LITERARY TOURS

Literary Tours in
The Highlands and
Islands of Scotland

By D. T. Holmes, B.A.

"Gaudia, discursus, nostri est farrago libelli"
—Juvenal, i. 74

PAISLEY: ALEXANDER GARDNER
Publisher by Appointment to the late Queen Victoria
1909

To
James Coats, Junr., Esq.,
Ferguslie House, Paisley.

You, but for whom I'd never been
Much further north than Aberdeen;
Whose mandate sent my willing feet
To realms of heather, broom, and peat:
Accept this record of my tours
As something less my own than yours.

D. T. HOLMES.

PREFACE.

White stands the long Kilpatrick row
Of hills with deep and dazzling snow,
And eastward, in a glimmering haze,
Stretch to the Forth the Campsie Braes.

But see! beyond the Clyde, a stain
Of smoke that runs across the plain,
And flecks for miles the vivid gleam:
It is the tireless steed of steam.

An old acquaintance! Ben and Strath
Daily behold his thunderous path,
That ceases not, until he feels
The breeze of Mallaig cool his wheels.

And Memory, fondly gazing back
On many a journey by that track
Of splendour, would, at home, retrace
The charms and lore of every place;

Yea, pass, in thought, to storied Skye,
Where all the glens in glamour lie;
And, lightly scorning gust and spray,
Leap o'er the Minch to Stornoway.

And many a northern beach besides,
Splashed by the foam of racing tides,
Rises in thought: from here to there,
Let Fancy's coinage pay the fare,—

Fancy, that wafts us o'er the main
To utmost Thule and home again,
Through mingled din of sea and sky,
Even in the twinkling of an eye.

D. T. H.

Ingleholm, Bridge of Weir,
16th January, 1909.

CONTENTS.

LITERARY TOURING.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

Village libraries—Difficulties of travel—Literary Societies in the Highlands—Gaelic books—Happiness and geniality of natives—Oban to Gairloch—Winter sailing—A crofting village—Horrors of the Minch—Notes on Lewis—Highland doctors—Hotels and anglers—Recent books—Military—Moray Firth—Among the miners—Handloom weaving—Professor Blackie and the Highlands.

VILLAGE LIBRARIES.

At pretty frequent intervals, during the last four years, I have sallied forth from my home in Renfrewshire, north, south, east, and west, to some of the most remote and isolated nooks of insular and provincial Scotland, on a mission so uncommon as to justify the writing of a book of impressions and experiences. The Highlands and Islands of Scotland are, of course, visited every summer by a great host of excursionists, who go thither to fish, play golf, lounge, climb hills, and otherwise picturesquely disport themselves. A few earnest devotees of science spend their holidays botanising in the glens, scanning the geological strata, looking for fossils, measuring the outlines of brochs and prehistoric forts, or collecting relics of Culdee churches. My journeys were undertaken for none of the objects named: they were entirely connected with libraries and lecturing, and, being undertaken mainly in the months of winter and spring, they have given me the opportunity of noting a great many interesting particulars that the summer traveller, bent on recreation or science, cannot be expected to notice.

I do not think any finer gift could be given to a village community than a collection of useful and entertaining books. The libraries with which my work was connected were sent, free of charge, to strath and glen, and nothing was asked in return, except that the volumes should be well housed and delivered to the people to read by some local librarian. You will find these libraries in all the townships of the Hebrides, from Ness in Lewis, down the long chain of islands, to Islay and Jura. About thirty of them are established in the Shetlands, and as many in the Orkneys. Scores of little villages in Aberdeen, Ross, Sutherland, Argyle, Bute, and Perth, have been gratuitously supplied with them. The same is true of many a weather-beaten, quaint, red-tiled little fishing-village along the shores of the Moray Firth. In the barracks of Fort-George, Inverness, and Dingwall, the soldiers can solace their leisure hours by delightful, patriotic, and instructive reading, furnished to them without money and without price. Even in quiet, pastoral Roxburghshire, at a spot near the birthplace of Dandie Dinmont, you will find one of these serviceable collections of books.

It is a pleasure to me to be able to say that I have visited a great number of the districts mentioned, for the purpose of speaking to the people in a familiar and non-academic way on some of the books which have been presented to them. In this way I have spoken to about 40,000 people, the majority of whom had never previously been present at a discourse on a literary topic. Most of them had, of course, been in the habit of attending religious services and election meetings: but neither of these is the very best preparation for a literary evening. Some of my experiences have been intensely amusing, and I do not think any lecturer has ever, as regards rough roads, inclement weather, and amazing votes of thanks, had quite the same joys and sorrows as I have come through. I have often laughed (good-naturedly, I hope) at what came under my notice, but I am not so conceited as to suppose that the hilarity was always on one side.

DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVEL.

It can very easily be seen that he who proposed to visit all the above districts would have some hard and continuous work in prospect. Even on the mainland of Scotland there are many villages of difficult access. The nearest railway station to Durness on Loch Eriboll is Lairg, sixty miles away. Gairloch in Ross-shire is thirty miles distant from the railway station of Achnasheen. In the great county of Aberdeen there are a good many villages that can only be reached by long and tiresome driving in a mail coach. At different parts of the Moray Firth little townships lie huddled at the foot of precipitous cliffs, and, at first sight, seem inaccessible except by sea. To one accustomed to the sumptuous equipment of the Clyde steamers, even the journey to the shrine of Hugh Miller at Cromarty is pleasant only in good weather: a wee, puffing, hard-wrought steam-launch takes a slant course of five miles from Invergordon to Cromarty pier, accomplishing the journey in forty-five minutes. The fare between the two piers is one shilling, and there is no extra charge for the use of the cabin, which is reached by a perpendicular and very slippery ladder, and would be better suited for philosophical reflection in a gale if the crew did not use it as a store-room for engine-grease and old oilskins. In the Outer Islands, Watt's machine is, of course, unknown, and many of the roads which imaginative cartographers have inserted in their maps, will perhaps be finished when the last trump is about to sound.

Railway travelling, too, is attended with some inconveniences in winter. The Glasgow-Inverness train, for example, may, on the coldest night of the year, break down at Dalnaspidal; and in such a case the passengers will have to sit, entertained by howling blasts, till a fresh engine comes up from Blair Atholl. Such an experience was once mine, and I always think of it when I read the ninth ode of Horace's first book. Outside were the great snow-sheeted mountains, and the moon was gazing in blear-eyed compassion through a screen of haze. From end to end of the train resounded the rhythmic beat of cold-footed passengers striving to bring some warmth of blood to the toes.

In Grantown-on-Spey, I got an uncommon surprise one February. There had been some snow in the Lowlands, but at Grantown the fall had been excessive, and the roads were encumbered. On arriving at the station, the travellers saw a sleigh waiting to convey them to the hotel. The conveyance suited the weather admirably, and the horses seemed to be enjoying the fun. No wheeled vehicles were to be seen: even the milkmen sleighed their commodity from door to door. "If we had a brace of grand-dukes and a bomb or two, we could fancy ourselves in Russia," said the facetious hotel-porter. He asserted that it was well for the country when abundant snow came down early in the year. It seems that Grantown is apt to suffer from drought in a hot summer following on a rainless spring. A copious fall of snow early in the year is retained in the mountains, and ensures plenty of moisture during the months of heat. Moisture is needed in summer, for the population is trebled then, and most tourists require a little water, sometimes, to qualify their potations.

It is evident from what I have said, that the pedantic and vexatious system adopted by Euclid in his Elements of Geometry could not be employed in arranging the chapters of this book. The stern consecutiveness of that immortal but unpopular author would be out of place in describing journeys which might have been taken in the reverse order without much difference in the results.

LITERARY SOCIETIES IN THE HIGHLANDS.

Winter with its long nights gives leisure to the remote glensmen and crofters. The distractions of the town are not there to take their minds away from study and meditation. Books may not be abundant, but what literature is available is eagerly fastened on and thoroughly digested. In the Lowlands we skip over our books and know nothing thoroughly. The Highlander, with his limited means and choice, is forced to peruse and re-peruse, even though he has nothing more lively than Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations among the Tombs. But he knows well what he has so often read, and is quite competent to discuss and criticise his little row of volumes. A few of the Highland townships have literary societies in which every variety of subject is debated: the meetings are usually opened with prayer, but not always closed in that way. There is a tiny clachan, some twenty miles distant from Ullapool, on the side of a hill, in view of the grotesque peaks of Suilven, which has a most flourishing literary society—with president, vice-president, rules, minutes, and committees. Not once, but twice a week does this society meet, and when the full moon is propitious for a clear journey home through the morasses, the debates are often unduly prolonged and the chairman's summing-up luxuriantly prolix. How many politicians of note in London have been raked fore and aft in that little schoolroom! What measures and enactments, plausible to the unthinking metropolitans, have been cut and slashed there, while the conscious moon, gleaming in at the window, strove vainly to disperse the loquacious throng! Listen to the chairman's modest remarks: "I do not wish," he says, "to embarrass the Government, but...." Unthinking Asquith, here is a man who does not wish to embarrass you; he could do it, but he is merciful! You may breathe freely, you and your Cabinet, for spite of your slips and blunders, the Ross-shire crofters will not turn round and rend you. They do not wish to embarrass the Government; but have a care: their eyes are on you, and forbearance has its limits. Think not because they live remote from train and telegraph, that you are immune from their censure. Far from it! Round the hill-side at a stated hour every day, in shine or shower, gust or calm, comes the mail-coach of King Edward VII., bringing its pile of letters and newspapers. I see the little throng of village politicians, eager-eyed, peruse the latest parliamentary news. There they get all the needed pabulum for the next political debate. If the answers to Mr. Galloway Weir have been shifty and evasive, it will go hard with the Government to-night in the little schoolroom, and the plaster will fall in showers of dust from the ceiling as the iniquities of our rulers are ruthlessly shown up. I should not like to feel the rough side of that chairman's tongue.

A library of representative English works, presented to a remote provincial society like the one I speak of, is a centre of unspeakable entertainment and instruction. The entertainment, during the long nights of winter, when the natives gather round the ingle and someone reads aloud, is a very palpable addition to the joys of life. The instruction is perhaps slower in coming, but is none the less sure. Only by comparison of books can their relative value as literature be determined. Bigotry and narrow-mindedness in literature and religion are almost always the result of ignorance. In the Highlands it is oftenest the local teacher who is the librarian, and the books are accommodated in the school. The teacher is thus able to make his instruction in literature vivid and interesting to his senior pupils; he can authorise a pupil to take a particular volume home and require an essay to be written on it within a given time; and he can, in school, read aloud typical passages of good prose to supplement the limited extracts of the class text-books. The books have been selected (i.) to form useful reading for adults; (ii.) to supply suitable pabulum for literary societies; (iii.) to aid the schemes of the Education Department in connection with what is called the "Supplementary Course of Instruction in English Literature." The selection of the books for the use of senior scholars has been, as a rule, easy enough. Dictionaries of the French and German languages, good atlases, and works of reference have, in most cases been included.[1]

GAELIC BOOKS.

In selecting the books specially intended for the perusal of the older people, an attempt is made to meet the needs of the various localities. In the bi-lingual districts there is always a shelf of Gaelic books, such as the original texts of Norman Macleod's exquisite sermons, M'Rury's religious compilations, Macleod's clever poetry The Lyre of the Grove, Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, and Magnus Maclean's manuals of Celtic Literature. There being a distinct dearth of comely Celtic reading that the ordinary native can understand, arrangements have been made for the translation into Gaelic in several volumes by competent scholars, of extracts from Mr. Lang's True Story Book, and from other sources.

The regrettable thing about Gaelic is its hopelessly bewildering spelling. The sounds are pleasing and melodious in a high degree, but they hide themselves behind most peculiar disguisements of print. Most people will admit, I think, that a language which spells Avon, Amhuinn, and Rory, Ruaridh, would benefit greatly by a visit from Pitman. The utility of sane phonetics was brought home to me very forcibly by a story I heard from a gentleman in the west of Skye. This gentleman is an excellent English scholar, can speak Gaelic but is unable to read it. He got a letter once from St. Kilda composed by an islander who spelt Gaelic by ear and not according to the awe-inspiring orthography of the dictionary. The gentleman, who could not have made out the letter had it been spelt correctly, was able to read it as it stood, without the slightest hesitation. If a more rational spelling were generally adopted, an immense number of Lowlanders who are interested in philology, would study the grand old tongue, were it only to understand the numberless place names of Celtic origin that occur in British geography.

What I have said about Gaelic spelling explains the inability of a large percentage of the population to read a book printed in the native idiom. What is the use then, it may be asked, of translating the True Story Book? The answer is obvious to one who knows the Highlands. In the Outer Isles there are many old people who know no English and whose only literary solace comes from listening to others reading. At the evening ceilidh a competent reader of Gaelic can usually be found. Then, again, we are likely to see, in the near future, a notable revival of interest in the old language, consequent on the efforts of the Mod, and on the recognition of Gaelic by the Department as a fit subject of study in the Highland schools. Such a revival, to be lasting in its effects, must be enforced and sustained by a constant supply of pure and interesting Gaelic books, both native and translated. Religious books there are in abundance, thanks to the zeal of the Protestant clergy. Needless to say, the compilations of the Dean of Lismore are as unintelligible to the modern Gael as Cynewulf is to a London cab-driver. I should like to see a round dozen of good English novels put into Gaelic by translators who knew the idiom thoroughly.

The fervour displayed at Highland gatherings, admirable as it is from a sentimental point of view, is apt to grow cold at the prospect of laborious work to be done. It is not creditable that the great majority of Gaelic speakers are unable to read a page of Gaelic print. Nor is it creditable that those who can both read and speak, do so little for the interpretation of the literature. Blackie's books and translations are still among the best, and Blackie was a Lowlander, was born, indeed, in the Saltmarket of Glasgow. My frequent visits to the north and west have convinced me that another difficulty in the way of a possible resurgence of Gaelic is the lack of a recognised standard of colloquial speech. The language is split up into many dialects, each possessing its own special idioms and vocabulary. A Glasgow firm of printers not long ago conceived the idea of printing post-cards with Gaelic greetings: they found that every city Highlander they consulted had either in grammar or turn of phrase some special way of framing the sentences. "Grand Gaelic to-day!" is an exclamation sometimes heard at the door of a Highland church in town, and indicates that the minister who has officiated comes from the same strath as the person speaking.

A moderate amount of encouragement to Gaelic is all that can reasonably be expected from the Government, seeing that the prime duty of the schoolmaster everywhere is to impart a sound knowledge of English.[2]

HAPPINESS AND GENIALITY OF NATIVES.

What has struck me most in my travels by land and sea, is the extraordinary amount of happiness, geniality, and good humour that still exists in the world. There is a substantial amount of felicity in the majority of men. Every one knows the sentence of Emerson: "Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of empires ridiculous." I like to give concrete examples of philosophic maxims, and I should particularise Emerson's dictum thus: "Bard Macdonald of Trotternish, Skye, whose only cow came near being impounded by the Congested Districts Board in order to pay for the price of seed-potatoes furnished to him by the said Board, having good health, makes the pomp of empires ridiculous three hundred and sixty-five days every year." Bard Macdonald is a very poor man, yet he has contrived to hitch his waggon on to a fixed star. He lives in one of those low thatch-roofed bothies that, with the accompanying croft, are rented at from £2 to £4 a year. He has a wife and a large family. Yet, tormented as he is by present poverty and past arrears, he eyes the future with serenity. I heard him sing a Gaelic poem of his own composition, containing twenty-five verses of intricate versification, and at the conclusion he was far less exhausted than any of the company. Then, again, Torquil M'Gillivray, schoolmaster of a rainy township on the sea-edge of one of the Skye nishes, has tranquillity of mind as great as any of the Seven Sages ever enjoyed. He is perfectly contented with his lot of rural dominie, and when I, in my presumption, ventured to speak critically of certain social conditions in his beloved island, he rebuked me by crooning tenderly the following lines:

"Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome,
I would see them before I die,
But I'd rather not see any one of the three,
Than be exiled for ever from Skye!"

We all know what a unique poetical gem Wordsworth composed after he heard a Highland girl singing at Inversnaid. I witnessed many fine examples of concentrated joy which might have resulted in metre if I had not had the presence of mind to pull myself up and refrain. One was at Acharacle, where in front of a croft a young fellow was dancing the Highland fling with such whole-souled and consuming zeal that I stood transfixed with wonder and awe. He was alone, and I came suddenly upon him at a sharp bend of the road. He threw his legs about him with such regardless glee, that for a moment I was afraid one of them would get unfixed and come spinning through the air to hit me. I watched him like one fascinated for fully ten minutes. When at length he saw me, the glory flowed suddenly off his legs; he subsided into a country bumpkin, and beat a hasty retreat indoors. "If Greek dances were as artistic as this one," said I, "and if the lines of each chorus had a reference to the diversity of the steps, it is little wonder that God in His providence should have sent us so many commentators to explain the mysteries of ancient scansion."

Another instance of natural and spontaneous bliss came under my notice about two miles along from Kinlochewe, on the banks of Loch Maree. It was a glorious, sun-illumined spring morning, and every crevice in the rough flanks of Ben Slioch was mirrored in the unwrinkled surface of the noble loch. Ben Eay had a bright covering of Nature's whitest, softest lawn. No sounds were heard except the low droning of a vagrant bee, the whizzing of a sea-mew's pinions, or a bark from this croft answered by a bark from that other a mile away. Suddenly the repose of the morning, in which a pedestrian could hear the echo of his own feet, was startled by the voice of a girl singing. For a moment I thought of the Lorelei; but it was soon evident where the notes were coming from. A maiden of ten or twelve was sitting in front of a cottage that faced the lake, combing her long, black hair that glistened in the morning rays, and pouring forth such exquisite trills as might have made Orpheus envious. The whole beauty of ben, loch, and sky seemed to be gathered up in that child's song. I had been wandering along in the sparkling air and feeling that something ought to be done to intimate to Heaven that it was a heavenly morning. The girl felt so happy in the gracious gift of another blue day that her nature responded at once in a spontaneous burst of melody. I was very grateful for her vicarious hymn of praise—

"Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace
Hath led me to this lonely place.
Joy have I had; and going hence
I bear away my recompense."

