of 'Familiar Letters' from 1803 to 1838, were published, edited by her son John-Peter Grant, writer to the Signet. A number of Grant's manuscripts are preserved in the David Laing collection in the Edinburgh University Library. Style There was a want of systematic accuracy in all her compositions. She had little constructive power, and great ability in word-painting from natural objects. Her style failed in precision, though it was seldom deficient in perspicuity. Her syntax was often faulty; her orthography was notoriously incorrect, and wholly at the mercy of the printers. She used many peculiarities of diction, often substituting the preposition "of" for the preposition "for," and making the adverb "whenever" equivalent to "as soon as:" for instance, "I am the better of being tenderly cared for, and of three months in the country"-—"Whenever she heard that I was here, she came." Like most Scotch writers of the time, she sometimes misplaced the verbs "will" and "shall." Every moral and social truth which she knew, and her memory was full of such, had been either directly brought to her by a fact, impressed by a fact, or conjoined with one by way of illustration. All these facts were either incidents of her personal history, or occurrences in the lives of people upon whose traces she had trodden. This realisation of things imparted to her writings an air of freshness and originality, which, atoning for all faults of construction and of style, rendered their perusal in a pleasing manner. It had the same effect in society, where the sagacity of her intellect, the warmth of her heart, her natural ease and fluency of speech, and the refined simplicity of her manners, rendered her an object of interest, and often of admiration. She was undoubtedly gifted with that faculty of originating ideas which constitutes genius. She versified harmoniously, and rhymed with facility. She had a frank avowal of her sensations and feelings. With admirable impartiality and candour, but with too much severity, Grant asserted that she had "no fountain of inspiration, but a cistern of acquisitions". Themes In a letter to Catherine Maria Fanshawe, dated 18 February 1809, Grant said:— Again, writing to the same friend, on 17 September 1810, Grant said, in reference to a tour which she had lately made with some English visitors :— Here is confession, unwittingly made, that the true spirit of sublime poetry never inhabited the