WHILE the pen has often undergone the unpleasant task of depicting the vices and follies of mankind, it dwells with peculiar pleasure on those virtues, which add dignity to high birth, and transmit to distant ages the revered memory of their possessor. Such was Mary, a lady of the blood royal of Scotland / who, both in felicity and misfortune, retained her fortitude; and forgot not, in all the anguish of sorrow, her innate dignity of mind and manners.

Wedded to the husband, both of her own choice and that of her royal relatives, a numerous and beautiful progeny promised her a continuance of that happiness, which she enjoyed during her prime of life.

To her skill in languages, music, and every other elegant accomplishment, she united all those qualifications that could render permanently happy the domestic duties of wife and mother. She lived but for her Donald and his beloved offspring; and she never neglected / the refined education she had received; but, by unremitted practice, kept those admirable talents in continual play, that she might ever remain the cherished companion of an husband she adored.

Fanatics have not been wanting in every age, since the first preaching of christianity; and the more unpolished and unenlightened the time, so much more pernicious is the consequence of enthusiasm, and more to be dreaded; as the mind wants developement, and too easily catches at the marvellous and terrific.

A vociferous and ignorant preacher had broached a new kind of religion, which had in view, to prove this world / to be only a valley of tears; that privation of all pleasure and continual mortification from the most moderate enjoyment of the good things of this life, was the only way to please that beneficent being, who delights in the happiness of his creatures; but whom this wretched fanatic represented as a merciless judge, dealing out only whips, scourges, and eternal fire, to whoever should dare to think of finding any satisfaction in the vain and perishable pleasures of this life.