MISS FERRIER'S NOVELS. [1]

In November 1854 there died in Edinburgh one who might, with truth, be
called almost the last, if not _the_ last, of that literary galaxy that
adorned Edinburgh society in the days of Scott, Jeffrey, Wilson, and
others. Distinguished by the friendship and confidence of Sir Walter
Scott, the name of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier is one that has become
famous from her three clever, satirical, and most amusing novels _of
Marriage, The_ _Inheritance,_ and _Destiny. _They exhibit, besides, a
keen sense of the ludicrous almost unequalled. She may be said to have
done for Scotland what Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth have respectively
done for England and Ireland--left portraits, painted in undying
colours, of men and women that will live for ever in the hearts and
minds of her readers. In the present redundant age of novel writers and
novel-readers, and when one would suppose the supply must far exceed the
demand from the amount of puerile and often at the same time prurient
literature in the department of fiction that daily flows from the press,
it is refreshing to turn to the vigorous and, above all, healthy moral
tone of this lady's works. To the present generation they are as if they
had never been, and to the question, "Did you ever read _Marriage?"_ it
is not uncommon in these times to get such an answer as, "No, never. Who
wrote it?" "Miss Ferrier." "I never heard of her or her novels." It is
with the view, therefore, of enlightening such benighted ones that I pen
the following pages.

[1] Reprinted from the _Temple Bar_ Magazine for November 1878, Vol I.