ts force the other
day, when a packet with a black seal arrived, containing a letter
addressed to me by my late excellent friend Mrs. Martha Bethune Baliol,
and marked with the fatal indorsation, "To be delivered according
to address, after I shall be no more." A letter from her executors
accompanied the packet, mentioning that they had found in her will a
bequest to me of a painting of some value, which she stated would just
fit the space above my cupboard, and fifty guineas to buy a ring. And
thus I separated, with all the kindness which we had maintained for many
years, from a friend, who, though old enough to have been the companion
of my mother, was yet, in gaiety of spirits and admirable sweetness
of temper, capable of being agreeable, and even animating society, for
those who write themselves in the vaward of youth, an advantage which I
have lost for these five-and-thirty years. The contents of the packet
I had no difficulty in guessing, and have partly hinted at them in the
last chapter. But to instruct the reader in the particulars, and at the
same time to indulge myself with recalling the virtues and agreeable
qualities of my late friend, I will give a short sketch of her manners
and habits.

Mrs. Martha Bethune Baliol was a person of quality and fortune, as these
are esteemed in Scotland. Her family was ancient, and her connections
honourable. She was not fond of specially indicating her exact age, but
her juvenile recollections stretched backwards till before the eventful
year 1745, and she remembered the Highland clans being in possession of
the Scottish capital, though probably only as an indistinct vision. Her
fortune, independent by her father's bequest, was rendered opulent by
the death of more than one brave brother, who fell successively in the
service of their country, so that the family estates became vested in
the only surviving child of the ancient house of Bethune Baliol. My
intimacy was formed with the excellent lady after this event, and when
she was already something advanced in age.

She inhabited, when in Edinburgh, where she regularly spent the winter
season, one of those old hotels which, till of late, were to be found in
the neighbourhood of the Canongate and of the Palace of Holyrood House,
and which, separated from the street, now dirty and vulgar, by paved
courts and gardens of some extent, made amends for an indifferent
access, by showing something of aristocratic state and seclusion