OBAN TO GAIRLOCH.

It is impossible for anyone who has a fair supply of the uncurdled milk of human kindness to sail from Oban to Gairloch and not be struck with the heartiness and good humour of the native population. Such a trip is rarely accomplished without some memorable incident or some outstanding impression. The landscape is doubtless magnificent, but the people one sees on the way are infinitely more interesting. No one, I am sure, can fail to observe the well-groomed, fresh, and imperial aspect of the pier policemen. The general polish of their boots and belts, the self-satisfied, Parnassian smile that never comes off, the spotless gloves, the muscular frame, combine to make up a splendid type of impressive Law grounded on Strength. I am ashamed to employ the term "policemen" to a body of officials who command such instantaneous respect. These men are King Edward's Highland satraps, and they both know it and feel it: law in the North is never undignified or unkempt. Then, again, the captain of the steamer is a man whom it is impossible to regard without veneration. All Macbrayne's men are fine fellows; they look well as they stand in stately fashion on the bridge: yet many a scowling sky of torrential rain they have to face, many a time have their beards been shaken by the hurricanes of the Minch. If you speak to a ship-captain, you are certain to get the utmost civility and politeness. It is true that most of them have several sets of vocabularies: to passengers they are urbane and choice of speech; but they have, within easy reach, another set of phrases, which they find of service in addressing delinquent mariners.

A student of Virgil in making the trip I have alluded to above, would run the risk of recalling the passage in which the poet suggests that the big island of Sicily was at one time connected with the mainland, but that some huge convulsion of nature disjoined the twain and allowed the Mediterranean to come roaring in a channel between. The scenery of Western Scotland stirs the imagination to suppose that some similar catastrophe permitted the sea to mangle the fair uniformity of a prehistoric coast, submerge the low-lying lands, and leave a great number of islands lying in lonely fashion out in the watery waste. Heavy weather, truly, it must have been ere Coll, Tiree, Rum, and Eigg were sundered from the mainland by the Atlantic flow.

All the islands I mention (save Tiree) can be seen from the deck of the Gael during the earlier part of the daily passage of that boat from Oban in the summer season. Tiree is off the main tourist track, but a few antiquarians are now finding it worth their while to go and dig there for relics of byegone civilisation. A friend of mine, a zealous and erudite F.S.A., has spent many a pleasant holiday in Tiree, and has come back with loaded trunks of valuable prehistoric remains. Certain artists go out to the island regularly in order to transfer to canvas some of Nature's most impressive aspects of cloud, wave, and crag. Nor let me forget the doughty members of the Faith Mission, who evangelise this and others of the outer isles, and sing such sweet melodies to the natives as would melt any "Wee Free" heart, let alone an ordinary heart of stone. Tiree has long been famous for its schools and for its intelligent inhabitants; as a consequence, the libraries have been enthusiastically welcomed in its townships, and are regarded by the teachers there as a new and valuable adjunct of education. I have often heard it said that Tiree produces more ministers than any other district, of like population, in the Celtic part of Scotland. The Duke of Argyll does not allow any licensed house on the island, but he has not as yet suppressed the Fingal and the parcels post. Should His Grace ever unbend so far as to permit the temperance hotels to obtain the licence, learned men might flock in greater numbers to Tiree, and dazzle themselves and the world with further antiquarian finds.[3]

Rum has not been dowered with a Paisley library, and I regret to say that the natives have the reputation of not keeping the Sunday with ostentatious strictness. Eigg, the little island contiguous, is a little heaven below. The missionary there well deserves a word of commendation: the island of Muck is under his spiritual supervision, and with a sandwich and a sermon in his pocket, he often sets sail, scorning gust and current, to preach to his parishioners in that tiny islet.

WINTER SAILING.

The summer tourist knows Skye very imperfectly, for he goes there in a commodious steamer and traverses the island at a season when the days are long and the weather benign. No one should vaunt of knowing Skye unless he has seen it in winter also. It is the small Lochiel that, in the dark days of December, bears the passengers along the chilly Sound of Sleat, and through the narrows of Raasay, into the haven of Portree. At such a time there is something fearsome and weird in the aspect of the coast, as seen from the cabin window of the brave little boat as she battles and plunges along in the teeth of the north-eastern gale. Her progress is slow, for when passengers are few Macbrayne wisely economises his coal. The long-stretching hills of Raasay (on the highest of which Boswell danced a jig) are white from head to foot, and gleam through the darkness of the afternoon, vivid and ghostly. As Raasay House, with its lamp-lit windows shining in a snowy recess, is approached, the engines slow down, and through the howl of the wind can be heard the plashing of oars. The broad waves swirl and seethe cruelly around the ferry-boat and toss it about at all angles, up and down, on crest and in trough, till you fear it will end its struggles keel upwards, and send the mail-bags down among the mackerel. But the boatmen know their trade, and so do the dripping, top-booted seamen of the Lochiel. Amid much running and shuffling and casting of ropes and animated bandying of (I fear) strong expressions in Gaelic sung out upon the night, the ship's ladder is cast down and the boat tied thereto. In a few minutes the transfer of mails is over, the ladder up, and the small boat leaping back to land. (I speak of December 22, 1904). A new passenger has come on board and is seen to descend the cabin stairs to unfreeze his fingers over the tiny stove. Half-an-hour's heaving still remains before Portree. A lady who has been on the border-line of squeamishness for the last hour, hurriedly leaves the cabin, probably to see if her luggage is all right. Good news at last for all! Portree is visible, and its lights are twinkling on the height. The moon comes graciously out, silvering the snowy shoulders of Essie Hill. What a contrast is this moonlit haven, with its background of terraced lights, to the rough surges outside. Glad indeed is everyone to set foot on the pier and trudge through disregarded slush to the warmth of home or hotel. We are told by our island friends that all Skye is under snow and that the roads are impassable. No mail-coach has ventured to Dunvegan for two days and in other directions, the postmen, turned cavaliers, have gone off on horseback with their letters. (Let me say in passing, that a red-bearded Highland postman, clad in post-office livery and seated on a sheltie, is a sight which any artist would go a hundred miles to see.)

Winter sailing may at times be as pleasant as a cruise in June. At 8 A.M. in the snug cabin, the breakfast-table, with its tea, ham, eggs, and sausages, is a welcome piece of scenery, and the genial talk of the captain and his colleagues is far better than pepsine as a digestive. After breakfast, a pipe on deck is a necessity. Who that has once seen Ben-na-ceallich all white to the feet and softly veiled with airy mists, but wishes he were a Turner to paint, or a Shelley to sing? The sail from Broadford to Kyle on a calm, cold, snow-dazzling morning is (if one is wrapped and coated well) absolutely majestic. The sun pours, if not warmth, at least light and heat on the hundred bens of the mainland and the breeze aiding, wakens a multitudinous smile on the glittering face of the cold waters.

I never take this trip without thinking of such books as The Brave Sons of Skye, which gives a record of the brave men born in the misty island who have come south and distinguished themselves in many a different walk in life. It is a most inspiring thing to reflect on the dauntless way in which genius treads the stony road that leads from poverty to glory. There is not a district in Skye but has its great man, who forms the subject of conversation round the peat fire when the winter winds are blowing down the strath. "From Log Cabin to White House" is the American way of putting it: in Scotland we might say "From Crofter's Cot to Professor's Chair."

A CROFTING VILLAGE.

The sight of a crofting village is at first rather surprising to one accustomed to large towns. The low roofs are not far from the ground. Often, while driving, if you turn a corner swiftly, you run the risk of being thrown out of the trap on to one of the chimneys. It does not take much imagination, especially in the dim dusk, to transform a low-thatched cot into some weird animal that might begin to walk along the hill-side at any moment. So irregularly grouped are the townships, dropped here and there, as it were, that you might fancy the houses had begun at one time to run a race with each other, and in the middle of it had suddenly stopped. Dr. Johnson complained that the windows were fixed into the walls and could not, in consequence, be opened to let in the air. That fault exists to some extent still: I have been told, however, that peat reek is very purifying, and that its thick fumes make short work of any noxious germs that might lodge about the nooks of the interior. Great changes are gradually coming over many of the clachans, changes not loved by an artist or a devotee of the picturesque. Instead of thatch, held down by ropes weighted with heavy stones, there is often to be seen a roofing of tarred cloth or corrugated iron. Romance might attach itself to a roof of thatch, but corrugated iron, with its distressing parallelism, could never awaken a genuine lyric note. Further, it does not make a very comfortable seat, whereas thatch is soft. Now, children in the Highlands are rather fond of sitting and even playing on the roof: thatch is less cruel on bare feet than iron is.

HORRORS OF THE MINCH.

I have alluded to the distresses of winter voyaging to Skye. But there are other routes worse, notably that from Tarbert in Harris to Lochmaddy, which is a perfect Tartar of a trip. When the wind is high and contrary, the traveller (if he can stay on deck and maintain an interest in the scenery), beholds a sight of extreme grandeur. The waves are to be seen all along the Harris coast leaping up to a terrific extent with an unbroken line of foam extending for miles. So much does the boat romp and dance, however, that most passengers forsake the deck and retire inelegantly below. When a man lies in a stuffy cabin wishing himself wedged into it to prevent the perpetual rolling to this side and to that, and hearing the desperate thud of the Minch flinging itself against the port-hole, a series of vivid panoramic pictures pass before his mental eye. Home appears so lovely and reposeful: faces of friends on shore arise, transfigured by the glow of love: the squeamishness and retching he endures seem to the sufferer a special and direct judgment on him for impiously endeavouring to find pleasure otherwise than by the practice of the domestic virtues. Disquieting memories of bursting boilers surge up to the surface of the mind, and old catches like the weird ballad of Sir Patrick Spens lilt themselves to the clank of the staggering ship's machinery—

"The anchor's brak and the tapmast lap,
It was sic a deadly storm,
And the waves dashed into the gude ship's side
Till a' her planks were torn."

The romance of the sea is apt to vanish as you look out upon a wilderness of foaming water, tossing the boat like an insignificant toy, drenching the bulwarks and vehemently smiting everything in its riotous anger. Neptune seems a mere blind force without reverence or mercy for the works of man. It is good for a boy of romantic disposition to cross to the Long Island in a gale: it will effectually cure him of all desire to take up the profession of pirate. What a sad moment for such a youth when he sees his breakfast where it shouldn't be, and reflects that he has not the staying power of Sir Ralph the Rover!

I regret to say that I have no specific to give as a preventive for sea-sickness. Even the Phœnicians who had time, during the intervals of their hardy voyaging, to invent the alphabet, were unable to devise a remedy for the mal de mer. Custom does not create immunity, for even the mighty Nelson, who had a life-long acquaintance with the ocean, was afflicted with sea-sickness to the end of his days. In France there exists a Ligue contre le mal de mer, commenting upon which a French journalist says: Avec une ligue on est toujours assuré d'une chose: à défaut de progrès, qu'elle nous fera peut-être attendre, elle fera des congrès: et c'est du moins une consolation que de pouvoir discourir de son mal.

He that will to Cupar maun through Fife, and he that has business in the Lews must brave the billows of the Minch.

NOTES ON LEWIS.

The great island of Lewis, formerly so distant from Edinburgh and Glasgow, can now be reached in fourteen hours by one who leaves the latter city at 5.40 A.M. The old route was very tiresome and circuitous: the traveller had to proceed to Inverness, take the Dingwall and Skye line to Strome Ferry, and then sail over the Minch to Stornoway. The opening up of the West Highlands by the railway to Mallaig has changed all that. At Mallaig pier, when you leave the train, you find the connecting steamer ready to set off, at noon, for its journey to Stornoway, where it arrives about eight in the evening.

I don't think anyone would want to stay more than a week at a time in Stornoway. The town itself is just like the fishy part of Boulogne-sur-Mer, only more so. There is a pervading odour of mussels, bait, and herring, and the gulls go flapping overhead in crowds everywhere. If the tourist remained a week in the place, he would go every day to the Castle grounds. Here, if anywhere, is the paradise of the Lews. There is a profusion of dells, burns, glades, ivy-grown bridges, and far-extending vistas over sea, moorland, and town. As with a knife (so precise is the division) the well-wooded policies are separated from the barren and disheartening moor. When one gets to the highest point of the grounds and gazes over the long, tiresome slopes of the island, one's belief in design in nature gets a sudden stab. A man will think long and sore before he arrives at any raison d'être for including such a wilderness of bogs in the scheme of creation.

The men of the island are, in the main, shrewd, resourceful, and intelligent—qualities fostered by their constant fighting with the sea. "The young fellows here," said one of the hotel-keepers to me, "will either make a spoon or spoil a horn. They come to a decision speedily and put it into practice at once. It is hit or miss with them, usually hit. At sea, in a gale, there is no time for parliamenting; and Lewismen act on land with the swift decision that is needed in a tempest." All round the coast are fishing-villages, thickly populated by these intrepid children of the tempest.

Fishing is a precarious industry, and often fails. The harvest of the land may fail at the same time as that of the sea: in such a case the plight of the islanders is sad indeed. During the last five years, the trade of weaving has been wisely fostered by the Government, so that in future, when sea and soil are churlish, the loom will to some extent supply the lack. The Duchess of Sutherland and the Congested Districts Board have done excellent service in encouraging the tweed-weaving industry all over the Long Island. Her Grace, some years ago, made a progress through Lewis and addressed the people by means of an interpreter, on the advantages of such industry in their homes. She also instituted exhibition sales of work in the big cities of the south, with the result that large quantities of cloth were sold and a precious publicity given to the scheme. Depots for receiving the cloth from the workers are now established in Stornoway and Harris. The Congested Districts Board advance money without interest for the purchase of looms, provide an experienced instructor to supply the people with new patterns, and give an adequate supply of dye-pots free of charge. This instructor goes over the whole of Lewis and Harris, spending month about in each, erecting new looms and modernising old ones. There is a large carding mill in Stornoway, where the natives can have the wool expeditiously carded in the most approved modern style. An industry thus fostered and supervised is bound to succeed.

Educationally, the Long Island is making great progress. Higher education is almost entirely centred in the Nicolson Institute, Stornoway, a school admirably conducted and finely equipped. The pupils of marked ability in the elementary schools of Lewis come here to continue their higher studies, and, in many cases, to prepare themselves for the University. I have seen specimens of a magazine, annually put forth by the senior pupils of this school, and containing many interesting essays and poems, grave and gay. The English of the essays was remarkably good, and contained here and there some piquant suggestions of Gaelic idiom. The pupils read French well, probably because their native Gaelic contains such a rich reservoir of nasal sounds to draw upon.

HIGHLAND DOCTORS.

I have a great respect for the medical gentlemen who have taken up their position in remote districts of Scotland, and devote themselves to the healing art under most disadvantageous circumstances. The distances are incredibly long and dangerous in winter: I have in my mind an insular doctor who has a deal of midnight boating to do in glacial weather, and whose bills are often paid not in coin but in fleece newly off the sheep's back. As the population gets smaller, the doctor's work becomes more laborious and less remunerative. The institution of district nurses has been a great success, and I wish there were more of them. A sympathetic and competent nurse is a valuable asset in a crofting or seafaring community. In one district of Mull, recently visited, I found that the nurse was also the village librarian. She was quite at home both with lotions and literature, and could recommend a poet or prepare a poultice with equal skill. The ante-room to the village hall was her dispensary: it seemed to me remarkably complete, and to have as scientific an odour as any city pharmacy. I was glad to see that the Clan Maclean was so well supplied with the resources of modern civilisation.

In every one of the village libraries there is a copy of Black's Medical Dictionary, a most useful compilation, written in clear and simple language, and detailing all the commonest remedies. Many rural teachers and clergymen have considerable skill in coping with illness. Every country minister should have at least a smattering of medical knowledge.[4]

HOTELS AND ANGLERS.

Wherever the angler goes, you find a good hotel. Uist is low-lying and barren, with nothing to attract the eye—no tourist would go near the place for anything it has to show in the way of scenery. But as it has hundreds of small lochs, full of fish, ardent anglers go thither from all parts of the British Isles; and so at Lochmaddy and Lochboisdale the hotels are not merely good, they are excellent. The recording angel is kept busy, during the season, in taking a note of all the myths told there by the fishers in the evening over the whisky and soda.

There may be heard, at night, in most hotels in the Western Isles, the riotous scampering of rats overhead and along the walls. In Lochmaddy hotel there used to be an old frisker (perhaps he is living still) that gave great entertainment, though no one ever saw him. He lifted a stone, evidently with his mouth, ran a yard or two with it, and then dropped it with a great clatter. The game was a pleasure to him, for he would practice it for half an hour at a time. The anglers who frequented the hotel called him the mason.

I have got into conversation with innumerable knights of the rod, and can sympathise to a slight extent with their enthusiasm. Nothing seems to take hold of a man so irrevocably as Walton's mania. Travelling by night in the north lately, I looked out into the dusk from the carriage window and beheld a bright flash of lightning, and by the gleam thereof saw a midnight maniac with his rod silhouetted against the vast inane. How few fishers nowadays, except perhaps Mr. Andrew Lang, can write their experiences in good marrowy English—

The quaint loquacious wits of long ago,
Whose ease was never broken by the shrill
Whistle of engine panting round the hill,
Could by the brook where fishful waters flow,
Spend the long hours in angling to and fro,
And hooking lusty trout and salmon, till
The low-descending sun and evening chill
Would send them to the merry ingle-glow;
Then, after fit refection, pen and ink
Would consecrate on paper all their feats
In rippling phrases flashing with the blink
Of forest glades and living water-sheets;
The race is poorer now than it was then:
We have no anglers that can wield the pen.

