He was too thorough a politician, regarded his patriarchal
influence too much as the means of accomplishing his own aggrandizement,
that we should term him the model of a Highland Chieftain. Flora felt
the same anxiety for cherishing and extending their patriarchal sway,
but it was with the generous desire of vindicating from poverty, or at
least from want and foreign oppression, those whom her brother was by
birth, according to the notions of the time and country, entitled to
govern. The savings of her income, for she had a small pension from the
Princess Sobieski, were dedicated, not to add to the comforts of the
peasantry, for that was a word which they neither knew nor apparently
wished to know, but to relieve their absolute necessities, when in
sickness or extreme old age. At every other period, they rather toiled
to procure something which they might share with the Chief as a proof of
their attachment, than expected other assistance from him save what was
afforded by the rude hospitality of his castle, and the general division
and subdivision of his estate among them. Flora was so much beloved by
them, that when Mac-Murrough composed a song in which he enumerated all
the principal beauties of the district, and intimated her superiority
by concluding; that 'the fairest apple hung on the highest bough,'
he received, in donatives from the individuals of the clan, more
seed-barley than would have sowed his Highland Parnassus, the Bard's
croft as it was called, ten times over.
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