stated by Mr Malcolm, a person of great worth and ability. In the Edinburgh society of her day she was known as "the beautiful Betsy Somers;" and a portrait of her, painted when she was over forty years of age, leaves no room for doubting her title to that designation. She, the beloved mother of Thomas Drummond, will be often referred to in this narrative. She retained her beauty to the last,-a beauty shining through great sadness, we may believe, as she for years survived her darling son. Some who knew her say that at seventy she was the most beautiful old lady they had ever seen.

Such parents had Thomas Drummond: his father a Scotch laird, a man of ingenuity, and the inheritor of the traditions of an old, most respectable, and, in some branches of it, noble family; and his mother a beautiful and attractive woman, whose charms of person were equalled by the excellence of her dispositions and understanding. To have such parents is to have a start in life of the majority of men. Gentle bearing and honourable manly dealing are sustained by regard for family credit, as the natural outcome of qualities accumulated and transmitted from generation to generation in families of long-continued respectability.

Mr Drummond's circumstances became somewhat embarrassed soon after his marriage. As stated by Mr Malcolm, he had played the part of an improving proprietor. He had "new-modelled" the village of Comrie, besides expending large sums in land improvements, and in planting great portions of the estate with wood. He had farther encumbered himself by purchasing the plain of Dalginross, adjoining Comrie. And to effect this purchase and these improvements,

a part only of the rents of his estate had been available to him, a large provision to his sister Beatrice, wife of Mr Drummond of Strageath, falling to be paid out of them. The extent of his embarrassments, however, did not fully appear till his death, when there is some reason to think they were made to seem greater than they were in reality. He died suddenly in February 1800, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, survived by his wife and four children.

The children being all in infancy, and Mr Drummond having left no will, a tutor was appointed to them; and he, finding the debts and burdens to be very considerable, applied for and obtained the authority of the Court of Session to sell the heritable property. The estates were accordingly sold, and likewise the house in Castle Street, Edinburgh. By the time the tutor had paid the debts and expenses, Mrs Drummond found herself without a home, and left with her young family to face the world on about L.120 a year.

Mr Somers had been reputed to be rich, and his two daughters, his only children, to be heiresses. But, while zealous in his professional duties, he was careless of his accounts. On his death, his estate was found to consist chiefly of irrecoverable debts, and his widow and unmarried daughter became part of the household of Mrs Drummond.

She retired, on her husband's death, to Preston, in East Lothian, where for a time she occupied furnished apartments. The following winter she passed in the same village in the house of a friend of the family, a Mr Beveridge, who put it at her disposal free of rent. In the spring she removed to what is now known as Linkfield House, in Musselburgh, which she obtained for a small rent, as it had the reputation of being

haunted. It was then known by the name of "Cabbage Hall." She had scarcely, however, brought the place into order, when the proprietor himself fancied and took it. She then removed to a house on the banks of the Esk, not far from Musselburgh, where the family resided for the next ten years. Here Thomas Drummond passed his childhood and boyhood; and here his mother and grandmother fought their brave fight with worldly difficulties, and fought it successfully.

Her

Mrs Somers, with her unmarried daughter, continued, it will be understood, to form part of the household. Indeed, in some respects "Grandmother Somers" was the true head of the family. She is described as having been " a very managing woman"-a person "at once of great sweetness and great sense." portrait supports the character ascribed to her. She appears bright, good-looking, open-browed, with large dark blue eyes, and a figure full of grace; her looks betokening quick wit and good sense, readiness in repartee, and the merriment which sustains banter. She always did the marketing; and she did it well. A neighbouring butcher, an honest rogue in his day, is related to have said of her, "There comes the only lady I never could cheat." She was just the woman to be the head of a good family fallen on evil days, whose members were to be reared to sustain the credit of the house, if not to repair its fortunes. I imagine she superintended the financial affairs of the family, while Mrs Drummond discharged her duties as nurse and mother to her children.

From Miss Drummond, now the sole survivor of the group, we have a glimpse of the life in the house on Eskside, as well as a notice of the early tendencies of her brother. "It was," she says, "a very happy

life; we were the happiest of families. Our greatest enjoyment in the day was a walk with our mother, I getting her one hand and Tommy the other. The rest of us were all fond of gardening amusements. As for Tommy, his pleasures lay in carpentering and mechanical contrivances. He was always making things." There are preserved, as evidences of his success, some excellent specimens of bookbinding done by him when about ten years of age, half-calfs and moroccos, finished to the very gildings on the backs. A wellmade writing-desk attested his skill as a carpenter. He was a good rigger of ships, and used to finish the tiny craft with every rope and spar necessary for a large vessel. "About the house," says Miss Drummond, "his power of contrivance made him exceedingly useful. And whatever went wrong, from the roastingjack upwards, the appeal was to Tommy to put it right." The services he was thus able to render were perhaps of more value than people living on large incomes can well suppose.

The family, it afterwards turned out, should have been better off during these years than it was. Miss Somers having married Mr William Macfarlane, a Writer to the Signet (long popularly known as "Judge Macfarlane " on the bench of the Justice of Peace Court), this gentleman interested himself in the Drummond affairs, and helped to bring about a settlement of them. The result was, the recovery of a considerable sum to the family. It was large enough materially to improve their circumstances. The improvement came at a good time, when the children were growing up and expenses increasing. But before it came, there had been enough of frugality and carefulness in the household; and in the recollection of his early home we

may see a source of the great tenderness with which Thomas Drummond always regarded his mother. To use the language of Miss Drummond, " he idolised her." Also, the experience of this time must have intensified in some degree his natural sympathies with the poor and struggling. How strong these were we shall see. They prompted the most arduous labour of his life-a labour to which, indeed, his life may be said to have been sacrificed.