I believe the best region in all Scotland for trout is the wild and picturesque county of Sutherland. In the district of Assynt alone there are 150 lochs, fine sheets of water most of them, lying about among the hills. Half-way between the two seas and just on the borders of Sutherland and Ross, is the cosy wee hotel of Altnacealgach, with a well-stocked loch at the door, from which hundredweights of trout are taken every year. The air that blows about the house is to that of London as champagne is to dish-water.

There is a close connection, as I said, between the frequentation of a district by anglers and the excellence of its hotels. Where there is no great influx of tourists, the hotel accommodation is decidedly poor. I remember one inn, at a cold windy clachan on the west coast, which only stress of weather and dire necessity would make a man enter. Dirty stone steps, worn and crumbled in the centre, led to an upper room which had apparently not been swept out for a year or two. Not even the city of Cologne in Coleridge's time could have produced from among its imposing catalogue of stenches anything to match the complex ensemble of that malodorous inn. There was stale fish intil't, and bad beer intil't, and peat reek intil't, and mice intil't, and candle grease intil't, and the devil and all intil't. Though I was the only visitor, I feared I should not have the bed to myself: so I e'en wrapped myself in my Highland plaidie (after the minimum of disinvestiture), and stretched my limbs on an arthritic settee, with intent to sleep. No sleep came till the quaffing roysterers of the clachan had ceased fighting under the moon outside, about 2 A.M. namely. Rather than stay two nights in such a place, I boated out early next day into the mid-channel of the Sound of Mull, and clambered up the sides of Macbrayne's Lapwing, which took me to Oban.

RECENT BOOKS.

The most charming of recent works on the Outer Islands is that one of which the preface was written in Jerusalem. I refer to the volume of Miss Goodrich Frere, a lady whose vivacity, fervour, and picturesque style are deserving of unqualified praise. All the libraries in the bilingual districts contain the book, and few are so often asked for. In conversation and publicly I have often given myself the pleasure of recommending it, alike to Highlander and Lowlander. My admiration for Miss Frere's talents makes me wish that one or two of her prejudices had been less glaringly displayed. She speaks, for example, with something like scornful reproach of Lochmaddy, because the habit of taking afternoon tea is common in that township. It would have been more to the purpose if Miss Frere had issued a general warning to the people of the Hebrides not to drink tea as black as porter, and, above all, not to boil it. The pale anæmic faces one so often sees in the north and west, the mental prostration and actual insanity so alarmingly on the increase in the Long Island, are unquestionably due, in great measure, to the abominably strong tea that is swilled in such quantities there. A Tarbert doctor told me that the medical profession now talk quite familiarly of the Harris stomach just as drapers talk of Harris tweed: the former is, he averred, as weak and devoid of tone as the latter is strong and of good texture. This doctor was called up at two one morning to attend a patient in one of the moorland townships. At that hour, away over there on the gusty rim of the Atlantic, the natives were all afoot. People were talking to each other at the doorsteps; lamps were lighted inside, and tea that had been boiling for hours among the red peats, was being imbibed with infinite gusto. This, the doctor assured me, was the normal style of living.[5]

Talking of North Uist, Miss Frere shows indignation at the invasion of southern ideas, and thinks that everything is being vitiated by the taint of Lochmaddy. Lochmaddy, characterised in so droll a way, is a tiny township with a Sheriff Court, a church, a few well-built modern houses, a school, and an excellent hotel. Cleanliness is a welcome feature of the place, and I am sorry to say that the same can not be said of certain crofting villages not far distant. I expect that the visits of the Government Sanitary Officer, whom I met at Lochmaddy, and who knows his business well, will ultimately work an enormous amount of good. That gentleman gave me such unsavoury details regarding the conditions of life in certain of the townships as made me hope that the "taint of Lochmaddy," that is to say, the cleanliness and civilised life of that village, may more and more become evident throughout both the Uists. Improved sanitation would allow heaven's breath to circulate through the low-lying cots and prevent them from being hot-beds of malignant disease.

One feature of Miss Frere's book which does honour to her fine sympathy, but which is not ethnologically justifiable, is the persistent attempt to draw a sharp racial distinction between Highlander and Lowlander. The truth is, that no part of the Highlands is purely Celtic: the population is a welter of Picts, Gaels, Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons. The Lowland blood is, in like manner, a bewildering blend, there being no uncontaminated Anglo-Saxon district in any single county of Scotland. Mr. J. M. Robertson's clever book, The Saxon and the Celt, seems to me to dispose finally of certain fallacies that Hill Burton and others have light-heartedly written on the subject of racial characteristics. The conditions of life, the ungeniality of sea and soil, the wild and grand aspect of nature, influence thought, feeling, and character at least as much as blood and heredity.[6]

Another delightful book on the Outer Hebrides is that written by Mr. W. C. Mackenzie. Proceeding in the order of chronology, the author gives a vivid series of historic summaries (enlivened by many a piquant episode and humorous touch) of the Long Island from the earliest times. The wanderings of Prince Charlie, and the condition of the country after Culloden, have never been better told than in Mr. Mackenzie's narrative.

MILITARY.

I hinted at the beginning of this chapter that the barracks of the Highland regiments had been supplied with extensive libraries for the use of the soldiers during their leisure hours. Fort-George, the erection of which was directly due to the Highland rebellions, has been presented with two fine libraries, and I am happy to say that the men greatly appreciate the gift. I happened to be in the vicinity of Fort-George when the Duke of Connaught was conducting an official inspection. The little town of Ardersier, which is some two miles from the Fort, was gay with bunting for the ducal visit. The books at the Fort are under the charge of Sergeant-Major Markham, an able elocutionist and one who, in his own sphere, does an immense amount of good. He gets the young recruits to band themselves together in social clubs, organises games and entertainments for them, and encourages them to read and study. The philanthropic Sergeant-Major was engaged in typing a catalogue of the books when the genial Duke came upon the scene. His Royal Highness was astonished to see such a magnificent selection of reading matter at the disposal of the soldiers, and eagerly asked for information as to the origin of the boon. His curiosity was satisfied, and when he heard that the same donor had given appropriate libraries to the garrisons at Inverness, Dingwall, and Kinbrace, he exclaimed, "Such a gentleman is indeed the Soldier's Friend."

Since the Duke's visit, a small library of books has been sent to the children's school at the Fort. The population of this military community, containing as it does a great many married men with their wives and families, is fully equal to that of Ardersier, and necessitates a separate school. I was struck with the pronunciation of the children in this part of the country. Many of the Fort children, having mothers from the other side of the Border, speak with an unmistakable English accent and are rather unscrupulous with respect to the aspirate. The town of Inverness, which is at no great distance from Fort-George, has long been famous for its clear and unprovincial English speech, a fact which Johnson (oddly enough) thought due to some of Cromwell's soldiers having settled there.

Dr. Johnson devotes two pleasant little paragraphs to describe his visit to Fort-George and his entertainment there by Sir Eyre Coote. I have always admired the Doctor's sly way of avoiding a description of the Fort: "I cannot," he says, "delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description is of use only when the imagination is to be amused."

In spite of the menace of Fort-George, the Highlanders fondly cherished the memory of Charlie for many a year. To no subject even now do their descendants listen with such rapt attention as to his tragic story. I have heard indeed of a Highland minister who was so displeased at the homage paid to the Prince's memory by some of his flock, that he threw at them the unanswerable question, "What will Prince Charlie do for you at the day of judgment?"

I have had the curiosity to ask some of the Session Clerks of country parishes that were in the line of the insurgents' advance or retreat, if any references to the rebellion appear in the minutes of the year 1745. No references appear, as a rule, for that year; but, under 1746, there are brief accounts of church discipline being exercised in the case of a few illegitimate births,—the paternity being ascribed usually to ane sodger.[7]

At Inverness and Dingwall there exist similar libraries of great range and excellence. The men show an interest in Miss Marie Corelli's works that is rather astonishing. Their hard and strenuous drill does not deprive them of a curiosity to know something about Barabbas and The Sorrows of Satan. Sir Conan Doyle and Dr. Neil Munro are also great favourites, and deserve to be.

A large number of the Inverness recruits come from the Long Island. They almost invariably require to be taken to the hospital a week or two after their arrival. Change of diet and new modes of life seem to upset them at first. For those who have a mind to improve themselves, there are abundant opportunities. The reading and recreation rooms are well appointed and comfortable. Altogether, the regular life, physical drill, and healthy tone of the barracks must have a most beneficial effect on the men.

I am bound to say that I do not greatly admire the English style of the gentleman who composes the War Office placards that one sees at railway stations in the north. These are meant to allure country labourers to join the army, but the following piece of fatuous rhetoric must surely act rather as a deterrent than otherwise:—"Are you, the descendants of those who conquered India and carried the colours of the Gordon Highlanders through the Peninsula and at Waterloo, content to sit at home, or be satisfied with dull labours in the fields or at the mills, whilst the ranks of your own regiment are filled by strangers from the South?" I heard two freckled rustics, with difficulty and labour hard, spelling out the phrases of the foregoing sentence at the little station of Fyvie. They did not seem at all impressed by the fervent interrogation nor by this picture of prospective delights: "Many of your countrymen have seen the wonders of the Indian Empire and enjoyed the soft calm of Malta, and of Ceylon, the Paradise of the Ancients." It does not evince much knowledge of a ploughman's mind to seek to awaken his martial ardour by old myths about the Garden of Eden; nor is it specially alluring to him to mention, as the acme of glory, that he may distinguish himself so much as to gain "thanks from both Houses of Parliament." Such weak and watery declamation won't do for a country that has had thirty-eight years of compulsory education. If our War Office wishes to rouse patriotic feeling, it should cease to contrast "the dull labour of the fields" with "the soft calm of Malta": the veriest clown would not be caught by such chaff. It would be more to the point to send gratuitous copies of The Barrack Room Ballads to all the village libraries.

MORAY FIRTH.

My various visits to the shores of the Moray Firth have convinced me that a man may enjoy the majesty and terror of the sea without embarking on a boat at all. All he need do is to take a ticket to Portsoy in the month of March, when the wind is snell and the clouds low. I have never seen a more grim or cruel-looking coast than that which stretches for miles east and west of Portsoy. One shudders even at the thought of those detestable, razor-edged rocks, tilted up at all angles, with the tide for ever boiling and hissing about them. Neither by land nor sea, at many parts of the coast, can you get to what might be reasonably called a beach. The so-called shore-road is high up on the hills, and gives a good view far out over the billows, but does not take the traveller's feet near the water at all. Ill-advised would he be who should strive to guide his skiff from the outer firth to any chance cove on the shore, for the uncouth crags, huge and sombre, would have no mercy on any timber jointed by the hand of man. Perhaps the summer sun would give a gentler appearance to the rocky and wave-beaten shore, but I am certain Mr. Swinburne would prefer to see it in March.

The town of Portsoy in itself cannot be said to have much comeliness; the streets are irregular, the houses dismal, and the shops few. God has, as is meet, the best of the architecture, most of the churches being graceful and well-spired.

About twenty minutes by rail from Portsoy is the trim and typical fishing village of Portknockie, high-raised on a hill, and with little protection from any wind that Aeolus may send out of his cavern. The population comes near 1,600 souls, and it is rare to find a native who is not called by one of the following surnames: Mair, Wood, Munro, Pirrie. I believe such a dearth of appellatives is the invariable rule in the fishing villages of the North Sea. To counteract the confusion that would inevitably arise, an agnomen or "tee-name" is usually appended. The Portknockie tee-names are Mash, Deer, Doodoo, Bobbin, and Shavie. Examples of postal addresses are—

I don't envy the young minister who, fresh from Lucian, has to read with solemnity a roll of such communicants.

Between Portknockie and the sea-town of Cullen is a charming stretch of links and sea-sands. Over the broad Firth, as one looks north-west, may be faintly seen the hills of Sutherland and Caithness.

It is pleasant to read books amid the scenery in which they were conceived, and among the people they portray. Those who spend their holidays at Cullen would act wisely in reading George Macdonald's novels there. No one has drawn the character of the Moray Firth fisherman so lovingly, beautifully, and sympathetically as he. After reading such a tale as the Marquis of Lossie one looks upon places like Portknockie and the sea-town of Cullen with different eyes. The toilers of the deep that go forth on the waters from these seaboard shires are serious and moral men. Contact with the sea and the presence of danger at all hours, have made them alert, keen, and dexterous. Most of the crews carry a box of choice books with them for their odd hours of leisure when they go to the Yarmouth fishing. Let a stranger get into conversation with one or two of these hardy heroes, and he will be surprised at their intelligence and wide interests. He will certainly conclude that the young fisherman, Malcolm Macphail, whom Macdonald introduces in the novel mentioned, is no exaggeration, but true to the life.

The sea-town of Cullen consists of some hundreds of houses closely huddled together just at the edge of the sea. The rank odour of wreck, tar, fishing-gear, and bait, pervades the air, and is effectually kept from corruption by the searching sea-breezes that are ever blowing. When not engaged on the water, the men are busy mending their nets, stitching their sails, making fast the seams of their craft and tarring the big inflated floaters that support the lines. They are quite ready to chat with a stranger and discuss their methods of working, their gains, mishaps, and partnerships.

When the fishing season is over and the crews are known to be on the way home, the excitement among the women is intense. No Bourse ever tingled more feverishly with rumours and sinister fears than Sandhaven or Rosehearty or Seatown at such a crucial time. Costly nets may be riven, boats may be stove in by untoward accidents, or worse than all, fathers, husbands and brothers may be drowned on the road home to their loved ones. Rarely does a season pass without bringing sorrow to the heart of some waiting wife or sister.

The joys, hopes, and fears of these maritime townships have been worthily made vocal by Dr. George Macdonald. He has done this with a grace and an artistic conception that raise his stories to a very high rank in pure literature. I am afraid Macdonald is not much read by the present generation: his stories are too long, too philosophical, perhaps too poetical, for the taste of to-day. Every book of his is saturated from beginning to end with the religion of the Gospels—a religion of love, beauty, tolerance, and sympathy.

I am happy to say that I saw Dr. Macdonald once and heard him speak. His venerable aspect and chaste elocution made a powerful impression on all who heard him. His discourse could not be reported in cold print, for the flash of the mystic's eye, the human kindness that emanated from his whole being, and the felt emotion of his every tone could not be reproduced by any artifice known to the printer.

The Forfarshire fishwives have quite a Dutch mania for cleanliness. On Saturdays they give their homes a complete overhaul, and the men are driven out of doors during the ceremony. What man could stay at home when his wife, supplied with a mop and a big pail of soapy water, is sousing the floor and the walls? Furniture is scrubbed and dusted, glass ornaments, porcelain hens, and shell-boxes have to be carefully wiped, grates and fire-irons must be rubbed to a glittering polish. These industrious women, panting with the enthusiasm of work, enjoy Saturday more than any other day of the week. The enjoyment springs from various causes. There is first the delight that comes from a vigorous exercise of the muscles. This pleasure is heightened by the knowledge that the work is for a good end, and that on Sunday the house will be resplendent, immaculate, and peaceful. It is not to be denied that the feeling of satisfaction at having evicted the husband is also an important item. When he comes home from discussing politics with his co-mates and brothers in exile, she will not fail to jibe him on the general worthlessness of his existence, and accuse him of intemperance.

AMONG THE MINERS.

A fishing village has a picturesqueness and a kinship with Nature and the hills, utterly lacking in a mining locality. The squalid rows of the latter, arranged in wretched, heart-breaking symmetry, are an offence to the landscape. Mud and filth cumber the door-steps, runnels of malodorous water ooze along the rows, ragged and ill-kempt bairns tumble about like little savages. A pitiful sight it is to see the black squads of colliers returning to their homes after a day in the damp bowels of the earth: greasy caps with little oil-lamps attached, wet, miry clothing and grimy faces, all make up a most saddening spectacle. The wages given to these poor fellows are miserably meagre, considering that after the age of forty-five, their limbs are stiffened with rheumatism and their lungs the seat of chronic asthma. It is not surprising that miners should be intemperate, and that their recreations should rise no higher than dog-racing and cock-fighting.

It is very unpleasant to think that so much good bone and muscle is being ground and destroyed by work so brutalising and unnatural. Coal must be brought to the surface for the wants of civilisation, and in the process the collier is destroyed, body and soul. Society needs constantly to be reminded of its duties towards those who, in Helot fashion, clean the drains and work the mines. Those duties involve more than the distribution of tracts.

I had the opportunity of speaking to a crowded meeting of miners in the county of Stirling quite recently, and was immensely pleased with the behaviour and close attention of the audience. Before the speaking began, the proceedings resembled a University Graduation Ceremony, that is, there was a great deal of whistling, cat-calling, and rowdy merriment. The audience kept on their caps, and many of them, disdaining the use of chairs and benches, squatted against the walls in the position so dear to subterranean workers. Once the lecture began, the resemblance to a University gathering ceased, for the colliers behaved like gentlemen. What subject, it may be asked, could possibly interest an assembly of illiterate miners? It so happens that, in Scotland, we have a great number of working-men poets, who have, in a homely but very graphic way, voiced the feelings of the labouring classes, and given fit expression to every joy and sorrow that men experience in this mortal round. These hodden-gray bards furnish abundance of material for giving even the humblest and most untrained mind a few glimpses of what is meant by literature. Burns has a broad and brawny humanity that appeals to all men, and, besides Burns, there are scores of major and minor warblers that are interesting, quotable, and full of grace.

