AMONG the scenes of peculiar interest the American traveller is, as it
were, under a patriotic obligation to visit while abroad, may be
mentioned the birth-place of Columbus near Genoa, Cave Castle, the
mansion of the Washington family in the Wolds of Yorkshire, and the
abode at Edinburgh of the venerable authoress of “Letters from the
Mountains.” In acknowledgment of what we all owe to her, and as a
heartfelt tribute of admiration, and affection for her talents, and
virtues, the present work being out of print, the opportunity of
republishing what so much identifies Mrs. Grant of Laghan with our
country, is gladly seized upon by one who since one of those pilgrimages
has long enjoyed the benign influence of her society and correspondence.
The simple circumstances she relates of herself, and the gentle spirit
of the whole work render it unnecessary to deprecate criticism; and the
praise of Southey who pronounced the “description of the breaking up of
the ice in the Hudson,” as “quite Homeric,” must bespeak for it a
favourable perusal. As a picture, taken at the dawning of the
Revolution, of the clouds which then passed along to have vanished
otherwise forever, and as one in a series of works shedding light upon
that momentous period of which the “Pioneers” is its natural successor,
its reappearance must be a welcome event in the marshalling of American
literature now in progress.