QfatttcU ImuBtaitg Siibrara 3t^aca, ^tta ^atk BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF ,HENRY W.SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library PR4175.B2A651882 John Leech, and other papers. 3 1924 013 441 575 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013441575 JOHN LEECH AND OTHER PAPERS Hti'ji^^'"" cL Ii.ip A D\jrarui Par HORiE SUBSECIVyE. By JOHN BROWN, M.D. LL.D., ETC. ' Ce fagotage de taut si diverses pieces, se faict en cette condition : que je i^y Jnets la inain, que lors qu\ine trop lasche oysifvete me pressed — MICHEL DE montaigne- NEW EDITION IN THREE VOLUMES. THIRD SERIES. EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS. MDCCCLXXXII JOHN LEECH AND OTHER PAPERS By JOHN BROWN, M.D. LL.D., ETC. FOURTH EDITION EDINBURGH DAVID DOUGLAS MDCCCLXXXir. Edinburgh: Printed by Thomas and Archibald Constable., FOE t)AVID DOUGLAS. I-OWDON . . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. CAMBRIDGE . MACMILLAN AND BOWFS. GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. "T^VERY man is two men — at the least. Sydney Smith says St. Paul was a thou- sand men. But every man is good and bad, wise and foolish, conceited and not. It is the preponderance that makes the difference and the outward man. As one of the bravest men in the British army once said to me, ' When we go into battle we are all afraid, but we don't all shov/ it.' Well, when my friend and publisher spoke to me of putting these odds and ends into a volume, I said at first 'No;' now I am saying ' Yes,' though I still feel both., No one can so well know of how little worth much of these occasional papers — what old Creech would have called Fugitive Pieces — arc, how much better viii Preface. they might and ought to have been — as their author : this was the No — the Yes was a sneak- ing hope that others might not altogether agree with me. This was the conceit and vanity bit having its say. The struggle, some- what protracted, as to which would prevail, is now over. The ' bit ' and David Douglas have prevailed, and I must content myself, after the manner of the deliverance of Socrates and Voltaire on a more important matter, with the reflection that whether I said yes or no I would regret it. With regard to the paper which gives its name to this volume, I hardly know how to excuse myself, it is so unworthy of its delight- ful subject, so much more so now than when it appeared in the North British Review, by reason of its not having the woodcuts. It may truly be said that it is dished for want of the plates — to give a twist to Rogers's well- known joke. My only hope is that the reader, in his anger at being asked to look at what he Preface. ix cannot see, may be driven to Punch and elsewhere, and then I am surfe his anger will be appeased. He will be grateful, indeed, to Canon Hole for what he has said of his friend, and the friend of us all. I cannot end without most affectionate and sorrowing mention of two dear dead friends — Thomas Constable, who had a true literary faculty as well as palate, and of whom it may be said — as of too few — that to him to live was to love ; and Miss Fleming, the sister of- Pet Marjorie, who survived her seventy years, and who, I believe, seldom passed a day without thinking, and I dare say without speaking, of her darling, who had lain at her heart all these years. Rutland Street, Jan. 3, 1882. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. T SHOULD before now have thanked Dr. W. ■*■ F. Skene, Historiographer for Scotland, and facile princeps of Celtic scholars, for the material of ' A Jacobite Family,' written by his father, Sir Walter's friend, and the grandson of our fine old lady of Stoneywood. My readers, I am sure, will thank him too. I also thank the ' North British Review ' and ' The Scotsman ' for such of the ingredients of the following dish — which Meg Dods would have called Potted Head — as had already appeared in them. For putting ' Biggar' in, my excuse is that I am a Biggar callant. J. B. March 15, 1882. THE RESTORATION : UNPUBLISHED VERSES By THOMAS DAVIDSON, *THE SCOTTISH PROBATIONER.'! My love, she walked yon forest glade. At the waning of the year. She lifted a leaf from off the groujid — A leaf full dry and sere. My love, she bore it in her hand — It lived through every vein. My'' love, she placed it on her breast. And it straight grew green again. My love, she wears it at her heart ; Will wear it till she die. My love,\thou hast been life to jue, — For / trow that leaf am I. Pease Glen, near Cockeuenspath, Sept. 1865. 1 ' The Scottish Probationer," by James Brown, D.D. A worthy record of a man of rare genius — ' dead ere his prime.* * Morning breaks as I write, along those Coniston Fells, and the level mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of the moorlands, veil the lower woods, and the sleeping village, and the long lawns by the lake shore. ' Oh that some one had told me, in my youth, when all my heart seemed to be set on these colours and clouds, that appear for a little while and then vanish away, how little my love of them would serve me, when the silence of lawn and wood in the dews of mor?iing should be completed, and all 7ny thoughts should be of those whom^ by neither, I was to meet more I 'J. RUSKIN. ' Brantwood, 12M Feb. 1878.' CONTENTS. JOHN LEECH A JACOBITE FAMILY .... MYSTIFICATIONS MISS STIRLING GRAHAM OF DUNTRUNE THACKERAY'S DEATH .... MARJORIE FLEMING MINCHMOOR 'IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION' JEEMS THE DOORKEEPER . SIR E. LANDSEER'S PICTURE 'there's life in the old dog yet,' etc. etc. THE ENTERK.IN ... THE DUKE OF ATHOLE STRUAN DICK MI HI, OE CUR WHY? . E. V. K. TO HIS FRIEND IN TOWN. SIR HENRY RAEBURN SOMETHING ABOUT A WELL . MORE OF 'OUR DOGS' b 8i "S 167 177 199 =37 =57 =79 301 339 371 381 389 403 4t3 443 449 The portrait of the author prefixed to the present edition has been engraved by M. Amand Durand, from a sketch made by Mr. George Reid, R.S.A., in February 1882. JOHN LEECH. ' yohn Leech was an absolute master of the elements of char- acter ; of all rapid and condensed realisation ever accomplished by the pencil, his is the most dainty and the least fallible in the suijects of which he was cognisant, not merely right in the traits which he seizes, but refined in the sacrifice of what he refuses^ , — Mr. Ruskin, in a letter to Miss Leech on her brother's drawings. JOHN LEECH. IF man is made to mourn, he also, poor fellow ! and without doubt therefore, is made to laugh. He needs it all, and he gets it. For human nature may say of herself in the words of the ballad, ' Werena my heart licht, I wad dee.' Man is the only animal that laughs ; it is as pecu- liar to him as his chin and his hippocampus minora The perception of a joke, the smile, the sense of the ludicrous, the quiet laugh, the roar of laughter, are all our own ; and we may be laughed as well as tickled to death, as in the story of the French nun of mature years, who, during a vehement fit of laughter, was observed by her sisters to sit suddenly still and look very ' gash ' (like the Laird of Garscadden^), this being considered a further part of the joke, when they found she was elsewhere. In books, old and new, there is no end of philo- sophising upon the ludicrous and its cause ; from ' Professor Turner infonns me that this comfort is taken from us, — the superior apes have the lesser sea-horse. * Vide Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences, 4 Horcs Subsecivcs. Aristotle, who says it is some error in trrtn or pro- priety, but at the same time neither painful nor pernicious ; and Cicero, who defines it as that which, without impropriety, notes and exposes an impro- priety ; to Jean Paul, who says it is the opposite of the sublime, the infinitely great, and is therefore the infinitely little ; and Kant, who gives it as the sudden conversion into nothing of a long raised and highly- wrought expectation ; many have been the attempts to unsphere the spirit of a joke and make it tell its secret ; but we agree with our excellent and judicious friend Quinctilian, that its ratio is at best anceps. Tliere is a certain robust felicity about old Hobbes's saying, that 'it is a sudden glory, or sense of emi- nency above others or our former selves.' There is no doubt at least about the suddenness and the glory; all true laughter must be involuntary, must come and go as it lists, must take us and shake us heartily and by surprise. No man can laugh any more than he can sneeze at will, and he has nearly as little to do with its ending — it dies out, disdaining to be killed. He may grin and guffaw, because these are worked by muscles under the dominion of voli- tion, but your diaphragm, the midriff, into which your joker pokes his elbow, he is the great organ of genuine laughter and the sudden glory, and' he, as you all know, when made absurd by hiccup, is niasterless as the wind, ' untameable as flies ;' there- jfohn Leech. 5 fore is he called by the grave Haller, nohilissimus post cor musculus ; for, ladies and gentlemen, your heart is only a hollow muscle. If you wish to know what is done in your interior when you laugh, here it is from Dr. Carpenter. He classes it along with sobbing and hiccup, and says : ' In it — the act of laughing — the muscles of expiration are in convulsive movement, more or less violent, and send out the breath in a series of jerks, the glottis being open,' the glottis being the little chink at the top of the windpipe. As to the mental impression on the sensorium that sets these jerks agoing, and arches that noble muscle, we, as already said, think it may be left to a specific sense of its own, and that laughter is the effect and very often the cause of the laughable, and therefore of itself — a definition which has the merit of being self-contained. But is it not well that we are made to laugh, that, from the first sleepy gleam moving like sunshine over an infant's cheek, to the cheery and feeble chirrup of his great-grandfather by the fireside, we laugh at the laughable, when the depths of our strange nature are dappled and rippled, or tossed into wildest laughter by anything, so that it be droll, just as we shudder when soused with cold water — because we can't help it ? But we are drifting into disquisition and must beware. What is it to us or the public that the 6 HorcB Subseciva. pneumogastric and phrenic nerves are the telegraphs from their headquarters in the brain to this same midriff^that if cut, there would be an end of our funny messages, and of a good deal more ; that the musculus nobilissmus, if wounded in its feelings from without or from within, takes to outrageous laughter of the dreariest sort ; that if anything goes wrong at the central thalami, as they are called, of these nerves, the vehicles of will and feeling, they too make sad fools of themselves by sending down absurd, inco- herent telegrams ' at lairge ' ? One might be diffuse upon the various ways in which laughter seizes upon and deals with mankind ; how it excruciates some, making them look and yell as if caught in a trap. How a man takes to crowing like a cock, or as if under permanent hooping-cough, ending his series of explosions victoriously with his well-known ' clarion wild and shrill.' How provoca- tive of laughter such a musical performance always is to his friends, leading them to lay snares for him I We knew an excellent man — a country doctor — who, if wanted in the village, might be traced out by his convivial crow. It was droll to observe him resisting internally and on the sly the beginnings of his bravura; how it always prevailed. How another friend, huge, learned, and wise, whom laughter seizes and rends, is made desperate, and at times ends in crashing his chair, and concluding his burst on its ruins, and on John Leech. 