The wild and unruly manners of some mining districts, even at the present day, may partly be explained by remembering that up to the end of the eighteenth century, colliers were serfs and, as such, were not allowed to leave the mines and seek work elsewhere. When a pit was sold, the workers passed as a matter of course into the hands of the new proprietor. The son of a miner was compelled to follow the father's occupation.[8] Slavery fixed a brutalising mark on generation after generation that is not yet entirely erased. In the first half of the nineteenth century the knights of the shuttle—intellectual, disputatious, and lyrical—looked down with infinite contempt on the ignorant and boorish slaves of the pick. Poetry has, in consequence, little to say about the digger for coal. The song of "The Collier Laddie," attributed to Burns, is one of the very few pleasant pieces of verse associated with the miner.

The Scotch mining villages of to-day contain a queer juxtaposition of nationalities, and the proportion of native colliers is becoming less and less. Thousands of Irish families from Ulster and Connaught are now settled permanently in the counties of Lanark, Stirling, and Ayr. The alien Pole, too, is to be found in the same regions uttering melodious oaths learned on the banks of the Vistula. To complete the welter, huckstering Orientals may be seen gliding about among the rows of houses, fulfilling prophecy and selling highly-coloured pictures of the Virgin Mary.

HAND-LOOM WEAVING.

The miner is still with us, but the weaver is almost obsolete in the Lowlands. You must search diligently for him. In Laurencekirk (a quaint village of one long street, in the shire of Forfar), and in similar out-of-the-way nooks, can still be faintly heard the music of the hand-loom. I went recently into a weaver's shop in Laurencekirk, and found three old men and one aged woman plying their shuttles. The oldest of the men was born four years after the battle of Waterloo, and there he sat, like a vision of the vanished years, striving to weave a few more yards of drugget before going to rejoin his contemporaries of the reign of George III. He told me there were once seven hundred hand-loom weavers in the place, and "that young fellow" said he, pointing to a wrinkled carle of eighty on the loom behind, "remembers it as well as I do."

The industry of hand-loom weaving, which, a century ago, made every town in Scotland resonant with the din of shuttles, is thus almost a thing of the past, and the men who engaged in it have gone the way of their shoe-buckles, knee-breeches, and seventeen-hundred linen. Yet weavers were typical of all that was intellectual in Scottish life: every shop was in its way a miniature university, and every weaver a man who believed himself capable of giving Pitt a lesson or two on the management of the war, and Dundas a few hints on political economy. They had, indeed, far clearer views on politics than most of their legislators; from their ranks at a subsequent period the Chartist agitators—regrettably extreme as they were—were largely recruited; and it is not too much to say that the minds of many of our leading accredited reformers took the ply from these politicians of the loom. These men who, in a way so characteristic of Scotland, managed to make high-thinking subsist on homely fare, can never quite fade from memory while their tuneful poetical exponent, Tannahill, is read and enjoyed. In his works we have a page out of the past; and as we read his life and poems, we behold the Scotch village as it was a century ago; we see the old houses with their outside stairs, the antique boulder-paved cross, and the assemblies of aproned craftsmen discussing news much older than their ale.

In Broadford, Skye, there is an old crofter who, in his early years, worked at the loom with Alexander Bain, late Professor in the University of Aberdeen. Half a century ago, John Stuart Mill said that Bain's erudition was encyclopædic. From long residence in France, I know that few British philosophers are better known than Bain (whose name the French amusingly pronounce to rhyme with vin). This old crofter tells how he used to chaff the future professor for invariably having a book in front of him as the shuttle was plied. Bain, by slow and careful work, overcame prejudice, and secured a high position among the leaders of thought. Long ago, those who had to sit for the London degrees used to regard him as the greatest thinker in Europe. When he retired from the examinership at London, students lost some of their old veneration for him, and when he married a second time, a Miss Barbara Something, they even ventured to make a logical joke on him, and say that he had been fascinated by Barbara's perfect figure. I know that many pupils of our public schools, in love with football more than syntax, often regretted that Bain ever composed his English Grammar. No book (unless perhaps Morell's Analysis) has ever been more cordially execrated, and no book ever more richly deserved it, for though, like Aberdeen granite, it is stately and impressive, it is also ruthless, cold, and implacable. The draught may be wholesome and medicinal, but there is no honey on the rim of the cup.

PROFESSOR BLACKIE IN THE HIGHLANDS.

One hears a great deal of Professor Blackie in the North and West, and no wonder. He was a laughing, jocular, impressionable man, who hobnobbed with landlords and amiably slapped drivers and policemen on the back, throwing a Gaelic greeting at them as he did so. His faculty for writing poetry is seen in many a guidebook; Oban, Inverness, Pitlochry, and numberless other places, have had their beauties celebrated by this animated writer. He was a good friend to the Highlands—studied Gaelic most arduously, translated some of the finest of the Celtic bards, worked assiduously for the establishment of a Celtic Chair in Edinburgh, spoke many a good word for the crofters—in fact, did everything well except what he was paid to do, viz., teach Greek to his students. Grave D.D.'s could not understand or condone his cantrips. I have been assured that on one occasion, when Professor in the College of Aberdeen, he actually stood on his head before a class of students. Mr. Barrie has given a very amusing and quite unexaggerated account of the Professor's normal demeanour in Edinburgh. Blackie's text books of Greek Dialogues are full of the most waggish remarks.

The landlady of Kinlochewe Hotel gave some lessons in Gaelic to this convulsive old scholar. He would come in with a Celtic Bible below his arm, and, opening the sacred volume, read a chapter or two at a terrific rate of speed, and whistle triumphantly when he had finished. Highland folk did not care to converse with Blackie for three reasons: (1) he spoke too quickly for the leisurely and composed conversation of the Gael; (2) his pronunciation was bad, and people did not like to tell him so or correct him—(no one ever pronounced Gaelic to perfection who did not get the language with his mother's milk); (3) he was fond of using literary words, taken from the older bards, in his ordinary conversation; now, such words are obsolete in every-day talk and quite unfamiliar to crofters and cottars. In the Highlands, Blackie's English was better understood than his Gaelic.

Blackie was undoubtedly a very able scholar—not, indeed, of that minute burrowing kind famous in Germany, but rather of the class that delights in the literature and vivid force of a language. He spoke Latin and Greek, and held views on the teaching of these tongues that seemed more eccentric in his time than they do now. He declared that the linguistic achievement of which he was proudest was his mastery, such as it was, of the language of the Gael.

It affords me pleasure in the retrospect to think of old Blackie at a distribution of prizes to school-children in a town of the West some years before his death. During the chairman's opening remarks the merry old man continued to whistle like a mavis. When the chairman sat down, Blackie embraced him and called him fellow-sinner. Some recitations followed from the children, one of which was Burns's "Address to a Haggis." When the young elocutionist came to the lines—

"Till a' their weel-swall'd kites belyve
Are bent like drums."

Blackie rolled in his chair, held his sides and uproariously expressed his approbation. Then came the distribution of prizes, during which the Grand Old Boy made some pun or quaint remark on each of the children's names, as he presented the books: "Miss Minnie Morrow: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day; James Glen: be a real genuine Glen all through life, not a valet or flunkey; William Lindsay: Willie, my lad, imitate your ancestors at Otterburn: 'The Lindsays flew like fire about till a' the fray was done'; Mary Black: black but comely like the daughters of Jerusalem," and so on, in a bird-witted, half-daft way that the audience contemplated with benevolent wonder.

NOTE ON INVERNESS SURNAMES, ETC.

Let me mention here a very useful and interesting piece of philology that was done by Dr. Macbain in 1895. That eminent scholar, working on the Inverness Directory, analysed the names occurring there, explained them on sound principles of etymology, and gave percentages of Celtic and Saxon surnames in the Highland capital.

Roughly speaking, the Directory of 1894-1895 had 5,000 single entries, and 750 distinct surnames. Of these surnames, only 110 are pure Gaelic. About 70 per cent. of the natives are, however, supposed to be of Highland descent.

Dr. Macbain points out that certain Highland clans have names that are not Celtic: Grant is from the French "grand"; Fraser from the French "fraise," a strawberry (the Frasers have a strawberry in their coat-of-arms); Chisholm is English and means "gravel-holm,"—the Anglo-Saxon ceosol (pebble) is preserved in Chesil Beach and Chiselhurst; MacLeod signifies "son of Ljot"; and ljotr is the Norse word for "ugly." Campbell is probably Norman-French, though Dr. Macbain suggests cam-beul, Gaelic for "crooked mouth." In olden times an external conqueror would sometimes subdue a district, and call the natives after his noble self.

The commonest names in the town are Fraser, Macdonald, Mackenzie, Macintosh, Ross, Cameron, and Munro. About 1,200 of the population have one or other of the first three names. The Frasers are an easy first, and form more than 9 per cent. of the population.

John, Alexander, and William, are the commonest Christian names in Inverness. "It is remarkable and indeed regrettable," says Dr. Macbain, "that the Gaelic Christian names (Donald, Duncan, Kenneth, Murdoch, and Angus), are not higher in the list."

The name of the first recorded inhabitant of Inverness (A.D. 1200) is Geoffrey Blount, a feudal warrior no doubt (French blond). In the thirteenth century we have the names Noreys, Grant, and Hay. In the fourteenth century the leading name is Pilch, derived from peluche, the French for "plush." In the fifteenth century, Reid, Vaus, and Cuthbert are prominent citizens. Vaus is said to mean "of the vales," i.e., de Vallibus; Reid is Scotch for "red"; and Cuthbert is pure Lowland. Evidently the leading men were aliens and interlopers.

CHAPTER II.
MUSIC, SPEECHES, AND LITERATURE.

Scotch a reading nation—Hardships of students in old days—Homer in Scalloway—When education ends—Objects of chapter—Music—M.P.'s—Rural depopulation—Its causes—Emigration—Village halls—The moon—A lecture in Islay—Mental and material wealth—Real greatness—A Highland laird on literature—Varieties of chairmen—"Coming to the point"—Moral obligation—Compliment to Paisley—Oratory at Salen—Lecture in a dungeon—Surprises—A visit to the Borders—Tarbolton—Scotch language—Choice books—The essayists—A Banff theory—Goldsmith in Gaelic—Biblia abiblia—Favourites for the road—Horace—Shakespeare's Sonnets—Xenophon—French literature and journalism—Romance and Augustanism—Victorian writers—Celt and Saxon.

SCOTCH A READING NATION.

I think it was Mr. Holyoake, the veteran lecturer, who, in a volume of reminiscences, declared he found the audiences in Scotland more intelligent than elsewhere. I cannot draw such comparisons, for I have not spoken often south of the Tweed; this I can say with assurance, however, that no one need hesitate to address an audience of Scotch peasants on a topic of literary interest. Predestination and such religious trifles may stir them to disrespectful heat, but pure literature invariably draws forth their cool and critical attention. Probably no nation has ever devoted so much attention to books, and, as the result of this characteristic, Scotland, considering its size and population, has produced far more than its proportion of eminent men. At the Reformation epoch, when the comforts of a Lowland cottage would be little in advance of those in a present-day Uist croft, writers like George Buchanan and his fellows of the Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum made the excellence of Scotch scholarship known in every university of Europe. Buchanan was really a typical Caledonian man of genius—open-eyed, sagacious, patriotic, and cosmopolitan—and I can strongly recommend the occasional perusal of his Latin Psalms to all modern readers who wish to keep their feelings of reverence fresh and prevent their Latin quantities from getting amorphous.

HARDSHIPS OF STUDENTS IN OLD DAYS.

Those who think highly of the Scotch intellect, point with pride to the fact that for many a year the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition, and the Archbishop of Canterbury all hailed from the North. For my own part, I am chiefly interested in cases where eminence has resulted from the cultivation of literature on a little oatmeal. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of chatting, over a cup of tea, with the suave old gentleman who combines the postmastership of Dunvegan with the office of factor to the Macleod of Macleod. He held me spell-bound for an afternoon as he narrated in graphic language the hardships of the Skye students in former times. Many a Skye youth, I was told, bent on studying the humanities at Aberdeen, would mount his sheltie, traverse thereon the rough roads of his misty island as far as Kyleakin, cross the ferry there, ride on east through the ben-shadowed track of Glen Moriston, and finally bear down on the streets of the Granite City. There the o'erlaboured sheltie would be sold to pay the matriculation fees.

HOMER IN SCALLOWAY.

Many little out-of-the-way townships in insular Scotland contain scholars who would find themselves quite at home among a set of college dons. In the course of my travels in Shetland I came to the tiny village of Scalloway, and while standing on the pier gazing alternately at the confusion of sea and island, and at the grim old ruined castle where Earl Patrick, the wicked viceroy, once resided, I heard a conversation on geology being carried on between a tall and brawny shopman and some sailors. The latter, who were on board a ship, shouted their replies over a few yards of water to the shopman, who was on the pier near me. I was interested in the men's talk, which had to do with the subsidence of the land at this part of the coast. One of the sailors alleged that his grandmother's cabbage-patch was now covered by the water on which his boat was floating. The big shopman, turning to me, quoted the well-known passage of Tennyson (everyone can repeat it) of the sea flowing where the tree used to grow. "O Earth, what changes thou hast seen." This quotation led to a literary talk in which he remarked that of all poets he preferred Homer. "What translator do you like best?" I enquired. "Blackie's," he replied, "as being the most faithful to the original. But I rarely read a translation, 'I prefer Homer in his own Greek.'" This remark made by one whose fingers were glistening with herring-scales, came to me as a pleasant surprise. Later on in the day, I visited his house and saw his fine library and his splendid selection of classical books. Not many teachers of my acquaintance have a better array of the editions of Homer. He was not one of your ignorant collectors who know only the outside of what they buy. He had read over the whole forty-eight books of the text again and again, and could discuss knotty passages in most interesting and original fashion. His memory was evidently an excellent one. He informed me that most of his reading was done in the early morning, and that he found five hours' sleep quite adequate. I have a most agreeable recollection of my interview with this self-taught scholar. I believe there are many like him in not a few outlandish nooks of Scotland,—men who read books not for any material advantages that result from their studies, but simply and solely for the intense pleasure that comes from communion with the masterminds of bygone generations.

Travel in remote districts of Britain reveals the fact that our provincials, whenever they have the chance, are a studious and thoughtful race. The isolation and monotony of life in many parts are bound to drive men to study and reflection if the means for these are at hand. Sisyphus himself had hardly less variety of occupation than some of our shepherds whose work on the hills involves long absences from social intercourse. To such men (whose life is suggestive of a repeating decimal) the access to an ell or two of good books often means mental salvation. Nothing is so melancholy as to find a countryman of brains who has never had the opportunity of cultivating his mind in such a way as to eliminate prejudice and widen the range of interest.

WHEN EDUCATION ENDS.

I am sometimes inclined to think that many of our rural clergymen, intent on shielding their congregations from pestilent doctrine and latitudinarism, are actuated by much the same spirit as the Sultan Omar when he set fire to the great Library at Alexandria. The Bible is no doubt the best of books, and it may be that the Confession of Faith comes next: but when these have got their share, there still remains the religious duty of educating the intellect by a wide perusal of the inspired apostles of secular literature. A Highland teacher, who presided at one of the lectures in the north, expressed himself very appositely thus on the subject of education: "The supposition that education is over when a boy leaves school, is far too prevalent," he said. "Education properly considered comes to an end when the last breath of life is drawn. Edward Young in his Night Thoughts says: 'Were man to live coeval with the sun, the patriarch-pupil would be learning still.' Young was undoubtedly right: some of the most forceful and penetrating lessons of life are given to us long after we have cast our text-books into some dusty corner, never to be opened more. In our early days, we cannot choose our own teachers, and there is often a good deal of force and constraint. The delightful thing about our education in mature life is that we have the selection of our own masters. There is no compulsion whatever. I am convinced that for everyone of us there is some one author whose works will act as medicine for the mind and be an unfailing tonic in all conditions of the soul."

OBJECT OF CHAPTER.

I intend to devote this chapter to a description of a few of the speeches delivered by some of the speakers at such literary evenings in various parts of the country. After I had said my say, I sometimes invited an expression of opinion. Almost invariably someone responded to the invitation, with the object of asking a question, expressing dissent, or intimating concurrence. I do not recollect a single meeting out of hundreds that could be called monotonous. It did not in the slightest detract from the interest of a meeting that many of the remarks erred on the score of irrelevancy. The attention never flagged from first to last, and it was no uncommon thing for the proceedings to last for over three hours. In giving typical speeches delivered by crofters, lairds, tradesmen, and clergymen, I mean to indicate to the reader the subjects that are of interest to our provincial population, their attitude to questions of literature and social life, and incidentally the great amount of humour that still exists in the world.

MUSIC.

The free and unconventional character of these meetings was perhaps seen best of all in the musical part of the proceedings, which was always arranged locally. Usually the songs were well-known Highland or Lowland airs, in many cases so exquisitely rendered that it was quite evident there had been much previous preparation. When my opinion was asked beforehand, I invariably recommended national melodies. It was always a treat to get a Gaelic song or two well rendered. At Acharacle (a little place at the far end of Lochshiel) Mr. Rudd's piper gave some fine Highland tunes, which evoked great enthusiasm. Personally I prefer the pipes to every other instrument, for this reason, that even if I don't understand all the music, I can appreciate the scenic effects. The Acharacle piper was a fine specimen of the Celt, and his get-up was glorious:

"He screwed his pipes and gart them skirl
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl."

Sometimes the phonograph formed part of the musical programme. I do not approve of this demoralising instrument except to a very limited extent. The cylinders usually gyrate with records of fatuous music-hall songs, unedifying coster-airs and farcical speeches. The vox humana interpreting national melodies is infinitely better. What vigour and illustrative expression the islanders can throw into their songs! I have but to shut my eyes to see the policeman of Staffin interpreting "The Bonnie House o' Airlie." When his big, manly voice threw out the terrible threat, "I'll no' leave a staunin' stane in Airlie," his eyes shot fire, his teeth gleamed, and his ponderous fist came thundering down on the table in front of him.

