e watchful tenderness and uncompromising love of a
mother--ever "replaced," to a lonely sister or a bereaved daughter! Miss
Porter's pen had been laid aside for some time, when suddenly she came
before the world as the editor of "Sir Edward Seward's Narrative," and
set people hunting over old atlases to find out the island where he
resided. The whole was a clever fiction; yet Miss Porter never confided
its authorship, we believe, beyond her family circle; perhaps the
correspondence and documents, which are in the hands of one of her
kindest friends (her executor), Mr. Shepherd, may throw some light upon
a subject which the "Quarterly" honored by an article. We think the
editor certainly used her pen, as well as her judgment, in the work, and
we have imagined that it might have been written by the family circle,
more in sport than in earnest, and then produced to serve a double
purpose.

After her sister's death Miss Jane Porter was afflicted with so severe
an illness, that we, in common with her other friends, thought it
impossible she could carry out her plan of journeying to St. Petersburgh
to visit her brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, who had been long united to
a Russian princess, and was then a widower; her strength was fearfully
reduced; her once round figure become almost spectral, and little beyond
the placid and dignified expression of her noble countenance remained to
tell of her former beauty; but her resolve was taken; she wished, she
said, to see once more her youngest and most beloved brother, so
distinguished in several careers, almost deemed incompatible--as a
painter, an author, a soldier, and a diplomatist, and nothing could turn
her from her purpose: she reached St. Petersburgh in safety, and with
apparently improved health, found her brother as much courted and
beloved there as in his own land, and his daughter married to a Russian
of high distinction. Sir Robert longed to return to England. He did not
complain of any illness, and every thing was arranged for their
departure; his final visits were paid, all but one to the Emperor, who
had ever treated him as a friend; the day before his intended journey he
went to the palace, was graciously received, and then drove home, but
when the servant opened the carriage-door at his own residence he was
dead! One sorrow after another pressed heavily upon her, yet she was
still the same sweet, gentle, holy-minded woman she had ever been,
bending with Christian f