7 the floor. In houses where he is familiar, a special chair is set for him, braced with iron for the stress. Then one might discourse on the uses of laughter as a muscular exercise ; on its drawing into action lazy muscles, supernumeraries, which get off easily under ordinary circumstances ; how much good the convulsive succussion of the whole man does to his chylo-poietic and other viscera; how it laughs to scorn care and malaise of all kinds ; how it makes you cry without sorrow, and ache every inch of you without wrong done to any one ; how it clears the liver and enlivens the spleen, and makes the very cockles of the heart to tingle. By the by, what are these cockles of tradition, but the columnce carnea, that pull away at the valves, and keep all things tight ? But why should we trouble ourselves and you with either the physiology or the philosophy of laughter, when all that anybody needs to say or to hear, is said, so as to make all after saying hopeless and needless, by Sydney Smith, in his two chapters on Wit and Humour, in his Notes of Lectures on Moral Philosophy ? Why it is that when any one — except possibly Mr. Tupper — hears for the first time, that wisest of wits' jokes to his doctor, when told by him to ' take a walk on an empty stomach ;' — ' on whose }' — he laughs right out, loud and strong, may be a question as hard to answer as the why he curls up his nose when tickled with a feather, or sneezes when he 8 Horcs Subseciv^. looks at the sun ; but it is not hard to be thankful for the joke, and for the tickle, and for the sneeze. Our business rather is now gratefully to acknowledge the singular genius, the great personal and artistic ■worth of one of our best masters of 'heart-easing mirth,' than to discourse upon the why and how he makes us laugh so pleasantly, so wholesomely and well, — and to deplore along with all his friends (who has not in him lost a friend ?), his sudden and irre- parable loss (October 29, 1864). It was as if some- thing personal to every one was gone ; as if a fruit we all ate and rejoiced in had vanished for ever ; a some- thing good and cheery, and to be thankful for, which came every week as sure as Thursday — never to come again. Our only return to him for all his unfailing goodness and cheer, is the memory of the heart, and he has it if any man in the British empire has. The noble, honest, kindly, diligent, sound-hearted, modest, and manly John Leech — the very incarnation in look, character, and work of the best in an Englishman. As there is and has always been, since we had letters or art of our own, a rich abounding power and sense of humour and of fun in the English nature ; so ever since that same nature was pleased to divert and ex- press itself and its jokes in art as well as in books, we have had no lack of depicters of the droll, the odd, the terrible, and the queer. Hogarth is the first and greatest of them all, the greatest master in John Leech. 9 his own terribile via the world has ever seen. If you want to know his worth and the exquisite beauty of his colouring, study his pictures, and possess his prints, and read Charles Lamb on his genius. Then came the savage Gillray, strong and coarse as Church- ill, the very Tipton Slasher of political caricature; then we had Bunbury, Rowlandson, and Woodward, more violent than strong, more odd than droll, and often more disgusting than either. Smirke, with his delicate, pure, pleasant humour, as seen in his plates to Don Quixote, which are not unworthy of that marvellous book, the most deeply and exquisitely humorous piece of genius in all literature ; then the Monkeyana, designed and engraved by Thomas Landseer, forgotten by, and we fear unknown to many, so wickedly funny, so awfully human, as almost to convert us to Mr. Huxley's pedigree — The Duel, for instance. Then we had Henry Aiken in the Hunting Field, and poor Heath, the ex-Captain of Dragoons, facile and profuse, unscrupulous and clever. Then the greatest since Hogarth, though limited in range and tending to excess, George Cruikshank, who happily still lives and plies his matchless needle -^ — it would take an entire paper to expound his keen, penetrating power, his moral intensity, his gift of wild grimace, the dexterity and super-subtlety of his etching, its firm and delicate lines. Then came poor short-lived tragical 1 Died 1878. lo HorcB Subsecivce. Seymour, whom Thackeray wished to succeed as artist to Pickwick ; he embodied Pickwick as did ' Phiz,' — Hablot Browne, — Messrs. Quilp, and Pecksniff, and Micky Free, and whose steeplechasing Irish cocktails we all know and relish ; but his manner is too much for him and for us, and his ideas are neither deep nor copious, hence everlasting and weak repetitions of himself. Kenny Meadows, with more genius, especi- ally for fiends and all eldritch fancies, and still more mannerism. Sibson, — and Hood, whose drawings were quaint and queer enough, but his words better and queerer. Thackeray, very great, answering won- derfully his own idea. We wonder that his Snohs and Modern Novelists and miscellaneous papers were ever published without his own cuts. What would Mrs. Perkins's Ball be without The Mulligan, as the spread- eagle, frantic and glorious, doing the mazurka, with- out Miss Bunion, and them all ; and the good Uttle Nightingale, in Dr. Birch, singing ' Home, Sweet Home ' to that premature young brute Hewlett. But we have already recorded our estimate of Mr. Thackeray's worth as an artist }} and all his droll- eries and quaint bits of himself, — his comic melan- choly, his wistful children, his terrific soldans in the early Punches. They should all be collected, — where- ever he escapes from his pen to his pencil, they should never be divorced. Then Doyle, with his ' North British Review. No. Ixxix., February 1864. yohn Leech. 1 1 wealth of dainty phantasies, his glamourie, his won derful power of expressing the weird and uncanny, his fairies and goblins, his enchanted castles and maidens, his plump caracoUing pony chargers, his charm of colour and of unearthly beauty in his water- colours. No one is more thoroughly himself and alone than Doyle. We need only name his father, ' H. B.,' the master of gentlemanly, political satire, — as Gillray was of brutal. Tenniel we still have, excellent, care- ful, and often strong and effective ; but more an artist and a draughtsman than a genius or a humorist. John Leech is different from all these, and, taken as a whole, surpasses them all, even Cruikshank, and seats himself next, though below, William Hogarth. Well might Thackeray, in his delightful notice of his friend and fellow-Carthusian in Thi Quarterly, say, ' There is no blinking the fact that in Mr. Punch's cabinet John Leech is the right- hand man. Fancy a number of Punch without Leech's pictures ! What would you give for it ?' This was said ten years ago. How much more true it is now ! We don't need to fancy it any longer ! And yet, doubtless, nature is already preparing some one else — she is for ever filling her horn — whom we shall never think better, or in his own way, half so good, but who like him will be, let us trust, new and true, modest, and good ; let us, meanwhile, rest and be thankful, and look back on the past. We '11 move 1 2 Horce Subsecivce. on by and by — ' to fresh fields and pastures new ' — we suppose and hope. We are not going to give a biography, or a studied appraisement of this great artist; that has been ahready . well done in the Cornhill, — and we trust the mighty ' J. O.' who knew him and loved him as a brother, and whose strong and fine hand — its truth, nicety, and power — we think we recognise in an admirable short notice of Leech as one of the ' Men of Mark,' in the London Journal of May 31, 1862 — may employ his leisure in giving us a memorial of his friend. No one could do it better, not even the judicious Tom Taylor, and it is worth his while, to go down the great stream side by side with such a man. All that we shall now do is to give some particulars, not, so far as we know, given to the public, and end with some remarks on a few selected woodcuts from Punch — illustrative of his various moods and gifts.^ ' When the history of the rise and progress of Punch comes to be written, it will be found that the Weekly Dinner has been one of the chief things which contributed to its success. Almost from the foundation of that journal it has been the habit of the contributors every Wednesday to dine together. In the winter months, the dinner is usually held in the front room of the first floor of No. 1 1 Bouverie Street, Whitefriars, — the business offices of the proprietors, Messrs. Bradbury and Evans. Sometimes these dinners are held at the Bedford Hotel, Covent Garden. During the summer months, it is customary to have ten or twelve dinners at places in the neigh- bourhood of London, Greenwich, Richmond, Blackwall, etc. And once a year they attend the annual dinner of the firm, at John Leech. 13 John Leech, we beheve remotely of Irish extrac- tion, was a thoroughly London boy, though never one whit of a Cockney in nature or look. He was born in 181 7, being thus six years younger than Thackeray, both of them Charterhouse boys. We rejoice to learn that Lord Russell has, in the kindest way, given to Mr. Leech's eldest boy a presentation to this famous school, where so many of the best men of London birth have had their training, as Brougham and Jeffrey, Scott and Cockburn, had a the Edinburgh High School. This gift of our Foreign Minister is twice blessed, and is an act the country may well thank him for. which compositors, readers, printers, machinemen, clerks, etc., dine. This dinner is called the ' Way Goose,' and is often re- ferred to in Punch. At the weekly dinner, the contents of the forthcoming number of Punch are discussed. When the cloth is removed, and dessert is laid on the table, the first question put by the editor is, ' What shall the Cartoon be ?' During the lifetimes of Jerrold and Thackeray, the discus- sions after dinner ran very high, owing to the constitutional antipathy existing between these two. Jerrold being the oldest, as well as the noisiest, generally came off victorious. In these rows it required all the suavity of Mark Lemon (and he has a great deal of that quality) to calm the storm ; his award always being final. The third edition of Wednesday's Sun is generally brought in to give the latest intelligence, so as to bring the Cartoon down to the latest date. On the Thursday morning following, the editor calls at the houses of the artists to see what is being done. On Friday night all copy is delivered and put into type. 14 Horce Subsecivce. When between six and seven years of age, some of Leech's drawings were seen by the great Flaxman, and, after carefully looking at them and the boy, he said, ' That boy must be an artist ; he will be nothing else or less.' This was said in full consciousness of what is involved in advising such a step. His father wisely, doubtless, thought otherwise, and put him to the medical profession at St. Bartholomew's, under Mr. Stanley. He was very near being sent to Edin- burgh, and apprenticed to Sir George Ballingall. If he had come to us then, he would have found one student, since famous, with whom he would have cordialised : Edward, afterwards Professor Forbes, and at two o'clock on Saturday proofs are revised, the forms made up, and with the last movement of the engine, the whole of the type is placed under the press, which cannot be moved until the Monday morning, when the steam is again up. This precaution is taken to prevent waggish tricks on the part of practical-joking compositors. At these dinners none but those connected with the stafl proper are permitted to attend ; the only occasional exceptions, we believe, have been Sir Joseph Paxton, Mr. Layard, Charles Dickens, Rev. Reynolds Hole, and Charles Dickens, junior. As an illustration of the benefit arising from these meetings, we may mention that Jerrold always used to say, ' It is no use any of us quarrelling, because next Wednesday must come round with its dinner, when we will all have to shake hands again.' By means of these meetings; the discussions arising on all questions helped both caricaturist and wit to take a broad view of things, as well as enabled the editor to get his team to draw well together, and give a uniformity of tone to all the contributions. [1865.] John Leech. 