8 NOVEMBER 1913, Page 17

LINKS WITH THE PAST.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,-As the Spectator interests itself in long lives and the links which they create, you may care to publish the following. There died at Bath on October 27th a Scotswoman, Elizabeth Mackenzie by name, who was born on August 31st, 1814. She was the granddaughter of Mrs. Mylne of Mylnefield, well known to all Dundee as Grannie Mylne, who was born in 1750 or late in 1749, five years or so after the battle of Prestonpans and died in the summer of 1852, one year after the first Great Exhibition. The life which came in between these two, that of Mrs. Mackenzie of Annfield, daughter of Grannie Mylne and mother of Miss Elizabeth Mackenzie, lasted, I believe, ninety-four years. The last time I saw my kinswoman, Miss Mackenzie, alive, I said to her, "You must be able to recall talks between people whose recollections went back to all the soreness and misery in Scotland after Culloden." She replied, "Perfectly well." If Mrs. Mylne knew any really aged people in her own youth, she, whom I vividly remember when she was over a hundred, must have, in the same way, heard conversations between people who remembered the Common wealth.—I am, Sir, &c., L. P. MYLNE,

Alvechurch, Birmingham,. Bishop.