Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/337

Rh identity is denied by the biographer of Sir Walter Scott, it is certain that she was the early friend of the great novelist, and bore a strong family resemblance to the subsequent heroine of his creation. In 1797 she was married to Godfrey Wenceslaus, count of Purgstall, an Austrian nobleman, possessing large establishments in Styria. But although surrounded with almost regal splendour, the latter part of the life of this once happy creature was a mournful one; for first her husband died in 1811, and finally, a few years afterwards, her only son, a youth of high promise and attainments, at the early age of nineteen, by which death the illustrious race of Purgstall was extinct; and the forlorn wife and mother, who had vowed to her son upon his death-bed that her dust should finally be mingled with his, resisted every solicitation of her early friends to return to her native Scotland, and preferred a residence for the rest of her days in her now lonely and deserted Styria. Captain Hall gladly accepted an invitation to visit her, at her schloss or castle of Heinfeld, near Gratz; and from the journal which he kept there, he afterwards published his work of "Schloss Heinfeld, or a Winter in Lower Styria." The lady had now reached the advanced age of seventy-eight, but her recollections of early days were still so fresh and vivid, that they formed the chief theme of her conversation, while she found in Captain Hall a delighted listener. "The Countess's anecdotes," he says, " relating to this period (of her intimacy with Sir Walter Scott), were without number; and I bitterly regretted, when it was too late, that I had not commenced at once making memoranda of what she told us. It was, indeed, quite clear to us, that this accomplished and highly gifted lady was the first person who not merely encouraged him to persevere, but actually directed and chastised those incipient efforts which, when duly matured, and rendered confident by independent exercise, and repeated though cautious trials, burst forth at last from all control, and gave undisputed law to the whole world of letters." It was at this huge Styrian castle, also, that Captain Hall spent his forty-sixth birth-day, upon which occasion he gives us the following retrospect of his past existence:—"I have enjoyed to the full each successive period of my life, as it has rolled over me ; and just as I began to feel that I had had nearly enough of any one period, new circumstances, more or less fortunate and agreeable, began to start up, and to give me fresher, and, generally speaking, more lively interest in the coming period than in that which had just elapsed. As a middy, I was happy—as a lieutenant,—happier as a captain, happiest! I remember thinking that the period from 1815 to 1823, during which I commanded different ships of war, could not by any possibility be exceeded in enjoyment; and yet I have found the dozen years which succeeded greatly happier, though in a very different way. It is upon this that the whole matter turns. Different seasons of life, like different seasons of the year, require different dresses; and if these be misplaced, there is no comfort. Were I asked to review my happy life, and to say what stage of it I enjoyed most, I think I should pitch upon that during which I passed my days in the scientific, literary, and political society of London, and my nights in dancing and flirting till sunrise, in the delicious paradise of Almacks, or the still more bewitching ball-rooms of Edinburgh! Perhaps next best was the quiet half-year spent in the Schloss Heinfeld. What the future is to produce is a secret in the keeping of that close fellow, Time; but I await the decision with cheerfulness and humble confidence, sure that whatever is sent will be for the best, be it what it may."—How blessed a boon is our ignorance of futurity! Through this ignorance, years of