of the PassionPlay. In 1880, Adela was there herself with her eldest sister. Our town life gave her still more general intercourse with others. We became members of the Shakespeare Club and of the Ladies' Debating Society, where she was soon in great request as a reader and speaker. In summer, when meetings were small, it was sometimes proposed that each one present should describe her favourite picture or read her favourite short poem. She once selected A. Clough's Qua Cursum Ventus,' new to the listeners, some of whom have told me they could never forget the poem or the reader. I used to wish she would write at this time; but she answered quaintly: Books enough in the world, we want folks to read them.'

I must say a few words of her special Church-work. She was the first Secretary to the first Churchwomen's Association for Foreign Missions in our Scottish Church, and co-editor of the Mission

* Ode to Dejection.