never so popular on the Continent as "Thaddeus of Warsaw", although
Napoleon honored it with an interdict, to prevent its circulation in
France. If Jane Porter owed her Polish inspirations so peculiarly
to the tone of the times in which she lived, she traces back, in
her introduction to the latest edition of "The Scottish Chiefs." her
enthusiasm in the cause of Sir William Wallace to the influence an
old "Scotch wife's" tales and ballads produced upon her mind while in
early childhood. She wandered amid what she describes as "beautiful
green banks," which rose in natural terraces behind her mothers house,
and where a cow and a few sheep occasionally fed. This house stood
alone, at the head of a little square, near the high school; the
distinguished Lord Elchies formerly lived in the house, which was very
ancient, and from those green banks it commanded a fine view of the
Firth of Forth. While gathering "_gowans_" or other wild-flowers for
her infant sister, (whom she loved more dearly than her life, during
the years they lived in most tender and affectionate companionship),
she frequently encountered this aged woman, with her knitting in her
hand; and she would speak to the eager and intelligent child of the
blessed quiet of the land, where the cattle were browsing without fear
of an enemy; and then she would talk of the awful times of the brave
Sir William Wallace, when he fought for Scotland, "against a cruel
tyrant; like unto them whom Abraham overcame when he recovered Lot,
with all his herds and flocks, from the proud foray of the robber
kings of the South," who, she never failed to add, "were all rightly
punished for oppressing the stranger in a foreign land! for the Lord
careth for the stranger." Miss Porter says that this woman never
omitted mingling pious allusions with her narrative. "Yet she was a
person of low degree, dressed in a coarse woollen gown, and a plain
_Mutch_ cap, clasped under the chin with a silver brooch, which her
father had worn at the battle of Culloden." Of course she filled with