o first works in the German
language that their author was honored by being made a Lady of the
Chapter of St. Joachim, and received the gold cross of the order from
Wurtemberg; but "The Scottish Chiefs" was 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 of 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 mother's 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 woolen 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 tales of Sir
William Wallace and the Bruce, the listening ears of the lovely Saxon
child who treasured them in her heart and brain, until they fructified
in after years into the "Scottish Chiefs." To these two wer