15 who to his other great gifts added tliat of drawing, especially of all sorts of wild, fanciful, elfish pleasan- tries and freaks, most original and ethereal — and the specimens of which, in their many strange resting- places, it would be worth the while to reproduce in a volume. Leech soon became known among his fellow-students for his lifelike, keen, but always good- natured caricatures; he was for ever drawing. He never had any regular art-lessons, but his medical studies furnished him with a knowledge of the struc- ture and proportions of the human form, which gives such reality to his drawing ; and he never parades his knowledge, or is its slave ; he values expression ever above mere form, never falsifying, but often neglect- ing, or rather subordinating, the latter to the former. This intense realism and insight, this pure intense power of observation it is that makes the Greek sculptors so infinitely above the Roman. We believe the Greeks knew nothing of what was under the skin— it was considered profane to open the human body and dissect it ; but they studied form and action with that keen, sure, unforgetting, loving eye, that purely realistic faculty, which pro- bably they, as a race, had in more exquisite perfection than any other people before or since. Objective truth they read, and could repeat as from a book. The Romans, with their hardy, penetrating, auda- cious nature — rerum Domini — wanted to know not 1 6 Horce Subseciva;. only what appears, but what is, and what makes appear. They had no misgivings or shyness at cut- ting into and laying bare their dead fellows, as little as they had in killing them or being themselves killed : and as so often happens, their strength was their weakness, their pride their fall They must needs show off their knowledge and their muscles, and therefore they made their statues as if without skin, and put on as violent and often impossible action as ever did Buonarotti. Compare the Lao- coon and his boys (small men, rather) with the Elgin marbles ; the riders on the frieze so comely in their going, so lissome ; their skin slipping sweetly over their muscles : their modestly representing not of what they know, but of what they see. In John Leech and Tenniel you see something of the same contrast ; the one knows more than he needs, and shows it accordingly ; the other knowing by instinct, or from good sense, that drawing has only to do with appearances, with things that may be seen, not with things that may be known, drew merely what he saw, but then with what an inevit- able, concentrated eye and hand he did draw that ! This made him so pre-eminent m reproducing the expression of action — especially intense and rapid action. No knowledge of what muscles were acting, and what are their attachments, etc., could teach a man how a horse trots, or how he gathers himself up to yohn Leech. 1 7 leap, or how a broken- backed cab-horse would lie and look, or even how Mr. Briggs — excellent soul — when returning home, gently, and copiously ebriose from Epsom on his donkey, would sway about on his podgy legs, when instructing his amazed and ancient groom and friend as to putting up and rubbing down — the mare. But observation such as the Greeks had, that aKpi^eta or accuracy — carefulness, as they called it — it enabled Leech to do all this to the life. All through his course, more and more, he fed upon nature, and he had his reward in having per- petually at hand her freshness, her variety, her end- lessness. There is a pleasant illustration of this given in a letter in Notes and Queries for November 5, 1864 : — ' On one occasion he and I were riding to town in an omnibus, when an elderly gentleman, in a very peculiar dress, and with very marked features, stepped into the vehicle, ' and sat down immediately in front of us. He stared so hard and made such wry faces at us, that / could hardly refrain from laughter. My discomfiture was almost completed when Leech suddenly exclaimed, " By the way, did Prendergast ever show you that extraordinary account which has been lately forwarded to him ?" and, pro- ducing his note-book, added, " Just run your eye up that column, and tell me what you can make of it ?" The page was blank ; but two minutes afterwards the features of that strange old gentleman gaping at us 1 8 HorcB SubsecivcB. were reflected with life-like fidelity upon it' There is humour in the choice of the word ' Prendergast.' This is the true way to nurse invention, to preen and let grow imagination's wings, on which she soars forth into the ideal, ' sailing with supreme dominion through the azure depths of air.' It is the man who takes in, who can give out. The man who does not do the one, soon takes to spinning his own fancies out of his interior, like a spider, and he snares him- self at last as well as his victims. It is the bee that makes honey, and it is out of the eater that there comes forth meat, out of the strong that there comes forth sweetness. In the letter we refer to, which is well worth reading, there is a good remark, that Leech had no mere minutiiE, as Turner had none ; everything was subordinated to the main purpose he had, but he had exquisite ^««Wi? and delicacy when it was that he wanted. Look at his drawing of our ' Jocund Morn,' from the boots to the swallows. His pencil-work on wood was marvellous for freedom and loveliness. The bent of his genius and external causes made him, when about seventeen, give up the study of medicine and go in stoutly and for life for art. His diligence was amazing, as witnessed by the list of his works ; in Bentley they are in multitudes ; and in Punch alone, up to 1862, there are more than three thousand separate drawings ! with hardly John Leech. 19 the vestige of a repetition ; it may be the same tune, but it is a new variation. In nothing is his realistic power more seen than in those delightful records of his own holidays in Punch. A geologist will tell you the exact structure of that rock in the Tay at Campsie Linn, where Mr. Briggs is carrying out that huge salmon in his arms, tenderly and safely, as if it were his first-born. All his sea- scapes — Scarborough, Folkestone, Biarritz, etc. etc. — any one who has been there does not need to be told their names, and, as we have already said, his men are as native as his rocks, his bathers at Boulogne and Biarritz, his gamekeepers and gillies in Blair- Athole and Lochaber — you have seen them there, the very men ; Duncan Roy is one of them ; and those men and women at Galway, in the Claddich, they are liker than themselves, more Irish than the Irish. In this respect his foreigners are wonderful, one of the rarest artistic achievements. Thackeray also could draw a foreigner, — as witness that dreary woman outworker in the Kickleburys. Then as to dress ; this was one of the things Leech very (sarly mastered and knew the meaning and power of, and it is worth mastering, for in it, the dress, is much of the man both given and received. To see this, look at his first large drawing in the fourth number of Punch, called 'Foreign Affairs.' Look, too, at what is still one of his richest 20 Horce Subsecivcs. works, with all the fervour and abundance, the very dew of his youth, — the Comic Latin Grammar. Look at the dress of Menelaus, who threatens to give poor Helen, his wife, ' a good hiding.' Look at his droll etchings and woodcuts for the otherwise tire- somely brilliant Comic Histories, by Gilbert A'Beckett, with their too much puns. Leech was singularly modest, both as a man and as an artist. This came by nature, and was indica- tive of the harmony and sweetness of his essence ; but doubtless the perpetual going to nature, and drawing out of her fulness, kept him humble, as well as made him rich, made him, what every man of sense and power must be, conscious of his own strength ; but before the great mother he was simple and loving, attentive to her lessons, as a child, for ever learning and doing. This honesty and modesty were curiously brought out when he was, after much persuasion, induced to make the coloured drawings for that exhibition which was such a splendid success, bringing in nearly ;^5ooo. Nothing could induce him to do what was wanted, call them paintings. ' They are mere sketches,' he said, ' and very crude sketches too, and I have no wish to be made a laughing-stock by call- ing them what they are not' Here was at once modesty and honest pride, or rather that truthfulness which lay at the root of his character, and was also 'John Leech. 21 its ' bright, consummate flower,' and he went further than this, in having printed in the Catalogue the following words : — ' These sketches have no claim to be regarded or tested as finished pictures. It is impossible for any one to know the fact better than I do. They have no pretensions to a higher name than that I have given them — Sketches in Oil.' We have had, by the kindness of Mr. John Heugh, their possessor, the privilege of having beside us for some time two of the best of those coloured sketches, and we feel at once the candour and accuracy or their author's title. It is quite touching the unac- customedness, the boyish, anxious, laborious work- manship of the hand that had done so much, so rapidly and perfectly in another style. They do not make us regret much, that he did not earlier devote himself to painting proper, because then what would have become of these 3000 cuts in Punch i But he shows, especially, true powers of landscape painting, a pure and deep sense of distance, trans- lucency, and colour, and the power of gleams and shadows on water. His girls are lovelier without colour — have, indeed, ' to the eye and prospect of the soul,' a more exquisite bloom, the bloom within the skin, the brightness in the dark eye, all more expressed than in those actually coloured. So it often is ; give enough to set the looker-on a-painting 2 2 HorcB Stibsecivcs. imagining, realising, submitting ' the shows of things to the desires of the mind,' and no one but the highest painter can paint like that. This is the true office of the masters of all the ideal arts, to evoke, as did the rising sun on Memnon, the sleeping beauty and music and melody of another's soul, to make every reader a poet, every onlooker an artist, every listener eloquent and tuneful, so be it that they have the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the loving and under- standing hea.rt. As is well known, this exhibition took London captive. Tt was the most extraordinary record by drawing, of the manners and customs and dress of a people, ever produced. It was full 'from morn to dewy eve,' and as full of mirth ; at times this made it like a theatre convulsed as one man by the vis comica of one man. The laughter of special, often family groups, broke out opposite each drawing, spread con tagiously effervescing throughout, lulling and waxing again and again like waves of the sea. From his reserve, pride, and nicety. Leech could never be got to go when any one was in the room ; he had an especial horror of being what he called ' caught and talked at by enthusiastic people.' It is worth men- tioning here, as it shows his true literary turn as a humourist, and adds greatly to the completeness of his drawings and of his genius, that all the funny, witty, and often most felicitous titles and wordings of John Leecli. 23 all sorts were 7vritten by himself; he was most par- ticular about this. One day a sporting nobleman visited the gallery with his huntsman, whose naive and knowing criti- cisms greatly amused his master. At last, coming to one of the favourite hunting pictures, he said, ' Ah ! my Lord, nothin' but a party as knows 'osses cud have draw'd them 'ere 'unters.' The origin and means of these sketches in oil is curious. Mr. Leech had often been asked to undertake works of this character, but he had for so many years been accustomed to draw with the pencil, and that only on small blocks, that he had little confidence in his ability to draw on a large scale. The idea originated with Mr. Mark Lemon, his friend and colleague, who saw that by a new invention — a beautiful piece of machinery — the impression of a block in Punch, being first taken on a sheet of india-rubber, was enlarged ; when, by a lithographic process, the copy thus got could be transferred to the stone, and impressions printed upon a large sheet of canvas. Having thus obtained an outline groundwork consisting of his own lines enlarged some eight times the area of the original block, Leech proceeded to colour these. His know- ledge of the manipulation of oil colours was very slight, and it was under the guidance of his friend, John Everett Millais, that his first attempts were made, and crude enough they were. He used a 24 Hortz Subseciv^. kind of transparent colour which allowed the coarse lines of the enlargement to show through, so that the production presented the appearance of indifferent lithographs, slightly tinted. In a short time, how- ever, he obtained great mastery over oil colour, and instead of allowing the thick fatty lines of printers' ink to remain on the canvas, he, by the use of turpen- tine, removed the ink, particularly with regard to the lines of the face and figure. These he re- drew with his own hand in a fine and delicate manner. To this he added a delicacy of finish, particularly in flesh colour, which greatly enhanced the value and beauty of his later works. To any one acquainted with these sketches, we may mention for illustration of these remarks, No. 65 in the Catalogue. This work presents all the incompleteness and crudity of his early style. The picture represents Piscator seated on a wooden fence on a raw morning in a pelting shower of rain, the lines necessary to give the effect of a leaden atmosphere being very nume- rous and close. The works which illustrated his later style are best shown in Nos. 36 and 41. In the framing of these sketches he persisted in leaving a margin of white canvas somewhat after the manner of water-colour sketches. Of all art satirists none have such a pervading sense and power of girlish and ripe womanly beauty as Leech. Hogarth alone, as in his Poor Poet's yohn Leech. 