"All the world knows that there is nothing on earth to be compared to a Highland chief. He has his loch and his islands, his mountains and his castle, his piper and his tartan, his forests and his deer, his thousands of acres of untrodden heath, and his tens of thousands of black-faced sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, with claymores and Gaelic, and hot blood and dirks." But Miss Ferrier also depicted a more sordid type of Highlander. Christopher North in his _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ writes of her novels: "They are the works of a very clever woman, sir, and they have one feature of true and melancholy interest quite peculiar to themselves. It is in them alone that the ultimate breaking-down and debasement of the Highland character has been depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed the enamel of genius over the last fitful gleams of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler and sadder scene--the age of lucre-banished clans,--of chieftains dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefs content to barter the recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons of Almacks and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen and steamboat pibrochs, was reserved for Miss Ferrier." Besides her descriptions of the Highlands, Miss Ferrier has drawn several Scotch characters that deserve to live. What a delightful group is described in _Marriage_, consisting of the three Misses Douglas, known as "The girls," and their friend Mrs. Maclaughlan! Miss Jacky Douglas, the senior of the trio, "was reckoned a woman of sense"; Miss Grizzy was distinguished by her good-nature and the entanglement of her thoughts; and it was said that Miss Nicky was "not wanting for sense either"; while their friend Lady Maclaughlan loved and tyrannised over all three of them. Sir Walter Scott admired the character of Miss Becky Duguid, a poor old maid, who "was expected to attend all accouchements, christenings, deaths, chestings, and burials, but she was seldom asked to a marriage, and never to any party of pleasure." Joanna Baillie thought the loud-spoken minister, M'Dow, a true representative of a few of the Scotch clergy whose only aim is preferment and good cheer. But none of her other characters can compare with the devoted Mrs. Molly Macaulay, the friend of the Chief of Glenroy in _Destiny_. When Glenroy has an attack of palsy, she hurries to him, and when she is told that he has missed her, she exclaims with perfect self-forgetfulness: "Deed, and I thought he would do that, for he has always been so kind to me,--and I thought sometimes when I was away, oh, thinks I to myself, I wonder what Glenroy will do for somebody to be angry with,--for Ben-bowie's grown so deaf, poor creature, it's not worth his while to be angry at him,--and you're so gentle that it would not do for him to be angry at you; but I'm sure he has a good right to be angry at me, considering how kind he has always been to me."