Annie
ranked among the humblest of our people. She had never seen a single
day in school. When best and most favourably circumstanced, she was
the wife of a farm-servant,--no very exalted station surely; but still a
lowlier station awaited her, and she passed more than half a century in
widowhood. One of her daughters became the wife of a poor labourer, her
two grandchildren were labourers also. It is not easy to imagine a
humbler lot, without crossing the line beyond which independence
cannot be achieved; and yet Annie was a noble-hearted matron, one of
the true aristocracy of the country. Her long life was a protracted
warfare--a scene of privation, sorrow, and sore trial; but she
struggled bravely through, ever trusting in God, dependent on Him,
and Him only; and if the dignity of human nature consist in integrity
the most inflexible, energy the most untiring, strong sound thinking,
deep devotional feeling, and a high-toned yet chastened spirit of
independence, then was there more true dignity to be found in the humble
cottage of Annie M'Donald, than in half the proud mansions of the
country. Many of our readers must be acquainted, as we have said,
with her character, and some of the outlines of her story. Most of them
are acquainted, too, with the character of another very remarkable
person, John Bethune, the Fifeshire Forester,--a man whose name, in
all probability, they have never associated with Annie M'Donald. He
belongs to quite a different class of persons. The venerable matron
takes her place among those cultivators of the moral nature who live in
close converse with their God, and on whom are re-stamped, if we may
so speak, the lineaments of the divine image obliterated at the fall.
The poet, too early lost, ranks, on the other hand, among those hardy
cultivators of the intellectual nature who, among all the difficulties
incident to imperfect education, and a life of hardship and labour,
struggle into notice through the force of an innate vigour, and impress
the stamp of their mind on the literature of their country. Much of
the interest of the newly published memoir before us arises from the
connection which it establishes between the matron and the poet. It
purports to be 'A Sketch of the Life of Annie M'Donald, by her
Grandson, the late John Bethune.' And scarce any one can peruse it
without marking the powerful influence which the high religious
character of the grandmother exerted on the intellectual cha