25 Wife, comes near him. There is a genuine domes- ticity about his scenes that could come only from a man who was much at his own fireside, and in the nursery when baby was washed. You see he is him- self paterfamilias, with no Bohemian taint or raffish turn. What he draws he has seen. What he asks you to live in and laugh at and with, he has laughed at and lived in. It is this wholesomeness, and, to use the right word, this goodness, that makes Leech more than a drawer of funny pictures, more even than a great artist. ^ It makes him a teacher and an example of virtue in its widest sense, from that of manliness to the sweet devotion of woman, and the loving, open mouth and eyes of parvula on your knee. How different is the same class of art in France ! you dare not let your wife or girls see their Leech ; he is not for our virgins and boys. Hear what Thackeray says on this point : — ' Now, while Mr. Leech has been making his com- ments upon our society and manners, one of the wittiest and keenest observers has been giving a description of his own country of France, in a thou- sand brilliant pages, and it is a task not a little amus- * It is honourable to the regular art of this country that many of its best men early recognised in Leech a true brother. Millais and Elmore and others were his constant friends ; and we know that more than twelve years ago Sir George Hai-vey wished to make Leech and Thackeray honorary members of The Royal Scottish Academy [1865]. 26 Horce Subsecivce. ing and curious for a student of manners to note the difference between the two satirists — perhaps between the societies which they describe. Leech's England is a country peopled by noble elderly squires, riding large-boned horses, followed across country by lovely beings of the most gorgeous proportions, by respect- ful retainers, by gallant little boys emulating the courage and pluck of the sire. The joke is the pre- cocious courage of the child, his gallantry as he charges at his fences, his coolness as he eyes the glass of port or tells grandpapa that he hkes his champagne dry. How does Gavarni represent the family-father, the sire, the old gentleman in his country, the civilised country? Paterfamilias, in a dyed wig and whiskers, is leering by the side of Mademoiselle Coralie on her sofa in the Rue de Breda; Paterfamilias, with a mask and a nose half- a-yard long, is hobbling after her at the ball. The enfant terrible is making Papa and Mamma alike ridiculous by showing us Mamma's lover, who is lurking behind the screen. A thousand volumes are written protesting against the seventh command- ment. The old man is for ever hunting after the young woman, the wife is for ever cheating the hus- band. The fun of the old comedy never seems to end in France ; and we have the word of their own satirists, noveUsts, painters of society, that it is being played from day to day. John Leech. 27 ' In the works of that barbarian artist Hogarth, the subject which affords such playful sport to the civil- ised Frenchman is stigmatised as a fearful crime, and IS visited by a ghastly retribution. The English savage never thinks of such a crime as funny, and a hundred years after Hogarth, our modern " painter of mankind," still retains his barbarous modesty, is tender with children, decorous before women, has never once thought that he had a right or calling to wound the modesty of either. ' Mr. Leech surveys society from the gentleman's point of view. In old days, when Mr. Jerrold lived and wrote for that celebrated periodical, he took the other side : he looked up at the rich and great with a fierce, sarcastic aspect, and a threatening posture ; and his outcry or challenge was — " Ye rich and great, look out ! We, the people, are as good as you. Have a care, ye priests, wallowing on a tithe-pig, and rolling in carriages and four ; ye landlords grinding the poor; ye vulgar fine ladies bullying innocent governesses, and what not, — we will expose your vulgarity, we will put down your oppression, we will vindicate the nobility of our common nature,'' and so forth. A great deal is to be said on the Jerrold side ; a great deal was said ; perhaps even a great deal too much. It is not a little curious to speculate upon the works of these two famous contributors of Punch, these two " preachers," as the phrase is. 28 Horcs SubsecivcB. " Woe to you, you tyrant and heartless oppressor of the poor !" calls out Jerrold as Dives's carriage rolls by. " Beware of the time when your bloated coach- man shall be hurled from his box, when your gilded flunkey shall be cast to the earth from his perch, and your pampered horses shall run away with you and your vulgar wife and smash you into ruin." The other philosopher looks at Dives and his cavalcade in his own peculiar manner. He admires the horses and copies with the most curious felicity their form and action. The footman's calves and powder, the coachman's red face and floss wig, the over-dressed lady and plethoric gentleman in the carriage, he depicts with the happiest strokes ; and if there is a pretty girl and a rosy child on the back seat, he " takes them up tenderly " and touches them with a hand that has a caress in it This artist is very tender towards all the little people. It is hard to say whether he loves boys oi girls most — those delightful little men on their ponies in the hunting fields, those charming little Lady Adas flirting at the juvenile ball ; or Tom the butcher's boy, on the slide ; or ragged little Emly pulling the go-cart freighted with Elizarann and her doll. Steele, Field- ing, Goldsmith, Dickens are similarly tender in their pictures of children. " We may be barbarians. Mon- sieur , but even the savages are occasionally kind to their papooses." When are the holidays? yohn Leech. 29 Mothers of families ought to come to this exhibition and bring the children. 'I'hen there are the full- grown young ladies — the very full-grown young ladies ^dancing in the ball-room, or reposing by the sea- shore — the men can peep at whole seraglios of these beauties for the moderate charge of one shilling, and bring away their charming likenesses in the illus- trated catalogue (two-and-six). In the " Mermaids' Haunt," for example, there is a siren combing her golden locks, and another dark-eyed witch actually sketching you as you look at her, whom Ulysses could not resist. To walk by the side of the much- sounding sea and come upon such a bevy of beauties as this, what bliss for a man or a painter ! The mermaids in that haunt, haunt the beholder for hours after. Where is the shore on which those creatures were sketched ? The sly catalogue does not tell us. 'The outdoor sketcher will not fail to remark the excellent fidelity with which Mr. Leech draws the back- grounds of his little pictures. The homely landscape, the sea, the winter wood by which the huntsmen ride, the light and clouds, the birds float- ing over head, are indicated by a few strokes which show the artist's untiring watchfulness and love of nature. He is a natural truth-teller, as Hogarth was before him, and indulges in no flights of fancy. He speaks liis mmd out quite honestly, like a thorough Briton. He loves horses, dogs, river and field sports. 30 Horce Subseciv(Z. He loves home and children, — that you can see. He holds P'renchmen in light esteem. A bloated " Mosoo " walking Leicester Square, with a huge cigar and a little hat, with " billard " and "esta- minet " written on his flaccid face — is a favourite study with him ; the unshaven jowl, the waist tied with a string, the boots which pad the Quadrant pavement, this dingy and disreputable being exercises a fascination over Mr. Punch's favourite artist. We trace, too, in his work a prejudice against the Hebrew nation, against the natives of an island much cele- brated for its verdure and its wrongs; these are lamentable prejudices indeed, but what man is with- out his own ? No man has ever depicted the little " Snob " with such a delightful touch. Leech fondles and dandles this creature as he does the children. To remember one or two of those dear gents is to laugh. To watch them looking at their own portraits in this pleasant gallery will be no small part of the exhibition ; and as we can all go and see our neighbours caricatured here, it is just possible that our neighbours may find some smart likenesses of their neighbours in these brilliant, life-like, good- natured sketches in oil.'^ We could not resist giving this long extract. What perfection of thought and word ! It is, alas ! a draught of a wine we can no more get ; the vine is ' Times, June 21, 1862. jfohn Leech. 3 1 gone. What flavour in his ' dear prisoned spirit of the impassioned grape ! ' What a bouquet 1 Why is not everything that hand ever wrote, reproduced? shall we ever again be regaled with such oenanthic acid and ether ? — the volatile essences by which a wine is itself and none other — its flower and bloom ; the reason why Chambertin is not sherry, and Sauterne neither. Our scientific friends will remem- ber that these same delicate acids and oils are com- pounds of the lightest of all bodies, hydrogen, and the brightest when concentrated in the diamond, carbon ; and these in the same proportion as sugar ! Moreover, this ethereal oil and acid of wine, what we may call its genius, never exceeds a forty-thousandth part of the wine ! the elevating powers of the fragrant Burgundies are supposed to be more due to this essence than to its amount of alcohol. Thackeray, Jeremy Taylor, Charles Lamb, old Fuller, Sydney Smith, Ruskin, each have the felicity of a specific cenanthic acid and oil — a bouquet of his own; others' wines are fruity or dry or brandied, or ' from the Cape,' or from the gooseberry, as the case may be. For common household use commend us to the stout home-brewed ale from the Swift, Defoe, Cobbett, and Southey taps. Much has been said about the annoyance which organ-grinding caused to Leech, but there were other things which also gave him great annoyance, and 32 Horce Subsecivcs. amongst these was his grievance against the wood- engravers. His drawings on the polished and chalked surface of the wood-block were beautiful to look at. Great admiration has been bestowed upon the delicacy and artistic feeling shown in the wood-blocks as they appeared in Punch, but any one who saw these ex- quisite little gems as they came from his hands would scarcely recognise the same things when they appeared in print in Punch. When he had finished one of his blocks, he would show it to his friends and say, ' Look at this, and watch for its appearance in Punch.' Sometimes he would point to a landscape, and calling particular attention to it, would say that probably all his fine little touches would be 'cut away,' in a still more literal sense than that in which he uses the word in his address. When, however, we come to consider the circum- stances and pressure under which these blocks were almost always engraved, the wonder will be that they were so perfect The blocks upon which he drew were composed of small squares, fastened together at the back, so that when the drawing was completed on the block, it was unscrewed, and the various pieces handed over to a number of engravers, each having a square inch or two of landscape, figure, or face, as the case might be, not knowing what proportion of light and shade each piece bore to the whole. John Leech. 33 Had these blocks been carefully and thoughtfully engraved by one hand, and then been printed by the hand instead of the steam press, we might have seen some of the finesse and beauty which the drawing showed before it was ' cut away.' There was nothing that was so great a mark of the gentleness of his nature as his steady abstinence from personality. His correspondence was large, and a perusal of it only shows how careful he must have been, to have shunned the many traps that were laid for him to make him a partisan in personal quarrels. Some of the most wonderful suggestions were for- warded to him, but he had a most keen scent for everything in the shape of personality. We need do little more than allude to the singular purity and good taste manifested in everything he drew or wrote. We do not know any finer instance of blamelessness in art or literature, such perfect delicacy and cleanness of mind, — nothing coarse, — nothing having the slightest taint of indecency, — no double entendre, — no laughing at virtue, — no glorifying or glozing at vice, — nothing to make any one of his own lovely girls blush, or his own handsome face hide itself. This gentleness and thorough gentlemanliness pervades all his works. They are done by a man you would take into your family and to your heart at once. To go over his five volumes of Pictures of Life and Character is not only a wholesome pleasure 3 34 Horcs Subsecivts. and diversion : it is a liberal education. And then he is not the least of a soft or goody man, no small sentimentalism or petit maitre work : he is a man and an Englishman to the backbone ; who rode and fished as if that were his chief business, took his fences fearlessly, quietly, and mercifully, and knew how to run his salmon and land him. He was, what is better still, a public-spirited man ; a keen, hearty, earnest politician, with strong convictions, a Liberal deserving the name. His political pencillings are as full of good, energetic politics, as they are of strong portraiture and drawing. He is almost always on the right side, — sometimes, like his great chief Mr. Punch, not on the popular one. From the wonderful fidelity with which he rendered the cabmen and gamins of London, we might suppose he had them into his room to sit to him as studies. He never did this ; he liked actions better than states. He was perpetually taking notes of all he saw. With this, and with his own vivid memory and bright inform- ing spirit, he did it all. One thing we may be par- doned for alluding to as illustrative of his art His wife, who was every way worthy of him, and without whom he was scarce ever seen at any place of public amusement, was very beautiful ; and the appearance of those lovely English maidens we all so delight in, with their short foreheads, arch looks, and dark laugh- ing eyes, their innocence and esprit, dates from about John Leech. 