He was too thorough a politician, regarded his patriarchal influence too much as the means of accomplishing his own aggrandizement, that we should term him the model of a Highland Chieftain.

Flora felt the same anxiety for cherishing and extending their patriarchal sway, but it was with the generous desire of vindicating from poverty, or at least from want and foreign oppression, those whom her brother was by birth, according to the notions of the time and country, entitled to govern.

The savings of her income, for she had a small pension from the Princess Sobieski, were dedicated, not to add to the comforts of the peasantry, for that was a word which they neither knew nor apparently wished to know, but to relieve their absolute necessities, when in sickness or extreme old age.

At every other period, they rather toiled to procure something which they might share with the Chief as a proof of their attachment, than expected other assistance from him save what was afforded by the rude hospitality of his castle, and the general division and subdivision of his estate among them.

Flora was so much beloved by them, that when Mac-Murrough composed a song in which he enumerated all the principal beauties of the district, and intimated her superiority by concluding; that 'the fairest apple hung on the highest bough,' he received, in donatives from the individuals of the clan, more seed-barley than would have sowed his Highland Parnassus, the Bard's croft as it was called, ten times over.
From situation, as well as choice, Miss Mac-Ivor's society was extremely limited.