d, that the Duke had done him this honour on account of his being
the first to mount the breach of a fort in Savoy during the memorable
campaign of 1709, and his having there defended himself with his
half-pike for nearly ten minutes before any support reached him. To do
the Baron justice, although sufficiently prone to dwell upon, and even to
exaggerate, his family dignity and consequence, he was too much a man of
real courage ever to allude to such personal acts of merit as he had
himself manifested.

Miss Rose now appeared from the interior room of her apartment, to
welcome her father and his friends. The little labours in which she had
been employed obviously showed a natural taste, which required only
cultivation. Her father had taught her French and Italian, and a few of
the ordinary authors in those languages ornamented her shelves. He had
endeavoured also to be her preceptor in music; but as he began with the
more abstruse doctrines of the science, and was not perhaps master of
them himself, she had made no proficiency farther than to be able to
accompany her voice with the harpsichord; but even this was not very
common in Scotland at that period. To make amends, she sung with great
taste and feeling, and with a respect to the sense of what she uttered
that might be proposed in example to ladies of much superior musical
talent. Her natural good sense taught her that, if, as we are assured by
high authority, music be 'married to immortal verse,' they are very often
divorced by the performer in a most shameful manner. It was perhaps owing
to this sensibility to poetry, and power of combining its expression with
those of the musical notes, that her singing gave more pleasure to all
the unlearned in music, and even to many of the learned, than could have
been communicated by a much finer voice and more brilliant execution
unguided by the same delicacy of feeling.

A bartizan, or projecting gallery, before the windows of her parlour,
served to illustrate another of Rose's pursuits; for it was crowded with
flowers of different kinds, which she had taken under her special
protection. A projecting turret gave access to this Gothic balcony, which
commanded a most beautiful prospect. The formal garden, with its high
bounding walls, lay below, contracted, as it seemed, to a mere parterre;
while the view extended beyond them down a wooded glen, where the small
river was sometimes visible, sometimes hidden in copse. The eye