He was too thorough a politician, regarded his patriarchal
influence too much as the means of accomplishing his own aggrandisement,
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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