PORTER, JANE, a popular novelist, was born at Durham in 1776, and spent her childhood in Edinburgh. A love for the marvellous, and a sentimental admiration for human excellence, increased with her increasing strength, and fitted her for becoming a popular story-writer. Accordingly in 1803, after her removal to London, she entered upon a successful career as a novelist by the publication of Thaddus of Warsaw. The book gained for her at once a European reputation. She saw it translated into several of the continental languages; she was elected a lady canoness of the Tenth order of St Joachim; and she received from a relation of Kosciusko a gold ring containing the portrait of that hero. Scarcely less effective was her next important work, the Scottish Chiefs, published in 1809. It is true that it failed to realize the scenes, the costumes, the manners, and the characters of the story; yet to mere novel readers the melodramatic exploits and the astounding chivalry of Wallace and Bruce were profoundly affecting. The ablest, however, of all her publications was probably Sir Edward Seaward's Diary, which appeared in 1831. So life-like were the representations in that work of fiction that a grave and pompous critic mistook it for a professed historical treatise. He laboriously rummaged the dusty collections of Admiralty records and Indian maps to test the accuracy of the incidents, and solemnly and triumphantly refuted them in one of the leading reviews. The latter part of Miss Porter's life was spent in paying lengthened visits to her relations and numerous friends. She died in May 1850, at the house of her eldest brother, an eminent physician at Bristol. Anna Maria, the younger sister of Jane Porter, was the author of several popular novels.