y a malignant fever,
with which, upheld by a powerful constitution, he struggled for
fifty-four days, and then expired. 'For the first twenty-one days and
nights of these,' says Dr. Jones, 'Lady Sutherland never left his
bedside; and then at last, overcome with fatigue, anxiety, and grief,
she sank an unavailing victim to an amiable but excessive attachment,
seventeen days before the death of her lord.' The period, though not
very remote, was one in which the intelligence of events travelled
slowly; and in this instance the distraction of the family must have
served to retard it beyond the ordinary time. Her Ladyship's mother,
when hastening from Edinburgh to her assistance, alighted one day from
her carriage at an inn, and, on seeing two hearses standing by the
wayside, inquired of an attendant whose remains they contained? The
remains, was the reply, of Lord and Lady Sutherland, on their way for
interment to the Royal Chapel of Holyrood House. And such was the
first intimation which the lady received of the death of her daughter
and son-in-law.

The event was pregnant with disaster to Sutherland, though many years
elapsed ere the ruin which it involved fell on that hapless county.
The sole survivor and heir of the family was a female infant of but a
year old. Her maternal grandmother, an ambitious, intriguing woman of
the world, had the chief share in her general training and education;
and she was brought up in the south of Scotland, of which her
grandmother was a native, far removed from the influence of those
genial sympathies with the people of her clan, for which the old lords
of Sutherland had been so remarkable, and, what was a sorer evil
still, from the influence of the vitalities of that religion which,
for five generations together, her fathers had illustrated and
adorned. The special mode in which the disaster told first, was
through the patronages of the county, the larger part of which are
vested in the family of Sutherland. Some of the old Earls had been
content, as we have seen, to place themselves on the level of the
Christian men of their parishes, and thus to unite with them in
calling to their churches the Christian ministers of their choice.
They knew,--what regenerate natures can alone know with the proper
emphasis,--that in Christ Jesus the vassal ranks with his lord, and
they conscientiously acted on the conviction. But matters were now
regulated differently. The presentation supplanted the cal