I still remember with infinite pleasure the strains of Mr. Cameron's Poolewe Choir, heard in Gairloch school-house. That energetic and complaisant conductor brought his clear-throated minstrels over to the meeting in a brake. It was a luxury to see them with their white robes and tartan sashes, while in front of them stood their genial leader clad in kilts. The Gaelic Mod, which is now a regular institution in the land, is bound to do splendid service towards keeping alive the fine old music of the North. The Poolewe Choir, I am happy to say, won much distinction at the Mods of both Inverness and Greenock. There is great need for choirs, and great need, also, for innocent songs of a secular character. Before I spoke to the people of Eigg, I requested the teacher to arrange, if possible, for a musical programme. The reply staggered me: "No man, woman, or child in this island would for a moment even dream of singing a worldly song. We are all converted here, except a few benighted Catholics. The vain, fleeting joys of this world are as dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could only mutter mechanically, "Dross," "Missionary,'" "Modulator," in a vain effort to seize the situation. Conversion I understood and approved of, but where, in the wee island of Eigg, were the vain, fleeting joys? There is no public-house in the place, and little temptation of any kind. The most disquieting item of all was the modulator: I have not seen one for a long time, and am not sorry, for there is nothing which so spoils the appearance of a wall nor anything so dismal as practising scales. A compromise was come to, and it was arranged that some Gaelic readings, containing a dash of religion, should take the place of songs, and give some variety to the evening's proceedings.

At some of the meetings there was perhaps an excess of realism. Bottom, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," wishing to avoid excitement and fear among the ladies when he is acting the part of Pyramus, says: "Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear." I thought of Bottom's extreme delicacy when I was present at a meeting in Tomatin not long ago. An outstanding feature of the evening's proceedings was the vividly dramatic rendering of the song, "Macpherson swore a feud," by the local postman. The latter, a big, burly man, was extremely formidable in his Highland attire. When he came to the verse dealing with the untimely decease of Macpherson, he whipped the dagger out of its sheath, flourished it as in act to kill, and terrified some of the lady visitors by his vivid suiting of the action to the word. They were as much astonished at the flash of the skian dhu as the Commons were when Burke threw a dagger on the floor of the House.

A musical treat is sometimes got in the most unexpected places. I was particularly struck with a children's glee-party in Jura (a rough island known chiefly for its sterile Paps). The bairns admirably rendered Ben Jonson's delightful ditty, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," and the Shakespearian song, "Where the bee sucks, there suck I." In such islands a musical teacher is a valuable asset. Let me add that all the libraries have been gratuitously supplied with fine collections of Scottish music.

At Acha, in the island of Coll, four sturdy farm-maidens, ruddy with health and robed in white, gave various English and Gaelic airs in admirable style. A divinity student sang a coster song (think of this in an island of craggy shores, gulls, wild-swans, and curlews!), and on being encored, he gave a "Cradle Lullaby," and by gently swaying a chair backwards and forwards on the platform, he strove to illustrate the movements of childhood's earliest receptacle.

A military gentleman—an ex-major—in proposing a vote of thanks, one evening, to the singers, said he had sung a song but once in his life, the occasion being his admission to the Royal Engineers, thirty years before. It was a standing law in that body that every novice should sing a song or drink a mixture consisting of whisky, ink, and cayenne pepper. He chose the former alternative, and at the end of the first verse the Royal Engineers had all left the room in a demoralised condition!

M.P.'s.

At one of the meetings in Argyleshire, I had the joy of speaking under the chairmanship of the glib and able Mr. Ainsworth, M.P. for that county. Among the votes of thanks was one for the chairman: it made a profound impression upon me, as much by its form as by its substance: "I hope, Mr. Ainsworth, that you will take better care of your health in future (hear, hear). No, no, you are not taking care of your health at all (laughter). We all expect you to be Prime Minister, and that is the reason we would like you not to roam about so much and undermine your constitution (cheers). You are always travelling. You are like the Wandering Jew. No! you are like a little bird on a bough. To-day, we see you on a tree near the door; to-morrow, we see you on a tree a hundred miles away" (great cheering). Mr. Ainsworth kindly promised that, in view of his destiny, he would cease to range around the country so indiscriminately.

Unfortunately, I have never met Mr. Galloway Weir, but I have heard much of the zeal of himself and his agents. The following story hinges on the fact that Weir and wire have the same pronunciation in Lewis. An old illiterate crofter came to record his vote by word of mouth, and told the polling sheriff: "I will vote for the right man, yes, yes, it's the right man I will be voting for this time." "That may be," said the sheriff, "but unless you will tell me his name, you can't vote." "Well, if you must know," said the old man, handing the sheriff a stocking-wire, "I will be voting for the man that has the same name as that."

RURAL DEPOPULATION.

The mention of that eminent politician brings to my mind the frequent references made at these meetings to the painful subject of rural depopulation. Everyone regrets the exodus of young men from the country to the town, a practice which depletes the rural villages and deprives the land of the strong arms that should find employment in working it. The ministers are not without hope that the rush city-wards may be checked by improving the conditions of country life, rendering it more attractive to the young, and enlisting the aid of Government in the scheme of small-holdings. Motives of health, morality, and patriotism, are all concerned in the fostering of a hardy peasantry. Everything that makes country life attractive to young men must operate to make them regret to quit it. I wish I could reproduce textually all the strong and astounding speeches I have heard in the Highlands on this subject of depopulation.

"We often hear," said a farmer, "that it's healthy men and women that make up the true wealth of a country, and if that is true, Scotland, for all its increase of riches, is every year growing poorer. How can the people left in the glens continue to propagate a hardy race, if all the young healthy bloods leave for the cities and settle there? I am afraid that both brain and brawn will continue to get feebler among us, unless the Government give some kind of inducement for the peopling of the land with bien, self-respecting men that have a bit land of their own. It's impossible to get farm-hands round Tayside nowadays, and it's not to be wondered at. Suppose a young man stays here, what prospect has he, what incentive has he to work? At the age of seventeen he has earned the highest wage he will ever earn. Thereafter his life is a slow, monotonous serfdom; he has no hope whatever of rising, he is doomed to live from hand to mouth all the years of his existence. But put before that young man the hope that he can become the owner of a morsel of land, however small, and you put life and pride into him. He will work in that case with intelligent purpose, knowing that every penny he saves is to be employed in making him a landed proprietor, and every detail of experience he gains will tell in the future for his direct benefit. Our young fellows don't really want to leave the land and go to die prematurely (as a great many of them do) in the slums of Glasgow and Edinburgh. They go to the cities because there is at least a chance of bettering their lot there, a chance which is entirely lacking at home. Some of them go away to the colonies and thrive as farmers there. I rejoice to hear of such success; but I rejoice with trembling when I think how much of Britain's best manhood has to leave her shores to till Transatlantic fields, while so much land at home remains unoccupied. By and by, if you want to see a good specimen of the Highlander, you will have to go to Canada. Sooner or later, and the sooner the better, the vigorous action of Government will be demanded to remedy the present iniquities of land-tenure, and to put a stop to the compulsory degradation of those who till the soil."

ITS CAUSES.

The present seems to be an opportune time for directing public attention to some remarkable changes that are taking place in the population of the rural districts of Scotland. A great deal of speaking and writing has been expended of late years in lamenting the depopulation of the country. Young fellows do not like the monotony of village and farm life: they prefer the stir and excitement of the cities. Such things are not to be wondered at. Town life has always had an attraction for those whose energy requires a wide scene of action. Energy and ambition go together, and it is the possessor of such qualities that makes the successful city man. The country does not give scope enough for their adequate display.

The railway train and the inventions of modern times are both answerable for a certain amount of depopulation. I believe the condition of farm-hands has been markedly improved of late years. They have now a shorter day, higher wages, better food, and superior house accommodation. Mechanical appliances have made farm-work lighter and more agreeable. The drudgery of the threshing flail is now unknown; the hook and the scythe have given way to the reaping-machine: in every way hand labour has been lightened. But it is precisely this machinery that lessens the need for large numbers of agricultural labourers. It is also notorious that shoemakers, tailors, and blacksmiths, are not so much required in the country as they used to be. Ready-made shoes and clothes are brought by rail from the city, and local tradesmen are reduced in numbers.

EMIGRATION.

There seems to be in our day a competition among the Governments of the New World, which of them can lure away the greatest number of our peasantry. The latest candidate for our rural youth is the State of Virginia, the legislature of which has voted a large sum of money to pay the expenses of two delegates, who are at work in the East of Scotland, hunting for likely emigrants. These Virginian delegates—Mr. Koiner and Col. Talliafer—paid the passage-money of over a hundred stalwart lads from Lochtayside in the autumn of 1906.

No one who has the opportunity of travelling through Scotland can fail to be struck by the absolute frenzy for emigration that exists everywhere. There is a constant stream of emigrants from all our agricultural counties to the wide plains of Canada. That great colony is being "boomed" in a most energetic way. In Sutherlandshire, I saw a large van, with placards and specimens of Canadian produce, being driven through Strath Halladale, to tempt the crofters over the deep. I have also, at the railway stations in the North, beheld heart-rending scenes of parting as the young fellows said good-bye to their parents and friends:

"Who could guess
If ever more should meet these mutual eyes."[9]

VILLAGE HALLS.

In most of the places I have visited, the school-house is the only available hall for public meetings. Now, a school-room, with its small, cramped seats, its lack of platform, and its defective ventilation, is not well adapted for large gatherings. No man likes to speak up to the waist in audience, under a low roof, and in stifling air. If less money were spent on needless church-building, every district in the Highlands might have its hall for purposes of recreation, reading, and lecturing. As it is, the churches should everywhere be used far more than they are for secular gatherings of an elevating kind. Religion suffers greatly from the closing of churches to concerts and lectures.

The kindness of local lairds is nowhere more pleasantly shown than in the giving of funds towards the creation of village halls and recreation rooms. The little village of Alness has a splendid Working Men's Club, furnished with everything requisite for pleasure and profit—smoking-room, billiard-room, and reading-room. This Club owes its existence to the generosity of Mr. Perrins—known everywhere for the excellence of his famous condiment—who has an estate in the vicinity. Kiltarlity and Beauly have, for similar instances of discreet bounty, permanent reason for blessing the name of Mr. Phipps. Other instances that occur to me are the spacious Dunbar Hall in Auldearn, due to the kindness of the family of which the genial Sir Frederick Dunbar, Bart., is the present representative, and the Astley Hall in Arisaig, named after the family so long associated with that charming West Highland village.

It must not be supposed that the natives do not thankfully welcome such work on their behalf. Many of the townships, it is true, have had libraries and halls for many a year, and have established these entirely on their own initiative; but outside help and enterprise stimulate local effort in a way often impossible otherwise, as the natives themselves admit. At Nethy Bridge, a fine hall, with club-room, has been recently erected, largely owing to the enthusiasm of a London lady resident in the vicinity. She was distressed to see the young fellows of the place loafing aimlessly about at night, and proceeded to organise some rational amusement for them. Her philanthropy has been greatly appreciated. At Kilmartin, the jubilee of Queen Victoria was signalized by the erection of the Poltalloch Victoria Hall—an enterprise in which laird and crofter alike willingly co-operated. It is in this hall that the Library is established. Mr. Dixon, the erudite historian of Gairloch, set aside the profits of his book to help in furnishing the reading-room at Poolewe, in Wester Ross.

When a rural community has a library and a place to meet in, a literary society is, as a rule, soon formed. Such a society, founded for an elevating and educational purpose, forms a common meeting-ground for all sects, schisms, and parties. I am aware that in most towns of any size there are such societies in connection with the special churches. In the Highlands it is better to eliminate the denominational element, for the very good reason that, the population being small, no one of the too numerous churches would furnish a representative enough roll of members. I was charmed to find that the little town of Portree, of which the population is not much more than eight hundred, has a fine literary society, established on the broad and rational lines I have indicated. As might be expected from the intellectual advancement and strong literary bent of the inhabitants, the lectures given and the subjects discussed at the meetings of the Portree society are of a more erudite nature than anywhere else in the West Highlands. Most of the Portree clergymen and professional men are on the list of members.

THE MOON.

Very few city people pay much attention to the moon: in the country that luminary has to be constantly deferred to when arrangements are being made for social meetings, dances, or lectures. When many of the audience have to come six, or even ten miles by land or water, light is needed, and light from above is best. It increases a lecturer's pride to be told that the plashing of oars over there on the argent face of the waters is an indication that some of his audience are coming from the other side of the loch. At the conclusion of many of the lectures, I have seen half a dozen traps, boats, and bicycles speeding away merrily in different directions. But for the bright moon, the audience would have been limited to the immediate neighbourhood of the place of meeting.

It has often happened that my hotel was as much as seven miles from the lecture hall. As closed carriages are rare in certain districts, and as it frequently rains—when it is not snowing—in the West and North of Scotland, I had many good opportunities for gauging my powers of endurance. The road from Killin to Ardeonaig is a fair example of a Highland highway:—

"Rough, hilly roads, that stain the spokes with mire;
Thick folds of ebon night on loch and law;
The moan of breezes wailing through the shaw
Like the weird plaints of an Æolian lyre:
And intermittently through the clouds, the fire
Of lightning streaks the night with glitter and awe,
And lapses swiftly in the dismal maw
Of darkness, 'mid the din of thunder dire.
But to relieve the sad night's sullenness,
And clear the heavens for the timid moon,
The straight-descending rain riots like hail
For a fierce hour, in prodigal excess;
Anon the clouds unmuffle, and the pale,
Thin crescent of Diana gilds night's noon."

The place of meeting at Ardeonaig was on the shores of Loch Tay, and the main road from Killin is high up and does not go near the water at this point. After alighting from the machine, I had to descend to the loch-side by a steep, miry, and circuitous road through a wood. As the "thin crescent of Diana," alluded to above, was not adequate to light my footsteps here, I struck some futile vestas, which the dripping leaves at once extinguished. Two elders, swinging lanterns and calling me by name, by and by divided the night in my vicinity. Their appearance was welcome, for the torrential rain had made the track one continuous slippery quagmire. The hospitality of the Ardeonaig minister speedily banished all recollection of the "sad night's sullenness."[10]

A more trying, because a longer, drive is that from Kilmun to Strachur, by way of Loch Eck. In the leafy month of June, nothing could be finer; but in a winter blizzard, one's appreciation of the glory of nature is somewhat less than rapturous. I mention the Strachur meeting because it was graced by the presence of a large contingent of local volunteers in civilian attire. The War Office ought to know that the inclement weather prevented these warriors appearing in their uniform.

A LECTURE IN ISLAY.

The westerly leg of Islay contains one or two places that have public libraries sent from Paisley: Portnahaven and Port Charlotte on the sea, and Gruinart inland and more to the north. It is a weird experience to drive along the shore road from Bridgend on a night of pitiless rain, and see the heavy mists broken every now and then by the far-reaching flash of the Portnahaven lighthouse. Equally weird is it to lecture in a school with no lamps (as happened at Port Charlotte). At eight o'clock I could see the faces of the audience well enough, but by and by the room became quite dark, and I seemed to be addressing an audience of silent and attentive ghosts. After I had finished, a Phantom arose in the far corner of the room and proposed a vote of thanks; and thereafter a Voice somewhere pronounced the benediction. Then there was a movement of feet, and the shadowy spectres trooped out into the night. The foolish virgins had no oil in their lamps; in Port Charlotte, there was neither oil nor lamps.[11]

SOME SPEECHES.

MENTAL AND MATERIAL WEALTH.

I never heard the difference between mental and material wealth more forcibly expressed than by an old Perthshire shoemaker. "Supposing," said he, "that I had fifty pounds in my pocket at the present moment. What a wild supposition, but good enough for an illustration! What inference would you draw from me having that sum of money? This, namely, that no other person in the universe has the same fifty pounds. The same pair of boots cannot be worn by two persons at the same time. The same guinea cannot be twice spent by the same man. It is different with spiritual things, and with works of art. Scores of people can simultaneously enjoy a great painting or a fine piece of music: my enjoyment does not interfere with yours, indeed, it is more than likely that my enjoyment will be greatly increased from knowing that other people are enjoying it as I am. Then again, you can't eat the same loaf of bread twice: but you can return a hundred times to the same song, poem, or picture, and like them better the hundredth time than the first. A pathetic old tune does not lose anything in being sung by generation after generation. It is always as good as new. Like the widow's cruise of oil, it can be used without being consumed. These facts show that works of art—good books, good poems, good music—are, in a certain sense, immortal and divine. A hundred years ago, our ancestors sang 'Bonnie Doon'; we, to-day, sing it with undiminished fervour; a hundred years after this, the song will be fresh. Aye, and a humorous American writer thinks some of us will hanker for it in heaven:

'Perhaps in that refulgent sphere
That knows not sun or moon,
An earth-born saint would long to hear
One verse of Bonnie Doon.'"

REAL GREATNESS.

The Rev. Chairman of this meeting emphasised the shoemaker's remarks in the following admirable words: "I often wonder what is really the greatest thing ever done by a citizen of this country of ours, by a man of English speech. If we agree with our worthy shoemaker and his way of thinking, we shall not look at the big accumulation of guineas as an indication of greatness. Certain commercial men (who ought to know better) seem to think God has sent us into this lovely world for the sole purpose of piling up as much money as possible, and then, by death, leaving it to others to spend. That can hardly be considered our reasonable service. Life is not so low-pitched as that. The best work of man does not admit of being put into an equation with cash. The greatest feat, to my mind, an Englishman ever performed was the writing of Paradise Lost. How much did John Milton get in money for his incomparable epic during his lifetime? Five Pounds: and if he had got five million pounds, the recompense would have been absolutely inadequate. History, however, has indemnified Milton for the neglect and poverty he endured. He has shot up into stature while those of his contemporaries who bulked largest in the eyes of the world have dwindled and shrunk into insignificance in comparison with him. The witty, dissolute king, Charles II., is now seen to be a wretched pigmy: Milton, who died in blindness and political disgrace, is the real king of that era, overtopping all the rulers, cabals, and intriguers. So, too, in Scotland, Burns is the giant of his period. During Burns's life, the Earl of Dundas was to all intents and purposes king of the country. He could say to whomsoever he pleased, 'Friend, come up higher; be you a Sheriff, or Lord-Lieutenant, or Justice of the Peace.' Dundas is pretty well forgotten by this time: probably he will by and by be remembered solely by Burns's description of him: That slee, auld-farrant chiel Dundas. Kings and men of temporary renown do well to keep on good terms with the men of letters."