35 his marriage. They are all, as it were, after her, — her sisters ; and as she grew more matronly, she may still be traced in her mature comeliness and motherly charms. Much of his sketches and their dramatic point are personal experience, as in ' Mr. Briggs has a Slate off his House, and the Consequences.' He was not, as indeed might be expected, what is called a funny maa Such a man was Albert Smith, whose absolute levity and funniness became ponderous, serious, and dreary, the crackling of thorns under the pot Leech had melancholy in his nature, especially in his latter years, when the strain of incessant pro- duction and work made his fine organisation super- sensitive and apprehensive of commg evil. It was -about a year before his death, when in the hunting field, that he first felt that terrible breast-pang, the last agony of which killed him, as he fell into his father's arms ; while a child's party, such as he had often been inspired by, and given to us, was in the house. Probably he had by some strain, or sudden muscular exertion, injured the mechanism of his heart We all remember the shock of his death : how every one felt bereaved, — felt poorer, — felt something gone that nothing could replace, — some one that no one else could follow. What we owe to him of wholesome, hearty mirth and pleasure, and of something better, good as they are, than either — purity, affection, pluck, humour. 36 HorcB Subsecivce. kindliness, good humour, good feeling, good breed- ing, the love of nature, of one another, of truth — the joys of children, the loveliness of our homely English fields, with their sunsets and village spires, their glimpses into the pure infinite beyond — the sea and all its fulness, its waves ' curling their monstrous heads and hanging them,' their crisping smiles on the sunlit sands — all that variety of nature and of man which is only less infinite than its Maker ; some- thing of this, and of that mysterious quality called humour, that fragrance and flavour of the soul, which God has given us to cheer our lot, to help us to ' take heart and hope, and steer right onward,' to have our joke, that lets us laugh at and make game of ourselves when we have little else to laugh at or play with — of that which gives us when we will the silver lining of the cloud, and paints a rainbow on the darkened sky out of our own ' troublous tears ;' — something of all these has this great and simple- hearted, hard-working artist given to us and to our children, as a joy and a possession for ever. Let us be grateful to him, let us give him our best honour, affection, and regard. Mr. Leech was tall, strongly but delicately made, graceful, long-limbed, with a grave, handsome face, a sensitive, gentle mouth, but a mouth that could be ' set,' deep, penetrating eyes, an open, high, and broad forehead, finely modelled. He looked jfohii Leech. T^y like his works— nimble, vigorous, and gentle ; open, and yet reserved; seeing everything, saying not much; capable of heartiest mirth, but generally quiet Once at one of John Parry's wonderful per- formances, ' Mrs. Roseleaf's Tea-party,' when the whole house was in roars, Leech's rich laughter was heard topping them all. There are, as far as we know, only two photographs of him • one — very beautiful, like a perfect English gentleman — by Silvy; the other more robust and homely, but very good, by Caldesi. We hope there is a portrait of him by his devoted friend Millais, whose experience and thoughts of his worth as a man and as an artist one would give a good deal to have. When Thackeray wrote the notice of his sketches in The Times, Leech was hugely delighted — rejoiced in it like a child, and said, ' That's like putting ;,^iooo in my pocket With all the temptations he had to Club life, he never went to the Garrick to spend the evenings, except on the Saturdays, which he never missed. On Sunday afternoons, in summer, Thacke- ray and he might often be seen regaling themselves with their fellow-creatures in the Zoological Gardens, and making their own queer observations, to which, doubtless, we are indebted for our baby hippopotamus and many another four-footed joke. He never would go to houses where he knew he was asked only to be 38 Horce Subsecivce. seen and trotted out. He was not a frequenter of Mrs. Leo Hunter's at-homes. We now give a few remarks on some of Leech's typical woodcuts, and we hope they will send every- body to the volumes themselves. There should immediately be made, so long as it is possible, a complete collection of his works, and a noble monu- ment to industry and honest work, as well as genius and goodness, it would be. We begin with the British Lion : — THE STATE OF THE NATION. DISRAELI MEASURING THE BRITISH LION. [Punchy vol. xvii., July 1849 ] This is from a large Cartoon, but we have only space for the British Lion's head. He is dressed as a farm-labourer. He has his hat and a big stick in his hand, and his tail innocently draggling under his smock-frock, which has the usual elaborate needle- work displayed. Disraeli, who is taking his measure for rehabilitating the creature, is about a third shorter, and we would say six times lighter. What a leonine simpleton ! What a visage ! How much is in it, and how much not ! Look at his shirt collar and chubby cheek ! What hafr ! copious and rank as the son of Manoah's, each particular hair growing straight out into space, and taking its own noway particular way ; his honest, simple eyes, well John Leech. 39 apart ; his snub, infantile nose ; his long upper lip, unreclaimed as No-man's-land, or the Libyan desert, unstubbed as ' Thornaby Waiiste ;' his mouth closed, and down at the corner, partly from stomach in dis- content (Giles is always dyspeptic), partly from con- tempt of the same. He is submitting to be measured and taken advantage of behind his back by his Semitic brother. He will submit to this and much more, but not to more than that. He draws his line like other people, when it occurs to him ; and he keeps his line, and breaks yours if you don't look to it. He may be kicked over, and take it mildly, smiling it may be, as if he ought somehow to take it well, though appearances are against it. You may even knock him down, and he gets up red and flustered, and with his hands among his hair, and his eyes rounder and brighter, and his mouth more linear, his one leg a little behind the other ; but if you hit him again, calling him a liar or a coward, or his old woman no better than she should be, then he means mischief, and is at it and you. For he is like Judah, — a true lion's whelp. Let us be thankful he is so gentle, and can be so fierce and staunch. HEALTHY EXCITEMENT. — HUNTING IN A GALE OF WIND. Did you ever see such a wind ? How it is making game of everything j how everything scuds ! Look 40 Horcs Siibsecivce. at his whiskers. Look at the tail of his descending friend's horse. Look at another's percursory 'Lincoln and Bennett' bowling along ! Look at his horse's head — the jaded but game old mare ; the drawing of her is exquisite ; indeed there is no end of praising his horses. They are all different, and a dealer could tell you their ages and price, possibly their pedigree. There is a large woodcut in the Elustrated London News (any one who has it should frame it, and put the best plate-glass over it) ; it is called ' Very Polite. The party on the grey, having invited some strangers to lunch, shows them the nearest way (by half a mile) to his house.' The ' party ' is a big English squire — sixteen stone at least — with the handsome, insolent face of many of his tribe, and the nose of William the Conqueror. He has put the grey suddenly and quite close to a hurdle-fence that nobody but such a man would face, and nothing but such blood and bone could take. He is returning from a 'run/ and is either ashamed of his guests, and wants to tail them off, or would like to get home and tell his wife that ' some beggars ' are coming to lunch ; or it may be merely of the nature of a sudden lark, for the escape of his own and his grey's unsatisfied 'go.' The grey is over it like a bird. The drawing of this horse is marvellous; it is an action that could only last a fraction of a second, and yet the artist has taken it. Observe the group in the road of the yohn Leech 41 astounded 'strangers.' There is the big hulking, sulky young cornet, 'funking,' as it is technically called ; our friend Tom Noddy behind him, idiotic and ludicrous as usual, but going to go at it like a man such as he is, — the wintry elms, the big hedger at his work on his knees, — all done to the quick. But the finest bit of all is the eye of the mare. She knows well it is a short cut home ; and her cheery; fearless, gentle eye is keenly fixed, not on where she is about to land — that's all right — but on the distance, probably her own stable belfry. This woodcut is very valuable, and one of the largest ever done after him. REMARKABLE OCCURRENCE. [Pictures of Life and Character, vol. iii. p. 2i.] How arch ! how lovely 1 how maidenly in this their ' sweet hour of prime,' the two conspirators are ! What a clever bit of composition ! how workmanlike the rustic seat ! how jauntily the approaching young swells are bearing down upon them, keeping time with iheir long legs ! you know how they will be chaffing all through other in a minute ; what ringing laughs ! ' AND JOCUND DAY STANDS TIPTOE ON THE MISTY MOUNTAIN TOPS,' [Little Tour in Ireland, p. 28.] And is not she a jocund morn ? day is too old for her. She is in 'the first garden of her simpleness' — in 4^2 Horee Subsecivcs. ' the innocent brightness of her new-born day.' How plumb she stands ! How firm these dainty heels ! — leaning forward just a little on the wind ; her petti- coat, a mere hint of its wee bit of scolloped work, done by herself, doubtless ; the billowy gown ; the modest little soup(on of the white silk stockings, anybody else would have shown none, or too much ; the shadow of puffing papa approaching to help her down ; the wonderful sense of air and space. The only thing we question is — Would papa's hat's shadow show the rim across, instead of only at the sides? BIT FROM THE MINMNG DISTRICTS. FcRST— ' Wnt tali thy quo at off, then! Oi till thee oi'm as good a mon as thee !'■ Second — 'Thee a moni Whby, thou he'est only walkiii^ aboot to savi thy funeral expenses.' [Pictures of Life a7td Character^ vol. ii. -p. 19.] This belongs to a set of drawings made when down in Staffordshire, his wife's county. They are all full of savage strength. They show how little he drew from fancy, and how much from nature, memory and invention proper, which, as does also true imagination, postulate a foundation in materials and fact. A mere Cockney — whose idea of a rough was that of a London ruffian — would have put Staffordshire clothes on the Bill Sykes he may have seen in the flesh or more likely on the stage, and that would be all: Leech gives you the essence, the clothes and the county. Look at these two fellows, brutal as their yoh7t Leech. 