George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[278] of the box where she sat, and stand up, that they might see her. For myself, I could not find her so very remarkable, though still I would not appeal from a decision like this, which is like the decision of a nation. She had a fine face, certainly, an open, radiant kind of beauty, an exquisite complexion, brilliant black eyes and hair, and a very graceful figure and manner. Her conversation, too, was light and pleasant and unaffected, and, what was most of all to her credit, though she had a perfect consciousness of her own beauty, which she took no pains to conceal, it was mingled with no conceit. It was like an historical fact to her. . . . . She had half the titles in Scotland at her feet. . . . .

I went quite as often to Mrs. Grant's, where an American, I imagine, finds himself at home more easily than anywhere else in Edinburgh. She is an old lady of such great good-nature and such strong good-sense, mingled with a natural talent, plain knowledge, and good taste, derived from English reading alone, that when she chooses to be pleasant she can be so to a high degree. Age and sorrow have fallen pretty heavily upon her. She is about seventy, and has lost several of her children, but still she is interested in what is going forward in the world, tells a great number of amusing stories about the past generation, and gives striking sketches of Highland manners and feelings, of which she is herself an interesting representative¹ . . . . . Not a great deal of society came to her house, and what there was did not much interest me. I met there Owen of Lanark, who talked me out of all patience with his localities and universalities; Wilson, of ‘The Isle of Palms,’ a pretending young man, but with a great deal of talent²; Hogg, the poet, vulgar as his name, and a perpetual contradiction, in his conversation, to the exquisite delicacy of his Kilmeny. . . . .