It is always a great treat to hear a working-man who has the power of utterance deliver a speech in a straightforward and unrhetorical way. There is always a pith and vigour about such deliverances quite unattainable in a formal harangue. The magnates of the little Fife villages are specially notorious for their gift of the gab: when Bailie M'Scales or Provost Cleaver gets up to speak, no one has any inclination to fall asleep.

A HIGHLAND LAIRD ON LITERATURE.

Max O'Rell has told us that his chairmen sometimes took advantage of their position to push their claims for the Town Council. I have not had the time at my disposal curtailed by any such municipal oratory, though, occasionally, my remarks on literature have seemed to the chairmen to stand in need of supplementing. One gentleman, in proposing a vote of thanks, pulled a copy of Bacon out of his pocket and read the whole of the famous essay on Studies. Another managed to bring in a lengthy dissertation on radium! The following speech, delivered by a Highland laird of a poetical turn, is noteworthy: "I am very fond of poetry," he said, "and yet I turn with a very languid interest to the writings of modern poets like Watson and Davidson. The verses of these gifted singers are for others, not for me. The truth is, I don't want any more lyrics and such like sugar pellets. My brain is already stocked with a plenteous supply on which I browse in weal and woe, which I almost think I personally composed, and to which I have attached a great many emotions and extraneous incidents known to nobody but myself. My old poetic favourites have been lying in various corners of my brain for forty or fifty years; I know every turn, rhyme and rhythm of them; and as they have served my need and alleviated my sorrow so long, I do not intend to give them many fellow-lodgers more. I do not know at what particular time literary nausea sets in, but Solomon had it when he said that of the making of books there was no end. No doubt his father David had primed him well in boyhood in the Psalms, and Solomon, feeling (like many others since) that the paternal psaltery met all his need of literary stimulus, would turn wearily from the heaps of presentation copies of new verse sent by the rising poets of Judæa for their sovereign's inspection. When a new book came out, Charles Lamb re-read an old one,—an excellent practice and one which has the additional recommendation of economy. It is not an unpleasant thing to find yourself falling back on old favourites and losing interest in the current hour. I knew a happy old gentleman whose reading was confined to Walter Scott. Every evening the lamp was lighted in the trim snuggery, and the appropriate Waverley taken down from the shelf. For such a man to begin a new novel would have been as irksome as travelling in a foreign land."

I am bound to say that I have great sympathy with the sentiments I have quoted from the speech of this kilted critic. If it were possible to retain the elasticity and adjustableness of the mind till the end of life, new authors would perhaps fix our attention as much as the old. But only a limited number of articulate-speaking men, such as the omnivorous Professor Saintsbury of Edinburgh, preserve their appetite tireless and intact. The Professor, like a literary Livingstone, can grapple with the most arid and dusty libraries, and is the envy of all scholars; but, alas! the majority of us have to take something less than the whole of knowledge for our province.

It must not be supposed that all the remarks made at these meetings were like those I have quoted. An airy irrelevancy was quite as common as the serious note.

VARIETIES OF CHAIRMEN.

I have had experience of hundreds of chairmen, and admired most of them. It is rather a painful thing to have one who is utterly unversed in speaking. I remember being introduced in the ante-room to the chairman of the evening, and, big bucolic giant as he was, he seemed fearfully perturbed. His hand trembled, his lips were ashy-gray, and his laugh was a nervous grin. "I am not much used to this sort of thing," said he, with a poor attempt at mirth and a furtive movement of his hand to his waistcoat pocket, where he had his introductory speech. "All you have to do is to introduce me," I hinted; "you needn't say much." On the platform he shook so much that the whole structure quivered. He rose, and was received with loud applause. Happily he did not read his speech, but simply pointed to me and said, "G-g-go on." He sank in his chair, while runnels of sweat coursed down his cheeks. I admired that chairman more than one in Caithness, who, after angling for the honour of taking the chair, grew so terrified towards the hour of meeting, that he went to bed and sent word he couldn't be present owing to flying pains in his leg! In country districts, reluctance to take the chair arises from a man's fear of making himself ridiculous; once he cuts a poor figure in public, discredit is for ever attached to his name.

Highlanders as a rule make excellent chairmen. The superior gifts of the Celtic mind, in imagination and wealth of florid expression, nowhere show themselves to better purpose than when compliments have to be paid. Then again, the kilt is very impressive on a brawny chairman's legs: it commands attention and respect at once. I have little knowledge of colloquial Gaelic, though I have studied the grammar, and have some skill in reading. A little Gaelic goes a long way in stirring the soul of a Highland audience. Often I have heard a kilted chairman quitting his English for a little and giving the audience a mellifluous Ossianic sentence or two. The effect was electric: eyes gleamed, breath came quick and fast, the souls of the hearers seemed to have tasted a tonic. Spoken Gaelic is akin to the elements: it has a mystic affinity with the winds that sough around the flanks of the mountains and along the surface of the lonely lochs. There is perhaps not much business precision about it, but for preaching, praying, and poetry, it is a splendid medium.

In Arran, a jovial chairman thus introduced me: "Before I left home, I thought of a great many nice things to say as a preface to the remarks of our friend from Paisley. (Here he coughed violently.) Unfortunately, I am unable to bestow these tit-bits on the audience owing to a kittlin' in my throat. Instead of saying what I meant to say, I think I had better tell you a story. A minister one Sunday had occasion to be highly displeased with the precentor, who broke down twice in quite a simple psalm-tune. 'Excuse me, minister,' said the precentor, 'but I've got a kittlin' in my throat this morning.' 'Kittlin'!' hissed the holy man in scornful wrath: 'it's mair like a big tom-cat.' Ladies and gentlemen, after these few and decidedly imperfect remarks, I resume my seat, merely expressing the hope that our friend will feel himself as much at home here as the deil did in the Court of Session."

Another chairman in an adjoining island, while engaged in tremulously reading his introductory speech, came to a sudden stop. An irreverent youth shouted, "Is that a blot?" After the laughter provoked by this query had subsided, the chairman said: "I feel to-night like a square pin in a round hole, or rather, like the Irishman who, when asked if he was dead, replied, 'No, I'm not dead, I'm only spacheless.'" Having said these words with a weird attempt at mirth, the chairman sat down too hurriedly, and struck his head so violently against the back of his chair, that the noise of the impact was heard in every part of the hall.

I may hint to anyone who lectures or preaches in the Highlands, not to adopt a patronising attitude or make it appear that he is talking down to the audience. Such a feature would be at once detected and deeply resented. A well-known Professor lectured to a Bute audience on Electricity, and out of ignorance, spoke in a very elementary way to the audience, defining the simplest terms, and interspersing a great many "you know's" and "you see's." The chairman, in proposing a vote of thanks, slyly remarked: "We have listened to-night to a very good discourse, and I'm only sorry there are so few young people here. Next time the Professor comes to speak to us, I hope to see all the school-children in the hall, for the lecture to-night was admirably adapted to their capacity."

COMING TO THE POINT.

A very loquacious lawyer proposed a vote of thanks to the chairman in the following fashion: "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "it is often a very difficult thing to come to the point. When I was at College, I consented once to write an essay on 'The Progress of America,' the subject being one of my own choosing. I wrote twenty-five pages of preliminary matter, and at the end of my writing, I found that Columbus was not landed. As my essay was to bring my hearers up-to-date on American progress, I became nettled at my failure to get Columbus ashore and went round canvassing among my friends to secure a substitute. No one would relieve me, so I was forced to slaughter an aunt. I was wired for, by arrangement, on the day before the meeting, and responded with great alacrity, knowing that there would be no funeral. Without wasting more words let me on this occasion come to the point, and ask you to accord to our worthy chairman a very hearty vote of thanks for the brilliant way in which he has kept us all in order this evening."

MORAL OBLIGATION.

A minister of a western parish thought it his duty, in the course of his introductory speech, to make some jovial remarks on the subject of conscience and moral obligation. "A student of my acquaintance," said he, "went to Arrochar on Loch Long by excursion steamer. At mid-day, being thirsty, he drifted thoughtlessly into the hotel and asked for a cup of tea. With this beverage he washed over some dry biscuits he had brought with him from home. Imagine his surprise on being told that the cup of tea would cost him two shillings. Bang went not one sixpence but four! He looked at the maid and his breath came quick and fast; but he counted out the money nevertheless. Having occasion to visit the bathroom to cool his throbbing brow, he perceived a razor on a little shelf near the mirror there. At once he pocketed this razor and made off, whistling Scots Wha Hae. He had recouped himself for the overcharge on the cup of tea. Strange to say, every time he shaved with the stolen razor he feared some impending calamity. He knew enough Greek to be aware that Ajax committed suicide with the very sword that hero got from the enemy. Whenever the student disfigured his chin and reddened the lather with a new-made gash, he felt in his inmost soul that a Nemesis was being wrought out. By this simple tale, my friends, one may see the sovereign power of conscience, which, though dormant for a time, invariably asserts itself and flogs the culprit."

COMPLIMENT TO PAISLEY.

The following remarks made by a speaker at one of the meetings are worth citing: "I do not wish our Paisley friend," he said, "to go back to the banks of the Cart under the impression that we are not a very literary people up here in Ross-shire. On the contrary, we are clean gone on literature. Just look at our syllabus! One night we have a discussion on Shakespeare. Eh? What do you think of that? Shakespeare no less! Next night we deal with an equally great poet—Tannahill." (No doubt the speaker meant to compliment Paisley in thus comparing the author of Lear and Hamlet with the poet-laureate of the loom.) I have heard Milton's Paradise Lost and Pollok's Course of Time clashed together in the same ludicrous way. I was dreadfully nonplussed on one occasion by hearing a speaker strongly recommend the audience to give their days and nights to the study of Bunyan and M'Cheyne. "Bunyan by all means," said I to myself, "but who is M'Cheyne that one should be mindful of him and put him for importance alongside of the immortal tinker?"

ORATORY AT SALEN.

I shall never forget a vote of thanks proposed in my hearing by the excellent doctor of Salen, a pleasant little place situated on a V-shaped creek of Loch Sunart. I never expect to meet a more genial or more humorous man than the doctor, on this side of eternity. He knows the roads of gusty Ardnamurchan better than any other living man, and, night and day, by sun and by moon, in weather of clear blue, and under the eddying blinding flakes, he is ever on the move. He found time to come to the meeting and propose a vote of thanks to the donor of the library. Everyone listened intently to him as he stood there in his professional frock-coat,—a thin, wiry, twinkling-eyed gentleman. "If the donor by any chance," said he, looking at me, "should ever sail up Loch Sunart in his yacht, and land among the people of Salen, to whom his books have given such pleasure, I should advise him not to stand too near the edge of the pier, for fear some of the grateful natives might push him over into the loch, in order to have the pleasure of saving his life!" This unexpected sally convulsed the audience, and gave a gay and rollicking touch to the speeches that came after. Mr. M'Gregor, a farmer from Resipol, broad and brawny, rose to make a few remarks. The schoolhouse was very hot and close, but he disdained to throw off the thick and ample Highland cloak which he had on, and which he had worn all day at the Oban Cattle Show, and on the deck of the boat that had brought him thence. Mr. M'Gregor had been much struck by my remarks on the knights of King Arthur, and their custom of sitting at the Round Table, to avoid questions of precedence. He spoke to this effect: "I do not wish the lecturer to go back to Paisley under the impression that Salen is not a very bye-ordinary and consequential place. We have a fleet of yachts out there, the like of which is not to be seen between this and Manch-oo-ria. We have a blacksmith that can preach and quote Scripture as well as any D.D. in the land; my friend the grocer over there, will give you such bargains as you could never get in Sauchie-hall Street; and we have a choir here that might give the angels singing-lessons. I am a very modest man, but I would like to say just a word about this Round Table business. The lecturer says the Table was round so that every knight might be at the head of it. That's the theory, but what's the fact? I'll tell you. One of King Arthur's knights was an ancestor of mine, and his name was M'Greegor.[12] Now, wherever M'Greegor sat, that was always considered the head of the table." This contribution to Arthurian criticism was delivered with such force, faith, and genial glee, that no one, considering the powerful muscles of the speaker, was disposed to question it. (Mr. M'Gregor's eulogy of Salen did not comprise a reference to the local hotel, which is conducted on the Gothenburg system. It is comfortable and snug, but not whole-heartedly patronised by some of the natives, as they consider the system is an un-Celtic innovation, and believe further that every drink they take is written down in a big book with an alphabet on the edge of the leaves to facilitate reference).

LECTURE IN A DUNGEON, Etc.

I have an agreeable recollection of my stay in Saddell, on the coast of Kintyre, as the guest of Colonel Macleod, son of the never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Norman Macleod. The Colonel was born in 1820, was present at the Eglinton Tournament, and is, to-day, in spite of his eighty-eight years, hale in body, sound of wind, and perfectly clear in the intellect. He is a walking encyclopædia of all the social and political changes that have come about since the accession of Victoria. He is also an authority on live stock, and it is intensely amusing to see his horses scampering from the far-end of the field when they see him, in the hope of getting some of the bits of sugar he always carries in his pocket for their benefit.

The school-house being badly situated for the convenience of the people, the meeting was held in the dungeon of the old castle, a spacious and airy place quite near the beach. Altogether, I reckon this meeting as the drollest in all my experience. There were no windows in the overhanging vaulted roof, and the long stone stair leading to the ground above, was filled with the audience that could not get accommodation below. The aged Colonel presided over about one hundred prisoners, and humorously remarked that the table at which he was standing, was really a patent incubating apparatus, under which four dozen of Mrs. Macleod's chickens were coming to maturity. He hoped these embryo fowls would not interrupt the lecture by any unseemly remarks. At the risk of wearying the chickens, I spoke for an hour and a half, dealing in the course of my remarks (to be as apposite as possible) with the dungeon scene in "The Legend of Montrose," where Dugald Dalgetty squeezes the windpipe of the Duke of Argyll.

In one little village hall in Kintyre, I was much perturbed by some of the placards that had been placed on the walls. The hall had been used for evangelical purposes, and there, facing me, in yard-long type, was the dreadful command, Get right with God. To speak on Hood and his puns with those colossal letters burning their message into your soul, would need nerves of steel. I have not nerves of steel, and I felt dreadfully incommoded by the bill. For the space of five minutes I might occasionally forget it, and then, in the midst of some light and skittish quotation, my eye would light upon it, and the verses would come feebly and falteringly off the tongue. Vox faucibus haesit.

SURPRISES.

My narrative would be lacking in completeness if I did not frankly confess that I have sometimes met with humiliations of a kind to wring the heart and call forth a sigh. In one nook of the north I stayed in the manse of an excellent clergyman, an eloquent preacher, but austere and extremely devout. He took the chair at the lecture, which was very well attended. Before the meeting began I was told that a local gentleman wished to ask me an important question. This was good news for me, as I thought the inquirer might have some literary difficulty which it would be profitable to handle in the course of my remarks. The anxious enquirer proved to be the local hotel-keeper, who, in a deadly earnest whisper made the following request: "You have a big meeting," he said, "and it's not likely there will be such a number of people so near my hotel for many a long day. Would it be asking too much of you to finish up about half-past nine and give the audience time to sample some of my commodities before departing homewards? It's chiefly the minister I have to fear; for if he suspects I wish to do business, he'll prolong the vote of thanks till after the stroke of ten."

One of my compensations in wandering Scotland thorough has been the heartfelt but rather naïve way in which some of the provincials have expressed their gratitude. "I've paid half-a-crown for worse," said an old man of Ross to me, shaking me warmly by the hand and believing he was uttering a most delicate and hyperbolical compliment. (Now, during my remarks, I had noticed this man taking copious pinches of snuff to enable him, as I suspected, to sit out the meeting.) Another rustic, this time an Aberdonian, was impressed by the number of authors mentioned and the copious citations from their works. "Heavens!" he cried, "what a memory that man has! That's the kind of partner I should like to have at whist: he would never forget the cards that were out."

I know not whether to laugh or weep when I think of the occasion on which the following charmingly irrelevant remarks were made to me: "We are all proud of our village library and even prouder of the feeling that prompted such a gift. I am reminded," the speaker went on to say, "of a cousin of mine who got a present of exquisite fruit (preserved in wine) from a friend in a distant part of the country. He wrote to the donor saying, 'Your fruit is delicious: I like it very much; but I like even more the spirit in which it has been sent.'"

A VISIT TO THE BORDERS.

In order that these pages may fitly represent all the districts of Caledonia that I have traversed as an uncommercial traveller, I should like to give a short sketch of how I reached Tweedside by way of Lanark, at a season when the Glasgow people were beginning their Fair holidays. Winter, as I remarked, is the time I prefer for travelling, but untoward circumstances have now and again compelled me to be on the move when "mid-summer, like an army with banners, was marching through the mid-heavens."