43 own bull-dogs and as staunch, — having their own virtues too, in a way, — what a shoulder, what a deltoid and biceps ! the upper man developed largely by generations of arm-work, the legs well enough, but not in proportion, — their education having been neglected. Contrast these men with Leech's High- landmen in Briggs' Salmon and Grouse Adventures : there matters are reversed, because so are the con- ditions of growth. A Staffordshire torso on Rannoch or Liddesdale legs would be an ugly customer. Observe the pipe fallen round from the mouth's action in speaking, and see how the potteries are indicated by the smoking brick cupola. MR. BRIGGS STRtJGGLING INTO HIS NEW HUNTING- BOOTS. [PiciJcres 0/ Life and Character, vol. iv. p. 9a J- This is delicious ! What comic vis / Pluck and perspiration ! bewilderment and bottom ! He '11 be at it again presently, give him time. This is only one of the rounds, and the boot-hooks are ready for the next. Look at the state of his back hair, his small, determined eye ! the braces burst with the stress ! The affair is being done in some remote solitary room. The hat is ready, looking at him, and so are the spurs and the other boot, standing bolt upright and impossible; but he'll do it; apoplexy and asphyxia may be imminent; but doubtless these are the very boots he won the steeplechase in. A 44 Horce Subsecivcs. British lion this too, not to be ' done, hating that bite of a word ' impossible ' as much as Bonaparte didj and as Briggs does him. We have an obscure notion, too, that he has put the wrong foot mto the boot ; never mind. The character of Mr. Briggs, throughout all pre- dicaments in Punch, is, we think, better sustained, more real, more thoroughly respectable and comic, than even Mr Pickwick's. Somehow, though the latter worthy is always very delightful and like himself when he is with us, one doesn't know what becomes of him the rest of the day ; and if he was asked to be, we fear he couldn't live through an hour, or do anything for himself. He is for the stage. Briggs is a man you have seen, he is a man of business, of sense, and energy; a good husband and citizen, a true Briton and Christian, peppery, generous, plucky, ob- stinate, faithful to his spouse and bill , only he has this craze about hunting and sport in general. CONNEMARA BAY. ^Little Tour in Ireland^ p. 73.] This is from the Little Tour in Ireland, in which, by the by, is one of the only two drawings he ever made of himself, — at page 141 ; it is a back view of him, riding with very short stirrups a rakish Irish pony ; he is in the Gap of Dunloe, and listening to a barefooted master of blarney. The other likeness is in a two-page Cartoon, — ' Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball, John Leech. 45 January 1847 la the orchestra are the men on the Punch staff at the time. The first on the left is Mayhew, playing the cornet, then Percival Leigh the double bkss, Gilbert A'Beckett the violin, Doyle the clarionet. Leech next playing the same — tall, hand- some, and nervous — Mark Lemon, the editor, as conductor, appealing to the fell Jerrold to moderate his bitter transports on the drum. Mooning over all is Thackeray — big, vague, childlike — playing on the piccolo ; and Tom Taylor earnestly pegging away at the piano. What a change from such a fancy to this sunset and moonrise on the quiet, lonely Connemara Bay, — nothing living is seen but the great winged sea-bird flapping his way home, close to the ' charmed wave.' The whole scene radiant, sacred, and still ; ' the gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme.' The man who could feel this, and make us feel it, had the soul and the hand of a great painter. A MORAL LESSON FROM THE NURSERY. Arthur. Do you know, Freddy, that we are only made of dust ? Freddy. Are we? 7 hen I'm sure we ought to l/e very care- ful how we pitch into each other so, for fectr we might crumble each other all to pieces. [Pictures of Life and Character, vol. iii. p. 27.] This speaks for itself. Nobody needs to be told which is Freddy ; and you see the book from which Arthur got his views of genesis and the mystery of being ; and the motherly, tidy air of the beds J 4.6 Horcs Subsecives^ Freddy's right thumb in his belt ; the artistic use of that mass of white beyond his head ; the drawing of his right sole ; the tremendous bit of theology in that ' only ' — do any of us know much more about it now than does Arthur ? — only surely nobody would now say, according to Pet Marjorie's brother, that our Arthur, as he now sits, clean and caller, all tucked up in his night-gown — made of soft cotton, thick and (doubtless) tweeled — and ready for any amount of discussion, is only 'dirt.'^ We have said he was greater in humour than in caricature or even satire, and, like all true humour- ists, he had the tragic sense and power — for as is the height so is the depth, as is the mirth so is the melancholy ; Loch Lomond is deepest when Ben ' This word, in conjunction with children, brings into our mind a joke which happened to Dr. Korman M'Leod, and which he tells as only he could tell his own stories. He was watching some barelegged Glasgow street children who were busied in a great mud-work in the kennel. ' What 's that ? ' said he, stooping down. 'It's a kirk,' said they, never look- ing up. 'Where's the door?' ' There's the door,' points a forefinger, that answers young Fleming's account of the consti- tution of man. 'Where's the steeple?' 'There's the steeple,' — a defunct spunk, slightly off the perpendicular. 'Where's the poopit ? ' ' There 's the poopit,' said the biggest, his fingei making a hole in a special bit of clay he had been fondly round- ing in his palms ; ' and where 's the minister ? ' ' Oh, ye see, looking as vacant as a congregation in such circumstances should, and as the hole did when he withdrew his finger : ' Ou 're run oot ady Pitlyal said her daughter did not value these things, and that she was resolved to leave it as a legacy to the Antiquarian Society. Holmhead was rather amused with her originality, though he had not forgotten the attack. He said he would try if she was a real Jacobite, and he called out, ' Madam, I am going to propose a toast for ye ! ' May the Scotch Thistle choke the Hanoverian Horse.' ' I wish I binna among the Whigs,' she said. 'And where wad ye be sae weel?' retorted he. 'They murdered Dundee's son at Glasgow.' ' There was nae great skaith,' he replied ; ' but ye maun drink my toast in a glass of this cauld punch, if ye be a true Jacobite.' 'Aweel, aweel,' said Lady Pitlyal, 'as my auld friend Lady Christian Bruce was wont to say, "The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it;'" and as she nodded to the toast and emptied the glass, Holmhead swore exultingly, ' Gad, she's true !' Supper passed over, and carriages were announced The Lady Pitlyal took her leave with Mrs. Gillies. Next day the town rang with the heiress of Pit- lyal. Mr. W. Clerk said he had never met with such an extraordinary old lady, ' for not only is she amusing 136 Horce Subsecivcz. herself, but my brother John is like to expire when I relate her stories at second hand' He talked of nothing else for a week after, but the heiress, and the flea, and the rent-roll, and the old turreted house of Pitlyal, till at last his friends thought it would be right to undeceive him ; but that was not so easily done, for when the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam hinted that it might be Miss Stirhng, he said that was impossible, for Miss Stirling was sitting by the old lady the whole of the evening. CRAIGIE. Another evening Miss Guthrie requested me to introduce my old lady to Captain Alexander Lindsay, a son of the late Laird of Kinblethmont, and brother to the present Mr. Lindsay Carnegie, and Mr. Sandford, the late Sir Daniel Sandford. She came as a Mrs. Ramsay Speldin, an old sweetheart of the laird's, and was welcomed by Mrs. Guthrie as a friend of the family. The young people hailed her as a perfectly delightful old lady, and an original of the pure Scottish character, and to the laird she was endeared by a thousand pleasing recollections. He placed her beside himself on the sofa, and they talked of the days gone by — before the green parks of Craigie were redeemed from the Muir of Gotter- Mystifications. 137 ston, and ere there was a tree planted between the auld house of Craigie and the castle of Claypotts. She spoke of the guid ' auld times, when the laird of Fintry widna gie his youngest dochter to Aber- cairney, but tell'd him to tak them as God had gien them to him, or want' ' And do you mind,' she continued, ' the grand ploys we had at the Middleton ; and hoc Mrs. Scott of Gilhorn used to grind lilts out o' an auld kist to wauken her visitors i' the mornin'?' ' And sorne o' them didna like it sair, tho' nane o' them had courage to tell her sae, but Annie Graham o' Duntrune. ' " Lord forgie ye," said Mrs. Scott, " ye'll no gae to Heaven, if ye dinna like music.'' But Annie was never at a loss for an answer, and she said, " Mrs. Scott — Heaven 's no the place I tak it to be, if there be auld wives in't playing on hand-organs."' Many a story did Mrs. Ramsay tell. The party drew their chairs close to the sofa, and many a joke she related, till the room rung again with the merri- ment, and the laird, in ecstasy, caught her round the waist, exclaiming, ' Oh, ye are a canty wifie.' The strangers seemed to think so too ; they abso- lutely hung upon her, and she danced reels, first with the one, and then with the other, till the entrance of a servant with the newspapers produced a season- able calm. 138 HorcB SubsecivcB. They lay, however, untouched upon the table till Mrs. Ramsay requested some one to read over the claims that were putting in for the king's coronation, and see if there was any mention of hers. 'What is your claim?' said Mr. Sandford. ' To pyke the king's teeth,' was the reply. ' You will think it very singular,' said Mr. Guthrie, ' that I never heard of it before ; will you tell us how it originated?' ' It was in the time of James the First,' said she. 'That monarch cam to pay a visit to the monks of Arbroath, and they brought him to Ferryden to eat a fish dinner at the house o' ane o' my forefathers. The family name, ye ken, was Speldin, and the dried fish was ca'd after them. 'The king was well satisfied wi' a'thing that was done to honour him. He was a very polished prince, and when he had eaten his dinner he turned round to the lady and sought a preen to pyke his teeth. ' And the lady, she took a fish bane, and wypit it, and gae it to the king ; and after he had cleaned his teeth wi' it, he said, " SCfjej! 'xt faeel pgkit." ' " And henceforth," continued he, " the Speldins of Ferryden shall pyke the king's teeth at the corona- tion. And it shall be done wi' a fish bane, and a pearl out o' the Southesk on the end of it. And their crest shall be a lion's head wi' the teeth dis- played, and the motto shall be weel pykit." ' Mystifications. 139 Mr. Sandford read over the claims, but there was no notice given of the Speldins'. ' We maun just hae patience,' said Mrs. Ramsay, 'and nae doubt it will appear in the next newspaper.' Some one inquired who was the present repre- sentative ? ' It 's me,' replied Mrs. Ramsay Speldin ; ' and I mean to perform the office mysel'. The estate wad hae been mine too, had it existed-; but Neptune, ye ken, is an ill neighbour, and the sea has washed it a' awa' but a sand bunker or twa, and the house I bide in at Ferryden.' At supper every one was eager to have a seat near Mrs. Ramsay Speldin. She had a universal acquaint- ance, and she even knew Mr. Sandford's mother, when he told her that her name was Catherine Douglas. Mr. Sandford had in his own mind com- posed a letter to Sir Walter Scott, which was to have been written and despatched on the morrow, giving an account of this fine specimen of the true Scottish character, whom he had met in the county of Angus. We meant to carry on the deception next morning, but the laird was too happy for concealment. Before the door closed on the goodnight of the ladies, he had disclosed the secret, and before we reached the top of the stairs, the gentlemen were scampering at our heels like a pack of hounds in full cry. 140 Hor(e Sudseciva. TULLIALLAN. I went with Lord Gillies and Mrs. Gillies to spend the Christmas holidays at Tulliallan. We met Ad- miral and Mrs. Fleming, Mr. and Mrs. Keay of Snaigo, Mr. John Murray (afterwards Lord Murray), Mr. and Mrs. Russell, Mr. Thomas Thomson, etc. — a very pleasant party. Lady Keith wished me to fake in Count Flahault, but no feasible means could be devised till one day that a robbery had been committed in the neighbour- hood. Two boys were accused, named John Murray and Alexander Jamieson; the former had escaped, but the other was taken up, and brought to be ex- amined before the justices of the peace assembled at the castle. It was suggested that I should come in the form of the mother of one of these lads. Accordingly, a costume was borrowed from the dairymaid, and I was speedily transformed into the character of Mrs. Jamieson, who desired to speak with some of the gentlemen that were taking the precognition. I cannot say that I felt altogether comfortable when I was ushered into an apartment among a motley group of witnesses, and was desired to wait until I was called up-stairs ; but Lady Keith arranged that I should not have long to wait, and desired the servant Mystifications. 