she was in the habit of contributing delightful humorous sketches to Blackwood's Magazine—the magazine which her father and her grandfather had so often contributed to in their day; but her life was not a long one: she died in 1895, eleven years after her husband, and while many possibilities seemed still before her.
Perhaps we might try to picture to ourselves the life in which Ferrier played so prominent a part in the only real University town of which Scotland can boast. For it is in St. Andrews that the traditional distinctions between the College and the University are maintained, that there is the solemn stillness which befits an ancient seat of learning, that every step brings one in view of some monument of ages that are past and gone, and that we are reminded not only of the learning of our ancestors, of their piety and devotion to the College they built and endowed, but of the secular history of our country as well. In this, at least, the little University of the North has an advantage over her rich and powerful rivals, inasmuch as there is hardly any important event which has taken place in Scottish history but has left its mark upon the place. No wonder the love of her students to the Alma Mater is proverbial. In Scotland we have little left to tell us of the mediæval church and life, so completely has the Reformation done its work, and so thoroughly was the land cleared of its 'popish images'; and hence we value what little there remains to us all the more. And the University of St. Andrews, the oldest of our seats of learning, has come down to us from mediæval days. It was founded by a Catholic bishop in 1411, about a century after the dedication of the Cathedral, now, of course, a ruin. But it is to the good Bishop Kennedy who established the College of St.
