prised," said she to her, "how it is possible my estate should answer all these things, when I consider what I do, and yet I never want money." This she only spoke to give honor to the divine blessing, which, as she was wont to acknowledge with great piety, protected her from losses, and succeeded all her affairs; for it would be extreme injustice to interpret her expressions of gratitude to the goodness of Providence in a different manner, since her great care to conceal her charities from the observation of mortals, gives the highest evidence that no love of human applause tainted the purity of her benevolent dispositions.

THE COUNTESS OF SEAFIELD.

ANNA, Countess of Seafield, the eldest daughter of Sir William Dunbar of Durn, son to the Laird of Grangehill, and Janet Brodie his wife, grandchild of the Lord Brodie, was born in the year 1672, and bred up virtuously from her infancy by her parents, and particularly by her grandmother, Lady Dunbar, who was a virtuous and pious woman, and took care to instil into her grandchild's mind a sense of piety and devotion from her very infancy. There appeared in her, from her childhood, a sweetness of temper and disposition which made her agreeable to all that saw her, and which was always observable in her to the last.

When she was a young girl with her parents, her mother would have had her learn housewifery; but her inclination led her rather to read, and therefore she stayed mostly in her closet, and gave herself much to reading, and still avoided the company of the servants, having an abhorrence of the profaneness and ribaldry with which they are ready to defile one another's ears, and pollute their hearts. And in this sense, one's great enemies are oftentimes those of one's own house; and children, in their younger years, are greatly corrupted by the example and speeches of servants.

Her parents, knowing how ready young people are to corrupt one another, and that one of the best means to keep them from evil is to preserve them from the occasion of it, chose not to send her to the city, to the women's schools, according to the ordinary custom, there to be trained up in the things which become those of her own age and quality to learn; but to keep a virtuous woman within their house to attend their daughter, and instruct her in such things as were fit for her to learn.

She began very early to read good and devout books, and took delight to hear them read to her; and when a portion of some of them had been read, she would retire to her closet, and was often observed there on her knees in prayer to God. When she was about eight years of age, while reading the Holy Scriptures, she happened to read these words, "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." On which, reflecting on her own sinful state, she was struck again with great terror, looking on herself as one of those against whom this is threatened. In this state her grandmother did greatly comfort her; and when she would be in the greatest anguish, these two passages of holy Scripture gave cure and relief to her spirit: "One day with the Lord is as a thousand years; and a thousand years as one day. When the wicked turneth away

from his wickedness which he hath committed, and doth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." However, the deep impression of this threatening remained on her spirit for several years.

When she was with her parents, her mother happened to be visited with a severe and long sickness, during which she constantly attended her, and ministered to her in every thing, sitting up by her in the night to serve her; and the seeing her mother so afflicted, and the apprehensions of her death, and the solitary nights she spent in attending her, made her very thoughtful; so that she employed them much in reading the Scriptures and devout books, and came thereby to have a deep sense of her duty to God, and received her parent's blessing for her so pious care of her; of the good of all which she was afterwards very sensible.

In the sixteenth year of her age she was married to the Hon. James Ogilvie, second son to the Earl of Findlater, who was afterwards created Earl of Seafield, and whose eminent parts appeared in the discharge of two great offices of state, that of secretary of state, and that of lord high chancellor, to which he was advanced in this and the last reign, first to the one, and then to the other; and that for two several times, continuing in the last till the late union of both kingdoms into one, of Great Britain.

When he came first to ask her for his wife, her father having told her of it the night before, some of her acquaintances pressed her to look out of her window to see him while he alighted, for she had never seen him, but she would not do it. When he first addressed her, she gave him no other return but that she was to obey her parents, and be directed by them. When all was agreed to, he made her a present of a rich diamond ring, but she would by no means accept of it till the marriage was solemnized: she considering that many have been contracted, who have not been married together and that if it should so happen with her, such a present could not be kept, and therefore she chose rather not to accept of it.

The entering into the married state so young, where she foresaw so many difficulties, made her very thoughtful, and therefore she had recourse to God, and begged earnestly counsel and direction from him. And this she said she did afterwards in all her difficulties, and that she found God was pleased to direct her and bring her through them, she knew not how.

When she was first married, her husband had no plentiful fortune in the world, although he had the prospect of being his father's heir, his elder brother, though alive, being very infirm; yet the estate of the family was under such burdens, that it was scarcely better than none at all. This made her give great application to a careful and prudent management; and their worldly wealth still increasing, and God blessing them with a plentiful fortune, and her husband being for the most part from home, and committing to her the care and management of his own estate, she did it with great application and

fidelity. She looked on herself as the steward of it for her husband, and that she was obliged to be faithful to her trust.