141 to bring Mrs. Jamieson into the corridor. The drawing-rooms opened to it, and the doors being left open, the party within could hear all that passed. Count Flahault and Admiral Fleming came from the justice-room, and the latter demanded in an angry tone, 'What is your business ?' ' I am the mither of Alexander Jamieson, and am come to see if you will let off my son.' ' The devil you are,' said the Admiral ; ' your son is a young thief, and deserves to be hanged.' ' I winna say.' ' Because you know very well that you have brought him very ill up, and I suppose you encourage him to steal for you.' 'God forgie ye,' said Mrs. Jamieson; 'it's the like o' you that hae ruined him. He was a gude, weel- living lad afore ye sent him to Bridewell.' ' What,' said Count Flahault, ' has your son been in Bridewell ?' No answer. 'I say,' said the Count, 'has your son been in Bridewell?' Still no answer. The Count then repeated slowly and distinctly, — ' Has your son ever been in Bridewell?' 'Yes.' ' For what was he sent to Bridewell ?' ' For nae great affair.' 142 Hor(B Subsecivcs. ' Tell instantly,' said the Admiral, ' for what he was sent to Bridewell.' ' For nae ither thing, but just because he whuppit a shawl off a stand, and gie'd it till's sweetheart' 'Ay,' said the Admiral, 'and pray how long has your son been in Bridewell? — speak out' ' Sax weeks, and he cam' out a deal waur than he gaed in.' ' I have not the smallest doubt of that,' said the Admiral ; ' I believe you speak the truth now ; ' and returning to the justice-room, he taxed the boy with having been in Bridewell, and received an answer in the affirmative. The Count then asked what brought her? 'I am come to mak' ye an offer,' replied the persevering Mrs. Jamieson. ' What kind of an offer ? ' said the Count with a smile between compassion and contempt ' I ken,' said Mrs. Jamieson, ' you would like very weel to get a hand o' John Murray, and if ye '11 let off my son, I 'se engage to get John Murray to you this very night' 'So you know where John Murray is, do you?' and he went back to the justice-room to relate the further particulars. Lady Keith, by this time, became fearful of mixing up the false witness with the true, and calling to tha Count, she said, ' For God's sake, Charles, give that Mystifications. 1 43 poor woman half-a-crown, and send her away. I cannot bear to see her standing there.' The Count desired the weeping Mrs. Jamieson to go home — an order which she very slowly set about obeying, hesitating and turning round to plead her cause every now and then. The Count, however, was resolute, and gently laying a hand on each shoulder, he marched her before him, and opening the outer door, he put half-a-crown into her hand, and pushed her out, she in the mean- time upbraiding him with having the heart of Pharaoh, that could turn a poor woman to the door in sic a night. The Count was delighted with the denouement ; but upbraided Lady Keith with hurrying on the con- clusion. 'Why did you not let me be more taken in?' he said ; ' and why did Mrs. Jamieson conclude the scene so soon ?' ' She shall be brought back again,' he said ; ' and we shall have a little fun with Keay.' After dinner, therefore, Mrs. Jamieson's return was announced. She was ordered to the dining-room • door, and Mr. Keay was appointed to hear her state- ment. She detailed, in the most pathetic terms, how Sandy Jamieson was the support of her old age, and that she came to petition for his being released. 144 HorcB Subsecivee. Mr. Keay endeavoured to soothe her, spoke kindly, bade her be comforted, assured her that her son would be taken care of as far as he was concerned, but that he could not release him. ' I ken weel what kind o' care ye will tak o' him,' she said. ' What do you mean, my good woman ? ' returned Mr. Keay. 'I ken,' said Mrs. Jamieson, 'you're gaen to mak a ploy o' hangin' him the nicht, and ye 've got Edinburgh judges in the house, and I saw them scrapin' a tree as I cam up the gait ; ' and she wept bitterly, and her grief became clamorous, and she would not move until she should see her son. Mr. Keay recollected having seen two of the foresters in the morning rubbing the lichens off some old oaks on the lawn ; but it was impossible to con- vince Mrs. Jamieson that it could be for any other purpose but that of preparing a gallows for her son. He returned to the dining-room to communicate to the party the state she was in, and the delusion under which she laboured. 'Give her half-a-crown, Keay,' said the Count; ' and do you. Admiral, give her as much, and she '11 go home.' ' I would see her hanged first,' replied the Admiral ; but Mr. Keay returned to the comfort of the dis- Mystifications. 145 tressed, and taking her kindly by the hand, slipped half-a-crown into it. 'What is that?' said she, throwing down the money ; ' it is the price of blood, and it shall never be said that Janet Jamieson sell'd her bairn's blood for half-a-crown.' 'You mistake, my good woman,' said Mr. Keay, ' it is not the price of blood. I assure you your son is quite safe; he is gone to Culross in a cart' ' To Culross in a cart ! ' shrieked Mrs. Jamieson. ' I winna stir from this house till ye bring him back again.' Mr. Keay's patience was now exhausted, and the more especially when he heard shouts of merriment from the dining-room. 'If you don't speedily take yourself off, you will be turned out. Better, there- fore, take the half-crown, and trust me there will no harm happen to your son to-night ; ' saying which he returned into the dining-room, and shut the door upon the distressed mother. By the time the gentlemen joined the ladies in tne drawing-room, a hole had been drilled through each of the half-crowns, and they were suspended round the neck of their new proprietor. Some months afterwards I happened to go with some strangers to see the new jail in EdinburgL The prisoners were amusing themselves in their airing ground. 10 146 HorcB SubsecivcB. ' That,' said the jailer, pointing to a young man, ' is the most hardened and incorrigible offender we have.' I inquired his name, and he said it was John Murray. RAITH. From TuUiallan we removed to Raith to bring in the new year. A very brilliant party was assembled. The gentlemen enjoyed the pleasures of the battue in the mornings, and we sat down to dinner upwards of twenty every day. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson, Sir Ronald and Miss Ferguson, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ferguson (now Sir Henry and Lady Davie), Mr. and Mrs. Michael Angelo Taylor, Lord Gillies and Mrs. Gillies, Mr. and Mrs. Russell, the Marquis of Tweeddale and his brothers. Lords John and Thomas Hay, Lord Maitland, the present Lord Lauderdale, and the Honourable Captain Maitland, Count Flahault, Lord Duncan, the present Lord Camper- down, Mr. John Murray, and though last, not least, the Honourable John Elliot, the very life and soul of the party. He was the universal favourite, and was altogether a delightful person, full of anecdote, and a mimic of the first water. Sir Ronald gave us personations of a certain Provost, and Mr. Murray gave specimens of all the judges on the bench ; and after we had been some Mystifications. 147 days together, Mr. Ferguson announced the expecta- tion of a visit of the Lady Pitlyal, and expressed his regret that I was engaged to a ball at Lord Rosslyn's. Her ladyship arrived just as dinner was announced, having remained in Kirkcaldy by the advice of her coachman till after dark, 'as he said there was a great gathering of thoughtless young men at Raith, and there was to be a battle wi' the Ephesians, and he thought we had better keep out o' harm's way.' Lord Gillies offered his arm to the dining-room, and placed her at table between himself and Mr. Elliot. She expressed great disappointment in not finding Lord Lauderdale of the party. ' I understood he was to be at Raith,' she said, 'and I wanted to consult him on a piece of business of great im- portance both to myself and the nation.' Mr. Elliot pressed her to take Maraschino, till Lord Gillies was obliged to tell him he knew the Lady Pitlyal was a very abstemious person, and that she never took anything but a glass of wine at dinner. She spoke to him of the estate of Melgund, and of its having been the residence of Cardinal Bethune. He believed it was rather a good place, and in- quired if she knew it well. She said she kenned a' the land thereabout, frae the south side of Seidlaw to the north o' the Grampians. And she told him how a living lobster had fallen out 148 Horce SubsecivcB. of a cadger's creel up about the parish of Lintrathen, and how a Highlandman had picked it up and carried it to the minister, and how the minister put on his spectacles to see what kind of a beast it was, and after lang examination, and mony a reference to the Bible, he pronounced it to be either an elephant or a turtle-dove. Mr. Elliot, in his turn, related how a seafaring friend of his, in giving an order for provisioning the ship, said, ' I am resolved to have a cow, for I am very fond of new-laid eggs. ' He then told her that a young lady had taken his purse the night before, and he would refer to the Lady Pitlyal what punishment should be awarded. She said she would give the same judgment that the bellman of Arbroath did on a like occasion, when he happened to be the finder of it himsel' — 'John Elliot 's lost his purse, And his money which is worse ; Them that 's found it let them keep it, Them that 's tint it let them seek it.' When dinner was removed, and the domestics were withdrawn, she recurred again to her regret at missing Lord Lauderdale, as it was of great conse- quence to her to have her bill brought in this session. Mr. Ferguson begged to know the nature of the bill, as some of the party present might perhaps be of use to her. Mystifications. 1 49 She said it concerned a charter which had lately been discovered in the garret of Pitlyal; it was a grant from James the Fifth, that the leeches of the loch of Pitlyal should become a monopoly ; and she wished Lord Lauderdale to bring in a bill obliging the king and all the heads of the nation to use the Pitlyal leeches. Lord Tweeddale said he would be happy to lay it before the Peers, and Sir Ronald was sure his friend Mr. Taylor would bring it into the House of Com- mons. Lord Gillies begged she would explain the origin of the charter. She said the king was on a hunting party in Strath- more, and he was thrown from his horse and ta'en up for dead ; that leeches were got from the loch of Pitlyal and applied to his head, and he recovered; and when he came till himsel', he speered at some o' the bystanders what like his head was, and the gude- man of that place said there was a muckle clour upon 't ' Muckle Clour,' says the king ; ' henceforth this place shall be ca'd Muckle Clour, and the land, gudeman, shall be your ain.' ' The place was since sell'd to an ancestor of Lady Keith's ; it is now ca'd Meikleour, ye ken, Count And the king said, "Ye shall bear the leeches on your shield, and I bind myself and my subjects to make use of them in need." 150 HorcB Subseciva. 'The richt o' the leeches wasna disposed o' when Mickleclour was sold; but for mair than a century the charter has been amissing, and leeches have been ta'en out o' ither lochs, and great quantities have been brought over from Holland ; and now it will no' be an easy thing to bring back the monopoly.' Mr. Taylor was doubtful how such a thing could be done ; nor could he distinctly see by what right she could expect it. Mr. Russell thought it might be a right of the same kind that secures thirlage to a mill. Lord Duncan interrupted the subject of right by stating that he had many times been at Pitlyal, and had heard her ladyship speak a great deal about the loch leeches, but he would like just to be in- formed how she had been in the practice of catching them. ' Oh, Robert, Robert ! ' replied her ladyship re- proachfully, ' mony ane speers the road they ken. I've seen you aftner than ance wade into the water, and come out wi' them sticking on your legs.' The cause was triumphant; his lordship was fairly cheered into recollection, but Mr. Taylor could not be made to understand it, and no one could assume sufficient gravity to explain. As soon as a hearing could be obtained. Count Flahault inquired after the health of the Rosebud. Mystifications. 