 was uniformly treated by her with the utmost distinction. This
was also extended to Flora, who was maintained for some time at a convent of the
first order, at the princess's expense, and removed from thence into her own
family, where she spent nearly two years. Both brother and sister retained the
deepest and most grateful sense of her kindness.
    Having thus touched upon the leading principle of Flora's character, I may
dismiss the rest more slightly. She was highly accomplished, and had acquired
those elegant manners to be expected from one who, in early youth, had been the
companion of a princess; yet she had not learned to substitute the gloss of
politeness for the reality of feeling. When settled in the lonely regions of
Glennaquoich, she found that her resources in French, English, and Italian
literature, were likely to be few and interrupted; and, in order to fill up the
vacant time, she bestowed a part of it upon the music and poetical traditions of
the Highlanders, and began really to feel the pleasure in the pursuit, which her
brother, whose perceptions of literary merit were more blunt, rather affected
for the sake of popularity than actually experienced. Her resolution was
strengthened in these researches by the extreme delight which her inquiries
seemed to afford those to whom she resorted for information.
    Her love of her clan, an attachment which was almost hereditary in her
bosom, was, like her loyalty, a more pure passion than that of her brother. He
was too thorough a politician, regarded his patriarchal influence too much as
the means of accomplishing his own aggrandizement, that we should term him the
model of a Highland Chieftain. Flora felt the same anxiety for cherishing and
extending their patriarchal sway, but it was with the generous desire of
vindicating from poverty, or at least from want and foreign oppression, those
whom her brother was by birth, according to the notions of the time and country,
entitled to govern. The savings of her income, for she had a small pension from
the Princess Sobieski, were dedicated, not to add to the comforts of the
peasantry, for that was a word which they neither knew nor apparently wished to
know, but to relieve their absolute necessities, when in sickness or extreme old
age. At every other period, they rather toiled to procure something which they
might share with the Chief as a proof of their attachment, than expected other
assistance from him save what was afforded by the rude hospitality of his
castle, and the general division and subdivision of his estate among them. Flora
was so much beloved by them,