I may say at once that it is a great trial to leave Glasgow at that particular date. The city pours forth its myriads at such a time. The stations are surging and heaving with throngs of men, women, and children, all in a hurry and all impatient. Families by tens and dozens are swarming about. How pathetic it is to see the father with one child in his arms and two clinging to his coat-tails, while the mother (poor bedraggled soul) is vainly striving to quieten a squalling fourth! Some children have lost their parents, and grope about underneath, nipping the legs of tourists to attract attention and get hold of the right father; others fall among bales of strawberries that were pulled yesterday in the fresh country air, but are now being trampled into gory pulp. Even in the fetid and dust-laden air, rendered almost unbearable by the hot sunlight that blazes through the overarching glass of the station roof, Cupid twangs his arrows, and soft eyes speak love to eyes that speak again. Suddenly the train arrives, and on the already crowded platform lands the human freight of twenty carriages—a fresh addition to the welter and confusion worse confounded. What a wealth of language one hears! Cyclists tinkle with bell and horn to secure the needed lane of passage. Porters, in desperate madness, throw wooden boxes down and rope-tied trunks of tin with little sympathy for injured knees and fiery corns. The train just in will shortly leave with a new load of passengers. A rush is made for the vacated seats: in tumbles the surging crowd without regard for the class of ticket they have purchased. A score of occupants per carriage is about the average; many swarm into the guard's van, where they are regaled with pandemoniac odours of ancient fish and decaying vegetables. The heavy train at length steams out into the open, and in an hour's time Lanark is reached. "God made the country and man made the town" is the involuntary reflection of the city man as he steps out of the train and breathes the fresh air of the hills.

From Lanark to Peebles, by road, is thirty miles. The track is excellent, and if the wind is not adversely strong the joy of cycling the distance is difficult to parallel.

On this route, no lumbering vehicles, laden with heavy merchandise, tear up the soil into ruts. No cab-drivers cast sarcastic remarks at you from their high perch. The only annoyance comes from the cast-off nail of a horse-shoe or the sharp splinter of a macadamised stone. The air is as fresh as on Creation's morn. Up hill and down again one can hurry on without ever touching the brake. For the first ten miles, the stately bulk of Tinto dominates the landscape. What a splendid range of scenery the eye could grasp from the high vantage-ground of its summit in clear weather! As one approaches the base of the big hill, the road turns sharply to the east, and you feel about your ears innumerable breezes that blow along from the little glens leading down from Tinto's breast. By and by, the clean, trim, little town of Biggar appears. (The inhabitants are proud of the fact that John Brown, author of the beautiful story, Rab and his Frien's, was a native of the town.) One notices the name of Gladstone prominent above the shops, and it is a fact that the ancestors of the Grand Old Man were, in the days of yore, denizens of those quiet hamlets. After a short rest here, we (for you are with me, ami lecteur) shoot on and pass the sleepy street of Broughton, lying clear and radiant in the slanting rays of the sun. Here is the ideal spot for a country clergyman in love with Hebrew roots and gardening and quiet contemplation. Soon we strike the tiny waters of the infant Tweed, prattling and gushing up and bubbling clear over its snow-white pebbles. Now the breeze of gloaming blows more snell. Away low in the west the sun begins to gather golden clouds in pomp around his setting. A gorgeous glimmer, gold and red, is thrown over the whole sky. Keeping close beside the ever-widening stream, we dash through little clachans on the bank, beneath long, over-arching avenues of trees, and past the gates of ivy-mantled homes of blessed outlook. Here a croquet party stops playing, for the grass is getting wet with evening dew, and there, in the river, and up to the knees in it, are half a dozen anglers sweeping the wave with their spurious fly. Peebles is not far off, and the quiet nooks of the high road are filled with pedestrians. The entrance to Peebles is exquisite. The long rows of trees, the situation of the road high above the river in the dell, combine to make an eerie blend of sound from sighing leaves and gurgling waters. An old Border peel, Needpath Castle, stands near the straggling outskirts of the town, and proves, by its choice situation on the knoll, that our cattle-reiving ancestors were quite alive to the advantages of a good view. It was a stirring quarter here in the days of the old Scotch kings. The deadly thrust of lance has reddened every burn in the wide Borderland. Every brae has had its gory bicker.

On this tournée I had the pleasure of giving a lecture on "Scotch Ballads," at a little village not more than half a mile from the birthplace of Dandie Dinmont. The place was full of sturdy, firm-knit Borderers, descendants of the dare-devil troopers who wrought such devastation along the Marches when the Stuarts reigned in Holyrood. Fresh, ruddy faces, coloured by breeze and sun; hard, keen, inquisitive looks; intelligence such as comes from knowledge of nature, hereditary quickness and good circulation of blood: all these could be instantly seen by glancing round the audience. (How insignificant a mere bookworm or scholar feels among a company of brawny Liddesdale farmers!) During the lecture, it was easy to note by the grim smile on their faces, their flashing eyes and the way they gripped their big sticks, that the old stirring rhymes of fight struck a sympathetic chord in their hearts. Now and again, during the address, one could see the lips of the listeners moving in soft repetition of the lines, as some typical quotations were being made.

It is not likely that there has been much change or influx of population in these districts for centuries. The alertness and intelligence of the natives must be to some extent an inheritance from the generations of strenuous clansmen whose blood flows in their veins. Life in a historical district is bound to have an ennobling effect on a man, especially if he feels knit to the past by lineal descent from the historical actors. A glamour of romance clings to hill and glen. The dalesman you meet on the highway can tell you all the lore of his parish, giving dates and citing illustrative lays. It is pleasant to find that the stories of the Borderland are still known where they first took birth, and that the local names, which to students instantly suggest delightful bits of rhyme, have also to those who dwell near them, a romance that is borrowed from the olden time.[13]

Anyone who has travelled in the shires that run along the Cheviots and the Tweed, will conclude that poetry and romance may ever find a home there. The hills, with their green pastoral slopes and abundant leafage, are a delight to the eye in fresh spring and tinted fall. The sound of the streams, as Ruskin has pointed out, is sweet and rhythmic to an extraordinary degree, combining with the sough of the winds to form an undersong of Nature's own melody. As the traveller drives or cycles along the roads, he now and again gets such impressive vistas of long-stretching waterways, wooded to the brink with graceful trees, as grave themselves on the memory for evermore. For rock, crag, and dashing linn, the northern Highlands are supreme; but in the green Borderland, there is a more sedate and proportioned beauty. Nature is none the less attractive for losing somewhat of her wildness and austerity.

TARBOLTON.

In the agricultural lowlands of Scotland it is not rare to come upon little villages that seem entirely left behind by modern progress. Not long ago my work took me to Tarbolton, a quiet, uneven village in the heart of the queenly shire of Ayr. The railway company has treated the place very badly: a full fifteen minutes' drive is needed to reach the town from the station. It is as if the company said: "Make what you can of our line, ye insignificant Tarboltonians; our trains are in a hurry to get from Ayr to Muirkirk; be thankful if we set you down only three miles from your home." If it is not wet, the drive is a grand one. Five miles to the right, Mauchline shows its red complexion on the green hillside, and awakens lyric memories of Burns's imperishable mouse and share-torn gowan. Over the pasture lands on the right come freshening winds that hint of the heaving Firth not far away. The road pursued by the coach meanders among all that is best of rural and pastoral scenery, for coaly Annbank, defaced by the exhumed entrails of the earth, is happily on the rear. At a turn of the road, a majestic spire, that of Tarbolton Parish Church, suddenly stands before the view of the traveller, and suggests Eternity even when tolling the hours of Time. Soon the village is reached, and one is in a position to form an idea of eighteenth century Scotland. The main street is built with that irregularity so charmingly illustrative of the evolution of the builder's art. Old cots roofed with thatch take the mind back to the time when George I. was defending the faith and maltreating his wife. Side by side with such are trim two-storey houses with all modern elegancies.

I have a pleasant recollection of this interesting village, not merely from its associations with Burns (which Mr. T.F. Henderson in a dainty little book has recently recounted anew), but also from the fact that the natives keep alive the literary traditions of the place in quite a worthy way. The local baker has written a fluent volume of Essays dealing with village incidents and worthies, which proves, as Mr. Barrie says, that life in every stage, if truthfully portrayed, is intensely interesting, and that every window-blind is the curtain for some tragedy or comedy.

THE SCOTCH LANGUAGE.

Very fine Scotch is still spoken in the rural districts of Ayrshire, and most of Burns's dialect words are in daily use, at least by the older generation. The Education Department has most wisely given encouragement to the study of Lowland Scotch, and I do not see why a special grant should not be given for special excellence in that department. Some national movement for a complete Dictionary of Modern Scotch with explanations in up-to-date philology ought to be organised.

During the lifetime of Sir Walter Scott, Dr. Jamieson published the famous Scottish Dictionary, which still holds the field as the most elaborate compendium of the Lowland dialects. Looked at in the light of modern science, the derivations are often absurd and fanciful. Jamieson's love for Gothic parallels led him constantly astray. Nevertheless, his dictionary, as amended by various revisers, remains a stately monument of industry and a necessary adjunct in the study of the Scotch language.

In our own day, Dr. Murray of Oxford has compiled an illuminating grammar of the language, indicating the various dialects of the Lowlands and their geographical areas. Local antiquarians have also written out lists of words special to particular counties. Dialect books, such as the entertaining Johnnie Gibb of Gushetneuk, as well as Mr. Barrie's delightful sketches, have put excellent specimens of provincial speech within the hands of a wide circle of readers. A good dictionary of modern Scotch, dealing with what has been written during the last two centuries, would be a very useful and a very interesting compendium. It would show that a great many expressive words employed by thirteenth century English writers are still in use on the Scotch side of the Border.

There is no denying the fact that book-English will soon push out the relics of the old Scotch tongue. Burns will soon be read by lexicon, even in the shire of Ayr. Men now write poetry in Scotch as boys at Eton and Harrow write Latin verses, the result in both cases being, as a rule, hideous and artificial doggrel. The little book, Wee Macgregor, written in what may be called the Scotch Cockney dialect, was a brave and amusing attempt to phonograph the talk of a Glasgow boy of the lower middle class. The unlovely speech employed by the author is, happily, quite unlike the careful and deliberate speech of the educated citizen of Glasgow or Paisley. The main differences between the educated Scot and the educated Englishman are that the vowel sounds of the former are pure and that r and h have a real value in most words where these letters occur.

It seems to me a very undesirable thing that a uniform system of pronunciation should be aimed at in every country of the British Isles. So long as clear and expressive enunciation of English is attained, intelligible differences of vocalisation, pitch, and even of vocabulary, are allowable, and at times positively charming. Monotony is the bane of life.

CHOICE BOOKS.

"Whether the books are borrowed books or no
That show their varied stature row on row
Along your walls, there will I truly find
The image of your character and mind.
Light, flimsy novels suit the flying train
Or Western Isle excursions of Macbrayne,
Where, dazed by gleaming firths of visible heat,
The torpid soul disdains substantial meat;
But oft-read volumes, to which men recur
The whole year round, bespeak the character."

The above lines, written by some unknown poetaster, indicate that it is the book we read over and over again that has the greatest potency in our education. I quite agree with the author, and I love to behold the well-thumbed pocket-edition that speaks to the eye of much handling and frequent perusal. There are very few books worth reading once that are not worth reading oftener. Hobbes used to say that if he had read as much literature as the majority of men, he would have been as ignorant as they. In that remark what depths of meaning lie! The sage of Malmesbury attributed his success in philosophy to his habit of judicious selection—to the fact that he concentrated his attention on those authors who were likely to help the development of his powers. Selection is more required now than in Hobbes's time. Few men would care to read more than a hundred books through in a year, and yet there are twenty thousand volumes added annually to the shelves of the British Museum.

THE ESSAYISTS.

It has been my privilege, during the last three or four years, to examine with more or less care something like four hundred bookcases, containing works on all departments of literature. I am inclined to turn away in disgust if the Essayists are not patronised.

Those delightful Essayists! Happy is the man who has his shelves full of them—writers who talk sense with wanton heed and giddy cunning, who spread their souls out on paper, who disarm hostility by taking you completely into their confidence. Addison, with the roguish gleam in his eye as he is calculating the number of sponges in the cost of a lady's finery; Goldsmith, in his London garret, talking of the ludicrous escapades of the Man in Black; Lamb luxuriating in reminiscences of Old Benchers. All these splendid, unsystematic delights, mingled with the breezes of byegone summers and the sunsets of long ago! Old ghosts whisper you their secrets; you hear the brush of sweeping garments that have been moth-eaten these hundred years. Crowded streets of people appear before the eye of fancy—London in the days of Anne and the Georges. In the company of such wits, there are no slow-moving hours: you have in them friends who never need tire you, for should the slightest tedium intervene, you may, without offence, stop their flow of conversation. Our living intimates are prone to drynesses and huffs; but these old prattling wits ever welcome us with a smile of affability.

A BANFF THEORY.

While speaking of Essayists, I ought to mention a peculiar Banffshire theorist who addressed me in the following words: "Give me an old set of Blackwood in the Kit North days, and I can easily forego your pinchbeck stories and propagandist novels of to-day. I put the most interesting period for reading at sixty years ago, and I think Scott must have known the charm of that number when he gave the alternative title to Waverley. It is pleasant to know how the world wagged when your grandfather was a ruddy egg-purloining rogue of five. When I read farther back than a century, I feel imagination flagging—the Merry Monarch is not much more to me than John the Baptist. But the men of the forties stand out clear and distinct. If I have never seen an out-and-out fiery Chartist, I have at least seen some smouldering specimens—men with much of the eloquence and a little of the enterprise of the original five-pointers. It may be that as I grow older, my most interesting historical period will move with me, keeping always at a distance of sixty years from the present, until, when I get within hail of the Psalmist's stint, I shall be most interested in childish things." These words rather staggered me, and set me thinking of geometrical loci. A man holding such views would find it difficult to obtain a bird's-eye view of history.

GOLDSMITH IN GAELIC.

If I had an adequate knowledge of Gaelic, combined with plenty of money and leisure, I should set myself the task of translating the whole of Goldsmith's Essays and Tales into that language, for the benefit of those who had no English. It would be a great feat if one could impress on the modern Celtic mind the conviction that piety and diversion are by no means incompatible. Goldsmith's Auburn introduces us to the most delightful prospect on earth: a simple village community, unacquainted with luxury and uncorrupted by vice. The inhabitants are full of health and joy—they till the soil and gain ample satisfaction for their unambitious wants. Life passes along bringing a pleasant succession of happy hours. After the labours of the day, the young people dance merrily on the green, and the old folk look on and regret that their own legs are too stiff to keep time to the fiddles. Certain Highland landlords might also read with advantage the exquisitely pathetic lines in which the poet pictures the desolation and ruin of the rural paradise, and perhaps conclude therefrom that, when glen and strath are depleted of their inhabitants, and these latter driven over the seas to seek a foothold in strange lands, it is the very heart's blood of Britain that is being drained away.

On the whole, probably no English writer has given such genuine delight as Goldsmith, and such genuine instruction too. Ineradicably frivolous, culpably negligent of the morrow, whimsically vain and living all his days from hand to mouth, he had the faculty of drawing upon himself the pity, and even the contempt, of his associates. But in the eyes of posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has left behind him, for it is pure and good. His river of speech flows ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed the adroit knack of bright writing in a more eminent degree. The pawky humour of his side-hits, the blending of light and shade in the process of the narrative, the beauty and melody that can be noted even in the sound of the sentences, combine to delight the judgment, the ear, and the fancy. Though the Vicar of Wakefield is a prose production, it produces all the effect of a poem on the affections of the heart. Of wit, properly speaking, it is as full as any volume of The Spectator; with humour it is flooded from beginning to end; and in those pathetic delineations of life which no one can read without being profoundly touched, there are few poems so rich.

BIBLIA ABIBLIA.

In many (indeed most) houses I have visited, I see in the bookcase large publications in six or seven well-bound parts and as good as new, dealing with subjects of little interest to anyone who breathes the vital air of heaven. Such titles as Science for All, The Thames from its Source to the Sea, The Queens of England are among the commonest on the boards of the books I allude to. The presence of these editions indicates that the possessor at a certain period of his life was shy and could not say no to that limb of the Evil One—the book-canvasser. The latter individual is the forerunner of the colporteur, who will bring you, if you wish poetry, an edition of the works of Shakespeare which is peculiarly ill-adapted for holding in the hand and reading. The print is large, the page is in size like a miniature wall-map, and the illustrations are got up with an easy defiance of archeology. The annotations, though stolen, are distinguished for extreme futility. After you have begun the purchase of such a book, shame and chagrin drive you to attempt the study of it; but it is of no use, and on each occasion of the very regular advent of the colporteur, you are inclined to swear horribly, after which a period of extreme dejection supervenes when you recollect the many fine things you could purchase for the half-guinea periodically expended. The knowledge of human nature displayed by the man who books the order surpasses anything in the works of the analytical philosophers. Every artifice of attack is his, and he knows how to play on all the emotions so ably and exhaustively catalogued in the manuals of Professor Bain. I believe a gay and chaffing rejoinder is what he can least overcome. Suggest to him that you are far gone in poverty and offer to sell him a few of your own books. Frequent exercise will confirm your principles, until finally, when you see one of the book-canvassing tribe, you will foresee half an hour's innocent amusement.

Certain of the points he so feelingly brings before you may no doubt awaken a responsive echo in your own bosom. You are well aware, for example, that your knowledge of the Queens of England is culpably imperfect. You know you are never likely to go in steadily for the study of constitutional developments, and so are led to admit the reasonableness of tackling history from a lighter and more entertaining point of view. Again, as to the River Thames, one must really grant that a considerable amount of self-complacency and internal sunniness would result from the ability to contradict your friends as to the length in miles of some of its minor tributaries. In science, too, you are no Kepler or Linnaeus, and there is something satisfactory when pedants talk of orbits, planes, bulbs, or beetles, in being able to say that you have a big book at home that tells all about those things.

