The world does not know much of Alison Rutherford of Fairnalee, but she is familiar to us under her married name of Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of one of the versions of ‘Flowers of the Forest.’ Her period was a long one, within the limits of the last century, 1712-1794. One of the biographers of this Queen of Edinburgh describes the Scotswomen of the early part of that century as highly cultivated. ‘The daughters of the country houses were educated by their fathers’ chaplains and their brothers’ tutors’ (the Dominie Sampsons of the House), ‘when they had brothers, as well as by their mothers’ waiting-women; and when the family happened to be of more than ordinary intelligence, or to be decidedly of a studious turn, the daughters were fairly well-read and well-informed women. Not only were Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Prior, and Addison on many bookshelves in lairds’ and ladies’ closets, but, though the women of the nobility and gentry had not a classical education, they frequently learnt French and Italian, and were very conversant with the former. This was not so much because of the obsolete national alliances which have scattered French words broadcast over the field of the Scottish language, as because of the influence of the _vieille cour_ of the great Louis on manners, and the effects of its _beaux esprits_ on literature, which were felt as far as Scotland. The number of soldiers of fortune belonging to the upper classes who served campaigns abroad and came home with foreign polish increased the influence. Corneille, Racine, and Molière, La Fontaine and La Bruyère were as much the fashion in the Scotch rank that pretended to fashion when Alison Rutherford was young, as they were in English high society when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mrs. Delany grew up.’ The above must be taken with some reserve. Scottish governesses of the period were, for the most part, ill-educated, and they were as much servants as teachers. When Jean Adam, the reputed author of ‘There’s nae Luck about the House’ (she was born in 1710), went as governess into the family of a clergyman, Mr. Turner of Greenock, she had to live on pease-brose, nettle-kail, and barley-meal scones. She knitted the minister’s stockings, helped to make the clothes of his wife, his girls, and his boys, worked at the spinning-wheel, nursed the baby, and tended the sick. In the manse of Crawfurdsdyke this governess wore a woollen petticoat and a short gown of striped linen within the house. Her Indian cotton gown and her _bon grâce_, or straw hat, were for gala trips to Glasgow. The education of Mrs. Cockburn, as we will call her, was defective in spelling, at all events. In one of her notes she complains of the ‘rheumatiz.’ In another she uses the word ‘unparaleled,’ sees the mistake, can’t correct it, and then gaily writes in a postscript, ‘cannot spell unparaleled.’ She was a beauty throughout life--supremely beautiful in her youth. She says prettily