Martha Bethune Baliol was a person of quality and fortune,
as these are esteemed in Scotland. Her family was ancient, and
her connections honourable. She was not fond of specially
indicating her exact age, but her juvenile recollections
stretched backwards till before the eventful year 1745, and she
remembered the Highland clans being in possession of the Scottish
capital, though probably only as an indistinct vision. Her
fortune, independent by her father's bequest, was rendered
opulent by the death of more than one brave brother, who fell
successively in the service of their country, so that the family
estates became vested in the only surviving child of the ancient
house of Bethune Baliol. My intimacy was formed with the
excellent lady after this event, and when she was already
something advanced in age.
She inhabited, when in Edinburgh, where she regularly spent the
winter season, one of those old hotels which, till of late, were
to be found in the neighbourhood of the Canongate and of the
Palace of Holyrood House, and which, separated from the street,
now dirty and vulgar, by paved courts and gardens of some extent,
made amends for an indifferent access, by showing something of
aristocratic state and seclusion when you were once admitted
within their precincts.
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