are exquisite originals.’  My own favourite, ’Molly Macaulay,’ preserves her good-humour to the last, though I thought you rather unmerciful in shutting her up so long in Johnnie’s nursery.  The fashionable heartlessness of Lady Elizabeth and her daughter is coloured to the life, and the refreshment of returning to nature, truth, affection, and happiness at Inch Orran is admirably managed.  Mary tells me you have returned from Fife with fresh materials for future volumes.  Go on, dear Miss Ferrier, you are accountable for the talents entrusted to you.  Go on to detect selfishness in all its various forms and foldings; to put pride and vanity to shame; to prove that vulgarity belongs more to character than condition, and that all who make the world their standard are essentially vulgar and low-minded, however noble their exterior or refined their manners may be, and that true dignity and elevation belong only to those to whom Milton’s lines may be applied: 

“’Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame.’”

The following letter from Joanna Baillie gives a very just and truthful criticism on Destiny:—­

Miss Joanna Baillie to Miss Ferrier.

“Hampstead, May 1831.

“My DEAR MADAM—­I received your very kind present of your last work about three weeks ago, and am very grateful for the pleasure I have had in reading it, and for being thus remembered by you.  I thank you also for the pleasure and amusement which my sisters and some other friends have drawn from it.  The first volume struck me as extremely clever, the description of the different characters, their dialogues, and the writer’s own remarks, excellent.  There is a spur both with the writer and the reader on the opening of a work which naturally gives the beginning of a story many advantages, but I must confess that your characters never forget their outset, but are well supported to the very end.  Your Molly Macaulay [1] is a delightful creature, and the footing she is on with Glenroy very naturally represented, to say nothing of the rising of her character at the end, when the weight of contempt is removed from her, which is very good and true to nature.  Your minister, M’Dow, [2] hateful as he is, is very amusing, and a true representative of a few of the Scotch clergy, and with different language and manners of a great many of the English clergy—­worldly, mean men, who boldly make their way into every great and wealthy family for the sake of preferment and good cheer.  Your Lady Elizabeth, too, with all her selfishness and excess of absurdity, is true to herself throughout, and makes a very characteristic ending of it in her third marriage.  But why should I tease you by going through the different characters?  Suffice it to say that I thank you very heartily, and congratulate you on again having added a work of so much merit to our stock of national novels.