Many people buy books, not because they have a present need for them, but on the chance that at some time in the future such volumes as they see for sale will solve a doubt or answer a need. The precise doubt or the pressing need rarely arises. I met a Celt who had bought a copy of Josephus in most irritating type, in the hope that it would help him to confute a Roman Catholic on the Power of the Keys. Then again, people of a wavering and bird-witted type of mind are constantly changing the subject of their interest: this month they are attacked by the furor poeticus, next month it will be a furor botanicus or politicus. Each separate frenzy means expenditure. When Browning is the temporary subject of the mania, a host of expository books on that poet have to be purchased, all of which are duly consigned to the topmost shelves when the soreness of the fit is past. There is also a tendency to purchase, because on the chance opening of a book you light on something that pleases the whim of the moment. It is a thousand to one that when you have bought the book you will not find another item worth perusing in the entire contents. This tendency to buy a book in a panic may be neutralised by remembering the story (whether true or not) of Defoe, who is said to have boomed the languid sale of the dreary Drelincourt on Death by means of a spicy little ghost story as introduction! Buy in haste, repent at leisure.

SECOND-HAND BOOKS.

It is a much pleasanter sight to my eyes to see a bookcase with second-hand books in it, for these are almost always bought to be read. In a teacher's house near Elgin, I recently saw a most remarkable collection—a veritable ragged regiment of books: single volumes of Plutarch, unexpurgated plays by Farquhar and Mrs. Behn, Civil War pamphlets, and rows of oddities. Mr. Forbes (the owner) was at one period of his life assistant in Falkirk, and every Saturday morning, rain or shine, he proceeded to the city of Glasgow, for no purpose but to roam through the dusty byeways and side streets in quest of bookstalls. He knew all the dealers by name, and they welcomed him, for he never left them without a purchase, however slight. It was a saying of his that while it took half-a-crown to purchase you two hours' amusement at a theatre, for a couple of shillings, or even less, you might divide out a whole Saturday most enjoyably in the old book-shops. He simply rioted in haggling over a threepenny piece. Even old Henderson feared him. This Henderson was a thirsty old bookseller who kept a shop at the corner of Cowcaddens and Ingram Street, and whose leading speciality was second-hand family Bibles, with the former genealogical leaf riven out and replaced by a clean sheet pasted in for the family of the next purchaser. To him, sitting enthroned on a pile of Bibles, Forbes, entering, spake: "Have you a copy of the Lives of the Twelve Cæsars?" "Aye, aye," said old Henderson, with a gracious smile; "thirteen if you like." The copy of Suetonius was produced, and "How much do you want for Suet.?" queried Forbes. "Half-a-crown," said old Henderson. "I'll give you ninepence," said Forbes. "Make it one-and-six," said the bookseller, rising from his Biblical throne, "and the book's yours." "I'll give you a shilling and a half of whisky," retorted Forbes. "Say a whole glass and the shilling, and we'll do business," quoth the vendor of volumes. This was agreed upon, and the two retired into the nearest dram-shop to conclude the bargain. Every Saturday evening, Forbes came home by the last train, carrying his bundle of volumes. He was careful to fumigate them for the purpose of destroying any microbes, and finally would sprinkle them with eau de Cologne to make them tolerable to the nose. On Sunday, he enjoyed the luxury of desultory reading.

Like Mr. Forbes, I enjoy a ramble among these old shops, and can say, as he said to me at parting:—

"I love the trundling stall
Where ragged authors wait the buyer's call,
Where, for the tariff of a modest supper,
You'll buy a twelvemonth's moral feast in Tupper;
Where Virgil's tome is labelled at a groat,
And twopence buys what tittering Flaccus wrote;
Where lie the quips of Addison and Steele,
And the thrice-blessed songs of Rob Mossgiel;
And some that resurrection seek in vain
From the swart dust that chokes the lumbering wain."

FAVOURITES.

I have often been asked: "You who are so much on the move, who have had so much train-travelling to do, what books would you recommend for a long railway journey?" I do not know that one man's likes and dislikes in reading are of value save as showing his own limitations, yet there are certain books of which I never tire. I never leave home without the following books handy for perusal: (i.) The Odes of Horace, (ii.) The Sonnets of Shakespeare, (iii.) A French novel and a few copies of the Paris Matin, (iv.) A Greek book of some kind, (v.) Pope or Addison, (vi.) Some Victorian classic. The list is varied enough, and has furnished me with much of the material for my speaking.

HORACE.

The pleasant thing about Horace is that his odes are so short: you can read one in a few minutes—shut your eyes and enjoy the mental taste of it—try to repeat it, and, if you fail, consult the original—then, finally (as Pope and many others have done), endeavour to find modern parallels. Suppose, e.g., you are reading, as is likely, the first Ode of the first Book, you might find present-day resemblances like the following:—

Curriculo pulverem.

What mad attractions sway the world!
Some are unhappy save when whirled
In motor cars that madly race,
To leave a stench in every place,
And maim those foolish folk that stray
Abroad upon the king's highway.

Tergeminis honoribus.

Yon babbling wight, of sense forlorn,
Who thinks himself a Gladstone born,
Although a bailie, still must strain
To gain himself a Provost's chain.
And, after that, the worthy prater
Aspires to be a legislator;
Dreams of St. Stephen's, where he sees
Himself hobnobbing with M.P.'s.

Patrios agros.

But Farmer Bob is somewhat saner—
He minds his stock and is the gainer;
Content to pass his life amid
The scenes that his old father did.
With hose in hand he cleans the byre,
And saves himself a menial's hire;
But gives his girls an education
That may unfit them for their station.
But don't ask Bob to tempt the tide,
Even on a turbine down the Clyde;
Neptune and Ceres don't agree,
And farmers hate the name of sea.

Mox reficit rates.

When Skipper Smith (whose usual goal
Is Campbeltown with Ayrshire coal)
Is labouring thro' Kilbrannan Sound,
He sighs for Troon and solid ground,
And swears, if he were safe on shore,
He'd never be a sailor more.
But once on shore—he thinks it dull,
And soon begins to tar the hull
And caulk the timbers of his ship:
"I'll try," he says, "another trip."

Lene Caput.

Some love to mangle turf: I see
Them drive their balls from sandy tee,
And think their day's delight begins
When they are up among the whins.
Some elders, full of godly zeal,
Turn crazy about rod and reel;
And ministers, reputed wise,
Take service with the Lord of Flies
(Beelzebub), and like the work
Better than prosing in a kirk.

Conjugis immemor.

Sir Samuel Crœsus (noble wight!
Who paid so dear to be a knight)
Forsakes his lady for the hills,
And aims at birds he never kills.
Too late in life he shouldered gun,
Breathless he toils beneath the sun,
Sips whisky every other minute,
Until his flask has nothing in it;
Then, at the end of strength and tether,
Falls tipsy in the blooming heather.

Praemia frontium.

But as for me, my wants are few:
£3,000 a year would do;
A villa built upon a height,
With ample view to left and right;
A garden with a sunny seat,
A grassy lawn with borders neat.
Inside, a study furnished well
(Like a true scholar's citadel)
With books and pipes and easy chairs;
Here, in despite of worldly cares,
If I should write a verse or two—
A lyric that a judge like you
Could read, without once yawning, through—
I'd be as proud as any man
That scribbled since the world began.

Horace is thus fit for all times and conjunctures, and is the most modern of all the Latin writers—

"Horace still charms with pleasing negligence,
And without method talks us into sense."

The translation of Horace's Odes into modern speech is generally admitted to be one of the most difficult tasks to which a versifier can apply himself. And yet there is no task so often essayed. It is a common saying in France that, when a lawyer quits the bar and retires, he is certain to publish a new translation of Horace after a year or two's studious ease. M. Loubet, we know, is a zealous devotee of the Sabine bard. Not the least droll of Mr. Gladstone's many feats was the publication, shortly before his death, of a translation of Horace's Odes, a translation wholly worthless indeed, in spite of the writer's immense scholarship, but valuable as showing the fascination exercised by Horace over the most austere and ecclesiastical of minds. It seemed strange indeed to see the great statesman turn aside from his study of Butler and the Fathers of the Church, in order to put into English verse the gay, and often scandalous odes, of an old Pagan epicure. Mr. Morley, who revised the translation, must have smiled as he read the old man's rendering of—

"Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa."

It is a fact, I suppose, that poetic translations of Horace are rarely read, save by scholars, and the verdict is almost always unkind. Yet an excellent anthology could be compiled by selecting the happiest renderings of the most talented translators. Dryden's paraphrase of III., 29, has been uniformly praised, and was a great favourite of Thackeray's. Cowper's nimble wit and classic taste are seen in his translation of II., 10, an ode beautifully rendered also by Mr. William Watson. Sir Theodore Martin and Connington are always readable, Francis is uniformly insipid, and Professor Newman, with his metrical capers, absolutely absurd. Pope's "Imitations of Horace" are so brilliant, that no student of English literature can afford to neglect them. Pope's method of replacing ancient allusions by modern ones, was employed by Johnson in some magnificent renderings of Juvenal, and no doubt suggested to our Scotch vernacular poets a mode (still popular) of translating Horace into Doric speech. Our Scotch bards preferred, as a rule, to work on the Odes, and they succeeded best when they departed most widely from the Latin text.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS.

The same blessed quality of brevity that attracts one in Horace is to me one of the recommendations of Shakespeare's Sonnets. I am glad the mystery of them is never likely to be discovered. From frequent perusal of them in the train, I know the majority by heart, but despair of finding any cryptogram in them.

The cord on which these exquisite beads of poetry are strung is of the most flimsy and frayed character. In other words, the characters are all bad, and the verses that laud them are of the utmost brilliancy and fascination. The poet himself supplies material that would justify us in stigmatising his friend as a heartless and dissipated rogue. He also lets us know that the pale-faced lady was an unwholesome and treacherous minx. Yet he addresses the one in language that would be too laudatory for Sir Galahad, and the other he idolises and insults by turns.

How strange it is that the poet, while lingering fondly over the doings of these two un-moral persons, should give utterance to some of the most impressive lines in English literature! Certain of the sonnets pierce the heart as with an arrow: such are those that deal, in broad and pathetic fashion, with the ceaseless flux of all things human, the grim realities of the grave, the ruthless sequence of earthly events, and the measureless melancholy of the reflecting mind. The effect produced is often like what we experience in reading Ecclesiastes or Omar Khayyam. "Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney-sweepers, turn to dust."

Though Shakespeare is dolefully impressed by the decay and destruction of all material things and by the evanescent nature of beauty, he has no doubt whatever of the immortality of the verses he is writing. He vaunts as boldly as ever Horace did—indeed, in words that suggest the Exegi monumentum ode—that his verses will outlast the proudest works of man. It is a sorry anti-climax to such a boast that the poet harps on the immortality of the dissolute youth as a consequence of the sonnets having an eternity of renown. Was there ever such a puzzling and unworthy association of ideas? The puzzle is rendered more perplexing still by the fact that Shakespeare took no pains to enlighten posterity as to the identity of the youth he praises, or even to supervise the publication of the sonnets. Thorpe's piratical edition was full of misprints, but Shakespeare, so far as we know, took no notice of it, and made no attempt, by giving the world a correct and authentic version, to secure what his verses declare him to be anxious to bring about, viz., the renown of his friend among generations to come. For us the youth still exists, no doubt, but not as an historical character. He takes his place among the creatures of the poets imagination, and is far more of a shadow or phantom than any one of them.[14]

If we suppose the sonnets to be connected with real life, it is not easy to understand why the radiant youth, "the world's fresh ornament," "only herald to the gaudy spring," etc., should need such an amount of persuasion to marry. Seventeen sonnets of great poetical beauty and felicitous language are devoted to this object. It is an exquisite treat to read them as works of art, but taken literally they are unspeakably absurd. No sane man would draw out such lengths of linked sweetness for the purpose named; nor would any youth, however credulous, take the sonnets at their face value. Shakespeare is merely practising his art, and we may be perfectly sure that these "sugared" sonnets (as Meres calls them), if they did circulate among the poet's private friends, were regarded as rhetorical exercises. They are intensely interesting, as showing the overpoweringly dramatic nature of Shakespeare's genius. Being impressed with the desirability of perpetuating beauty, he is driven to express the idea in the conventional form of a sonnet-sequence. The result is an exhaustiveness of treatment, a wealth of imaginative ornament, and a dramatic vividness of presentation that makes the reader marvel how so much could be made out of so little.

XENOPHON.

There is one Greek book, of which I have gone through three or four copies by carrying it about in the pocket for my moments perdus. I refer to the Economist of Xenophon, a gem of a book, and one on which I have often lectured. The title is not an attractive one, but the body of the work is charming in the highest degree, and gives a better notion of ancient Greek life than any other book in existence. Ruskin, who had an unerring instinct for good literature, got two of his disciples to put the book into English, himself furnishing a preface of characteristic insight and brilliancy. He might well do such homage to the old Greek soldier, for the Economist contains teaching remarkably like what is to be found in certain of the chapters of Unto This Last. A reader cannot fail to be struck by the wonderful modernness of Xenophon's writing, his love for the country, his simple and genuine piety, his soldierly directness, and his practical common sense. Here is a delightful sidelight on Greek family life, written twenty-three centuries ago, but which might have been spoken yesterday: "My wife," says one of the characters, "often puts me on trial and takes me to task—When I am candid and tell her everything, I get on well enough, but if I hide or disguise anything, it goes hard with me, for I cannot make black seem white to her."

The Economist is an ideal volume for the country calm: it will not deliver up its best to you in the city; but if it is leisurely perused while hayrick fragrances are in the air, while butterflies are fluttering round the lawns, and while the flow of a clear-gushing brook chimes with your fancy and the quiet tone of the old Greek's musings, then (be sure) the mellow sweetness of the "Attic Bee" will be adequately enjoyed.

It is a great pity that life is so short, that there are only twenty-four hours in the day, and that, owing to the general scarcity of money among the intellectual portion of the community, the possession of free-will is a pathetic fallacy. Nobody, in these bonds of time and space, can do precisely what he would like to do. Mr. T. P. O'Connor once said that, if he were master of his fate, and his feet in every way clear, he would at once proceed to Athens and learn Greek. I can conceive no keener or greater joy than that: it is the wish of a genuine lover of letters. At the age of ten, I came upon an old copy of Pope's Homer, and have been in love with Greek literature ever since. The cares of this world, including rates and taxes, prevent me likewise from proceeding to the City of the Violet Crown, but there are plenty of cheap copies of Homer to be had in Scotland, and it is no disadvantage that some of them have the translation printed on the opposite page.

So many things have to be learned at school now, that Greek is being pushed out. In future, it will be a University subject solely. That is a great pity, for although there are fine translations of the Greek authors in English, these are not so much read as they ought to be. Greek itself would be much easier to learn if editors would write fewer and shorter notes.[15]

FRENCH LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM.

I am always delighted to see French books on the shelves of a rural library. I notice Dowden's French Literature in many a Highland bookcase; and I am sure it will please that erudite and most excellent professor to know he has hundreds of students who never saw his face. Everybody should learn the French language: I don't know a better intellectual investment. French is rich in precisely those qualities that English lacks. It is not necessary, for proof of that statement, to read Gautier, Bourget, or Hugo. A daily paper from Paris supplies all the proof required.

I freely admit that the French newspaper seems, on first acquaintance, to be a wonderful and puzzling affair. It is never dull or tiresome, or glum. You may have your dearest susceptibilities wounded by it, but you won't fall asleep as you read its columns. Humour trickles from paragraph to paragraph; wit coruscates in the accounts of the most ordinary police cases; and abundant of dexterous literary workmanship is to be found in the leading articles. In spite of such admirable qualities, there is an element of frivolity, a lack of seriousness (I speak of the typical Boulevard sheet) that is at first rather shocking to a British reader. He finds grave subjects treated with a fineness of touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying to inject as much entertainment as possible into the daily record of mundane things.

I regret to say that the majority of French newspapers do not give their readers a quite fair or accurate account of events happening outside of France. French topics, as is right, have the bulk of the space, and foreign events are usually treated in a very prejudiced and perfunctory way. The Frenchman's enthusiasm for home politics does not leave him much emotion to spare for the rest of the world. Political life with him is always more or less in a state of turmoil. There is usually some scandalous affaire afoot or impending, to which political import can easily be given. Many of the most talented editors, being members of the Chamber, import into their articles much of the heat and unreasoning vehemence engendered by the violence of direct debate. There has always been a feeling since the great Revolution that others might follow, and that one or other of the royal gentlemen of this or that disestablished race might, by some cyclone of popular or military sympathy, be blown back to power in Paris. Unluckily, there are far too many parties in France, far too many nicknames, badges, and shibboleths. The language of political discussion is bitter, and heated beyond anything the cooler Anglo-Saxon would tolerate. And yet, amid all such electric discharges of wordy rancour, the French nation goes on its way rejoicing, not a penny the worse, making wines, silks, and fashions, for an ungrateful world.

There is now, and always has been, a strange sympathy between France and Scotland. A Scot learns French, as a rule, easily. One of the striking differences between dialect Scotch and book English is precisely the peculiar French ingredients in the former. For three hundred years the two countries were allies, and the advantages to England may be gathered from the remark of King Henry V. in Shakespeare's play—

"For you shall read that my great-grandfather
Never went with his forces into France,
But that the Scot on his unfurnished kingdom,
Came rolling like the tide into the breach."

GIL BLAS.

One French book that has solaced my leisure (in train, steamer, and trap), is that altogether delectable volume Gil Blas. It would be worth learning French to be able to read the book in the original. The characters are non-moral reprobates who lie, rob, and drink with the most unaffected sincerity. Vice loses all its grossness, and becomes intensely entertaining. The tone of the confessions is at once subtle and naïve, tragic and trivial, comic and pathetic. The humour is absolutely colossal: many English books, alleged to be humorous, do not contain, in their entire bulk, as much humour as a single chapter of this great work. For brilliancy of style it stands very high, and few authors, either in France or elsewhere, have attained such admirable clearness, precision, and pith. Read Gil Bias, say I, if you wish to appreciate the possibilities of the French tongue, and taste all the delicate flavour of its racy idiom.