In Flora’s bosom, on the contrary, the zeal of loyalty burnt pure and unmixed with any selfish feeling; she would have as soon made religion the mask of ambitious and interested views as have shrouded them under the opinions which she had been taught to think patriotism.  Such instances of devotion were not uncommon among the followers of the unhappy race of Stuart, of which many memorable proofs will recur to the minds of most of my readers.  But peculiar attention on the part of the Chevalier de St. George and his princess to the parents of Fergus and his sister, and to themselves when orphans, had riveted their faith.  Fergus, upon the death of his parents, had been for some time a page of honour in the train of the Chevalier’s lady, and, from his beauty and sprightly temper, 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 aggrandisement, 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