When her first son was born, being of a thin body, she was prevailed with to give him to be nursed by another woman, who proving a very bad nurse, occasioned much sickness to the child, which brought him to the gates of death, for which the mother had deep remorse and having met with the same affliction in her second child, for which she was touched with like trouble, she resolved afterwards to nurse her own children, which she accordingly essayed in the next child, her present eldest daughter; but, after two months' suckling, she became so weak that she was forced to give it over.

Though her husband was for the most part, always abroad, being employed in the public affairs, yet she kept still at home, being careful to educate and bring up her children in virtue and piety, and looked well to the ways of her household, and ate not the bread of idleness: a rare example for the ladies of this age.

She was most careful to nip the first buds of vice that appeared in her children, and to pull them up by the root. She still inculcated to them the heinousness of their disobedience to God, and their sinning against him, and would not forgive them the offense they had done, till they had first earnestly begged pardon of God. And she made them still conceive that the reason of their obedience to her commands, was because it was the will of God, and he commanded it. Her eldest son, in his childhood, when about five or six years of age, having learned from the servants to take the name of God in vain, she wrought in him such a sense of the baseness and heinousness of that crime, that ever afterwards he had a horror of it. At another time, about the eighth or ninth year of his age, she having given him a little money to carry to a beggar whom she saw at the gate, he was tempted by a boy of the same age with himself, to buy figs with it. This coming to her ears, she so laid before him the heinousness of this sin, the greatness of the theft he had committed in robbing the poor, the dreadfulness of the account he must have to give at the last judgment for this uncharitableness, when we shall be judged by Jesus Christ according to our charity or want of it; and did so inculcate upon him the thoughts of death and judgment, heaven and hell, as made him to tremble, and gave him a deep sense of that charity and compassion which we ought to have for the poor and miserable. There was nothing she was more careful to curb in her children than the least inclination to lying or deceit. She was also careful to suppress in them the least inclination to pride and self-conceit. And when she found them lifted up, she would take occasion to humble them, and so to point out to them their faults as to mortify their pride.

Though it was still her care to make no shew in her devotion, and not to be seen of men ; yet, for the most part, she constantly retired thrice a day for prayer and meditation on the holy Scriptures; and

and in particular on the Lord's-day in the afternoon; and frequently took in some one of her children with her, keeping her child under her arm while she prayed with great devotion; and afterwards would sit down and speak seriously to the child of the obedience and love he owed to God, the duty of depending upon him, and having recourse to him by prayer on all occasions, repenting and confessing his sins before him. And she would then reprove him mildly of any particular faults she thought he was guilty of, and recommend to him the particular duties he ought to perform; and especially to employ the Lord's-day in reading and meditating on the holy Scriptures and in prayer. She would then dismiss the child to get by heart a portion of a psalm, or some other part of the holy Scripture; and after she had ended her own devotions, would call in the child again, and take an account of it. She accustomed the children, from their infancy, to pray morning and evening, and recommended to them, before they fell asleep, to call to mind some passage of Scripture, and meditate upon it; and when they awoke in the morning, to do the same.

About a year after their marriage, they came to live with the Earl of Findlater, her husband's father, at his house of Cullen; where, the Countess of Findlater being deceased, the whole care of the family was committed to her; in the management of which she discovered a wonderful prudence and discretion, far beyond what could have been expected from a young lady of eighteen years of age. There were in the family, besides the lady and her own husband, the Earl of Findlater, his eldest son Lord Deskfoord, the earl's two daughters, both of them older than herself, and a younger son : and these were of such different tempers and interests, that it was not easy to oblige one without disobliging the other; and yet this young lady so lived among them, as to obtain the esteem and goodwill of all, and to avoid a concern in their little quarrels and resentments. She heard them complain of each other, without offending the person complained of, and was displeasing to none of them.

The Earl of Seafield had been in public office several years, both in Edinburgh and London, before he obliged his lady to leave her country-house to come to live with him at court or in the city. The ladies used to express their surprise why she lived still in the country, and concluded her lord was ashamed to bring her to the court and the city, because of her rural breeding. They earnestly pressed him to bring her up, and they pleased themselves with the fanof the sport and divertisement they should have in the manners, speech, conversation, and behavior of a country lass, and how odd she would look when she was out of her element. She knew not what it was to disobey her husband; and as she was well pleased to live in the country as long as he saw it fit, so she made no scruple, upon his call, to come to the city. Before she came first to Edinburgh, she had never been in a town so remarkable as Aberdeen,

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