Perhaps before this you have received a very short publication of mine on a very serious subject.  I desired my bookseller to send a copy to you, enclosed along with one to your friend, Miss Mackenzie.  How far you will agree with my opinions regarding it I cannot say, but of one thing I am sure, that you will judge with candour and charity.  I should have sent one to Mr. Alison had I not thought it presumptuous in me to send such a work to any clergyman, and, with only one exception (a Presbyterian clergyman), I have abstained from doing so.  I was very much obliged to Mrs. Mackenzie, Lord M.’s lady, for the letter she was so good as to write me in her sister-in-Iaw’s stead.  If you should meet her soon, may I beg that you will have the goodness to thank her in my name.  I was very sorry indeed to learn from her that Miss Mackenzie had been so ill, and was then so weak, and that the favourable account I had received of your eyes had been too favourable.  With all good wishes to you, in which my sister begs to join me,—­I remain, my dear Madam, gratefully and sincerely yours,

“J.  BAILLIE.”

[1] The humble and devoted dependant of the proud chief Glenroy, and governess to his children.  She was drawn from life, for Mrs. Kinloch writes to her sister, Miss Ferrier:  “Molly Macaulay is charming; her niece, Miss Cumming, is an old acquaintance of mine, and told me the character was drawn to the life.  The old lady is still alive, in her ninety-first year, at Inveraray, and Miss C., who is a very clever, pleasing person, seems delighted with the truth and spirit of the whole character of her aunty.”

[2] Lord Jeffrey considered M’Dow “an entire and perfect chrysolite, not to be meddled with.”

Granville Penn, the descendant of the founder of Pennsylvania, records the impression Destiny made on him, and which he communicates to Miss Erskine of Cardross, who copied and sent it to the author, as follows:—­

“My DEAR MADAM—­I return your book, but I an unable to return you adequate thanks for being the cause of my reading it.  I have done this (and all with me) with delight, from the interest and admiration at the whole composition, the novelty and excitement of its plan, the exquisite and thrilling manner of its disclosure, the absence of all flat and heavy intervals, the conception and support of the characters, the sound and salutary moral that pervades it all—­these make me love and honour its valuable authoress, and lament that I am not in the number of her acquaintance.  We all doat upon Miss Macaulay, and grieve that she is not living at Richmond or Petersham; and Mr. M’Dow has supplied me with a new name for our little young dog, whom I have called, in memorial of his little nephew (or niece), Little M’Fee.  With all the thanks, however, that I can offer, etc.

GRANVILLE PENN.

“Devonshire Cottage, 1_st May_ 1831.”

The next tribute of admiration bestowed on Destiny was from Sir James Mackintosh:—­