tains," and which, in ease and freshness, greatly surpass aught
which she produced after she began her career of authorship. Not a few
of her letters, and several of her poems, were addressed to my friend
Miss Dunbar. Some of the other members of the group were greatly younger
than Mrs. Grant and the Lady of Kilravock. And of these, one of the most
accomplished was the late Lady Gordon Cumming of Altyre, known to
scientific men by her geologic labours among the ichthyolitic formations
of Moray, and mother of the famous lion-hunter, Mr. Gordon Cumming. My
friend Miss Dunbar was at this time considerably advanced in life, and
her health far from good. She possessed, however, a singular buoyancy of
spirits, which years and frequent illness had failed to depress; and her
interest and enjoyment in nature and in books remained as high as when,
long before, her friend Mrs. Grant had addressed her as

"Helen, by every sympathy allied,
By love of virtue and by love of song,
Compassionate in youth and beauty's pride."

Her mind was imbued with literature, and stored with literary anecdote:
she conversed with elegance, giving interest to whatever she touched;
and, though she seemed never to have thought of authorship in her own
behalf, she wrote pleasingly and with great facility, in both prose and
verse. Her verses, usually of a humorous cast, ran trippingly off the
tongue, as if the words had dropped by some happy accident--for the
arrangement bore no mark of effort--into exactly the places where they
at once best brought out the writer's meaning, and addressed themselves
most pleasingly to the ear. The opening stanzas of a light _jeu
d'esprit_ on a young naval officer engaged in a lady-killing expedition
in Cromarty, dwell in my memory; and--first premising, by way of
explanation, that Miss Dunbar's brother, the late Baronet of Boath, was
a captain in the navy, and that the lady-killer was his first
lieutenant--I shall take the liberty of giving all I remember of the
piece, as a specimen of her easy style:--

"In Cromarty Bay,
As the 'Driver' snug lay,
The Lieutenant would venture ashore
And, a figure to cut,
From the head to the foot
He was fashion and finery all o'er.

A hat richly laced,
To the left side was placed,
Which made him look martial and bold;
His coat of true blue
Was spick and span new.
And the butt