The world would not suffer that poor beautiful girl to have the least good time, and now cannot rest for championing her. Singular misery of the lot of a woman with whom all men were dying in love, except her two last husbands; and with the first, a poor sickly child, she had no happiness. A woman the object of desire to so many, yet never suffered to become the parent of more than two children, and from those separated in so brief a space after birth, and never permitted to take the least comfort in them afterwards. Picture of Montrose charmed my eye. Some noble Vandykes. A full length of George by Wilkie. Hateful old John Knox, with a wife like himself. Came up the Canongate. Were ever people so villainously dirty?”[1]
During her tour in Scotland it is interesting to see how lightly she passes by the night when she was lost on Ben Lomond, of which so full an account is given in her “Memoirs:”[2] —
[September, 1846.] “Inversnaid. In the boat to Rowardennan. Loch Lomond. Boatmen. A fine race. Gaelic songs. Relate their import. Undoubting faith of these people in the story of ‘The Lady of the Lake.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said the boatmen, ‘we know they are true, having been handed down from father to son for so many generations.’ At Rowardennan. Down in the boat to Luss. Character of the place. Cleanliness for once. The minister, a ‘ceevil hamely man.’ The Manse. Sunset on Ben Lomond. I was alone. Evening.