1 5 1 'She's very weel, and shortly to be married,' re- plied her ladyship. ' To whom, may I beg leave to ask ?' ' To the Prince of Monaco.' ' A friend of mine,' said the Count ; but the name was not familiar to any of the rest of the party. ' I '11 gie ye a Scotch mark,' she said to Mr. Fer- guson ; ' it was his father that thought a' the lamps in London had been lighted up in honour of his arrival, and, as he drove through the city, he exclaimed with delight, " I 've often heard the English was a polite nation, but this is too much." I believe,' she added, ' my Jean will be a great match for him, for his principality is the very smallest in Italy ; it lies, I believe, on the shore of the Mediter- ranean.' The Count bit his lip. ' It does,' said he, ' and the gentleman is my particular friend ; he is now the ,' I forget the name. In the drawing-room, Mr. Elliot hastened to the side of his new friend, and many was the story they successively told. ' You carry the leeches on your shield ?' said Mr. Elliot. ' And the lion for the crest. I am the lion,' she replied. ' I was once a hare myself,' returned he ; and he began a story he had told the night before— how he 152 HorcB SubsecivtB. had acted the part of a hare to the astonishment of an old gentleman in the neighbourhood of Minto ; before the end of it, however, he caught the expres- sion of the lady's eye, and lifting up the veil which shaded her features, exclaimed — ' Now, I have found the Lion of PitlyaL' DINNER PARTY AT LORD GILLIES'S. Sir Walter Scott expressed a wish to see a persona- tion, and Lord Gillies made a party for the purpose, among whom were Sir Walter and Miss Scott, Sir Henry and Lady Jardine, the Lord Chief Commis- sioner and Miss Adam, Doctor Coventry, the Chief Baron, Sir Samuel Shepherd, and others. Among other things that afforded subject of con- versation was the fancy ball of the night before ; the various dresses and characters were commented on, and among them the inconsistent conduct of a black knight, who had thrown down the gauntlet without waiting to see who would pick it up. The knight was said to be young Mr. T — . The dinner passed very pleasantly, as all Lord Gillies's dinners do ; and when we returned to the drawing-room I bade good-night to the ladies. The Misses Carnegy and their old friend Mrs. Arbuthnott of Balwylie came to tea. Myshfications. 153 With all the ladies, except Lady Jardine and Miss Scott, Mrs. Arbuthnott was intimately acquainted. To them, therefore, she was now, by Mrs. Gillies, particularly introduced. Lady Jardine whispered to Mrs. Gillies, ' What a beautifully dressed old lady, her clothes are so hand- some, and so suitable to her time of life, and at the same time fashionable and lady-like. I wish some old ladies in this town would only take example by it.' The gown was a dark silk made up to the throat, and with sleeves to the wrist. A pure white gauze handkerchief pinned tight over it, an apron of clear white muslin trimmed with point lace, and a cap of point with bows of white satin ribbon ; a green shade, and French grey kid gloves seamed with black silk. Mrs. Gillies hoped she was to have the pleasure of seeing the rest of Mrs. Arbuthnott's family. To which she replied that they would all be here, but that they were dining out. Miss Adam inquired how many of her family had come up with her. ' There is the laird,' she said, ' my eldest son, and the three orphans left to my care by my second son, and there 's our right-hand man and governor, James Dalgetty.' ' The young men,' she continued, ' wanted a little amusement, and they cam' up to the Fancy Ball. The laird had to attend a meeting of the Antiquarian 154 Horn SubsecivcB. Society, and I thought I might as weel tak' the oppor- tunity to come and see my friends.' ' Your grandsons will be grown out of my acquaint- ance,' said Miss Adam. •They're fine handsome young men,' was the reply ; ' and Charles, the youngest of them, is the life and spirit of the whole house. He's a jewel of a creature, and the very image of his father.' ' How did they like the ball ? ' inquired Miss Scott. ' Extraordinary weel, and Charles went in the dress of a black knight.' 'Was it your grandson, then, Mrs. Arbuthnott,' continued Miss Scott, ' that was the black knight ? I am delighted to hear you say so. It destroyed the romance of the thing altogether when we were told it was the son of Mr. T — .' The gentlemen now entered the drawing-room. All who were previously acquainted with Mrs. Arbuth- nott expressed their delight at meeting her, and she became in a high degree animated by the sight of so many old friends. The Lord Chief Commissioner, claiming the privi- lege of an old sweetheart, sat down beside her on the sofa, and Sir Walter Scott, though a comparatively new acquaintance, placed himself by her on the other side. ' Do you know, papa,' said Miss Scott, ' that Mrs. Arbuthnott's grandson was the black knight ? ' Mystifica tions. 1 5 5 ' And poor Charles got a sad fright,' continued Mrs. Arbuthnott, — ' he did very weel till he threw down the glove, but syne he lost his presence o' mind a'thegither.' ' I am afraid,' said Sir Walter, ' it is no uncommon thing for knights in his situation to lose their pre- sence of mind.' • Where is the rest of your party, Mrs. Arbuth- nott?' now inquired Lord Gillies. ' They '11 be here presently, my Lord, but the laird is gone to a meeting of the Antiquarians, and the young men will come as soon as their dinner-party breaks up.' Then turnitig to Sir Walter, ' I am sure you had our laird in your e'e when you drew the character of Monkbarns.' ' No,' replied Sir Walter, ' but I had in my eye a very old and respected friend of my own, and one with whom, I daresay you, Mrs. Arbuthnott, were acquainted, — the late Mr. George Constable, of Wallace, near Dundee.' ' I kenned him weel,' said Mrs. Arbuthnott, 'and his twa sisters that lived wi' him, Jean and Christian, and I 've been in the blue-chamber of his Hospitiunt; but I think,' she continued, ' our laird is the likest to Monkbarns o' the twa. He 's at the Antiquarian Society the night presenting a great curiosity that was found in a quarry of mica slate in the hill at the back of Balwylie. He 's sair taen up about it, and 156 HorcB Subsecivcs. puzzled to think what substance it may be; but James Dalgetty, wha 's never at a loss either for the name or the nature of onything under the sun, says it 's just Noah's auld wig that blew aflf yon time he put his head out of the window of the ark to look after his corbie messenger.' James Dalgetty and his opinion gave subject of much merriment to the company, but Dr. Coventry thought there was nothing so very ludicrous in the remark, for in that kind of slate there are frequently substances found resembling hairs. Lord Gillies presented Dr. Coventry to Mrs. Arbuthnott, as the well-known professor of agricul- ture, and they entered on a conversation respecting soils. She described those of Balwylie, and the particular properties of the Sourock Park, which' James Dalgetty curses every time it's spoken about, and says, ' It greets a' winter, and gims a' simmer.' The Doctor rubbed his hands with delight, and said that was the most perfect description of cold wet land he had ever heard of; and Sir Walter expressed a wish to cultivate the acquaintance of James Dalgetty, and extorted a promise from Mrs. Arbuth- nott that she would visit Abbotsford, and bring James with her. ' I have a James Dalgetty of my own,' continued Sir Walter, 'that governs me just as yours does you.' Mystifications. 157 Lady Ann and Mr. Wharton Duff and their daughter were announced, and introduced to Mrs. Arbuthnott. Lady Ann was remarkably spirituelle, possessed a great talent for fun and humour, spoke the Scotch fluently, and entered the lists at once with Mrs. Arbuthnott. Many a good story she told — not only witty herself, but, as Falstaff says, she was also the cause of wit in others — and was altogether a very delightful person. Mrs. Arbuthnott inquired if she had heard what had happened to a laird on Deeside, when he was salmon-fishing short syne ? 'What laird?' said Lady Ann. ' One that shall be nameless for the present,' continued Mrs. Arbuthnott; 'but the first bite nearly whummelled him into the water. " Gie him line," cried Willy Bruce the fisher; "that chield maun hae play." 'And sure enough the laird gae him line — three days and twa nights he warstled wi' the beast, and there wasna a bush, nor the stump o' an auld tree, a' the way between the falls of the Feuch and the Linn 0' Dee, that he didna mak steppin'-stanes o'. At length the line broke, and down cam the laird. " The devil 's got the hook," he cried, and up again he couldna rise. 'A'body wonders if he saw ony thing, and some 158 Horcs Subsecivcs. say it was the auld Abbot of Arbroath, that used to dress himsel' in a white coat and a curled wig, to gar folk believe he was the laird o' Seton, when there was ony ploy gaen on that wasna just suitable for a monk's cowl to be seen in. ' He was doomed to haunt the rivers for a thousand years afore he should get into purgatory. 'But Willy Bruce swears it was naething but a muckle salmon that he 's kenned in the water these twenty years, and the fishers ca'd him William the Conqueror, because he managed aye to brak their lines ; but be that as it may, the laird got sic a flag that he was carried hame in a ragin' fever, and he 's keepit his bed aye sinsyne.' ' I know where you are now,' exclaimed Lady Ann Duff, and she began to relate a pendant to this history about the laird of Abergeldie. But the laughter caused by the downfall of the salmon-fishing laird only received a fresh impulse from this inter- ruption. Mr. Henry Jardine and his sister were announced : the former recognised a friend beneath the green shade, and his smile was returned by Mrs. Arbuthnott; He was a friend of Charles's, and had been at Balwylie. At ten, Sir Walter and Miss Scott took leave, with a promise that they should visit each other, and bending down to the ear of Mrs. Arbuthnott, Sir Mystifications. 159 Walter addressed her in these words : ' Awa ! awa ! the deil 's ower grit wi' you.' And now are we not all the better for this pleasantry? so womanly, so genial, so rich, and so without a sting, — such a true diversion, with none of the sin of effort or of mere cleverness ; and how it takes us into the midst of the strong-brained and strong-hearted men and women of that time ! what an atmosphere of sense and good breeding and kindliness ! And then the Scotch ! cropping out everywhere as blithe and expressive and unexpected as a gowan or sweet-briar rose, with an occasional thistle, sturdy, erect, and bristling with Nemo me. Besides the deeper and general interest of these Mystifications, in their giving, as far as I know, a unique specimen of true personation — distinct from acting — I think it a national good to let our youngsters read, and, as it were, hear the language which our gentry and judges and men of letters spoke not long ago, and into which such books as Dean Ramsay's and this are breathing the breath of its old life. Was there ever anything better or so good, said of a stiff clay, than that it ' girns (grins) a' simmer, and greets (weeps) a' winter ' ? AVhen we read over the names we find here, we see the men, we hear them, and feel their living i6o Ho7'cB SubsecivcB. power. There is Lord Newton, huge in body and in mind, capable of any mental and social effort, full of hard reason. William Clerk, only less witty and odd than his great Swiftian brother. Lord Eldin. Lord Rutherfurd then young, but rejoicing as only a strong man does, to run his race, with those great, burning, commanding eyes, and that noble head. Lord Gillies, every inch a man and judge — strong, clear, prompt, inevitable, with a tenderness of heart that only such men can have and give. I remember well his keen, shrewd, handsome, authoritative face, his shapely, well-knit legs in his Hessian boots. There is Harry Cockburn, with those wonderful eyes, melancholy and lonely, brown, and clear, and deep as a muirland tarn, sparkling at times as if the sun shone on them, or oftener as if a star of their own twinkled from out their depths ; but their habitual expression pensive to melancholy: what nature and fun and pathos ! what a voice, what homely power ! and his long country stride, and his leisurely flow of soul, rippling but strong, singing a perpetual and quiet tune, as if listening to himself and turning everything to his humour, — as native, as inimitable, as unmade and exquisite as a roadside flower spring. 1 And there is Jeffrey, whom flattery, ' It would be endless to give instances of his peculiar humour. It was mild in tone, and didn't explode so much as expand ; but for quiet and intense exaggeration I don't know anything Mystifications. 1 6 1 success, and himself cannot spoil, or taint that sweet, generous nature — keen, instant, unsparing and true as a rapier ; the most painstaking and honest-working of all clever men ; such eyes ! and that mouth, made to speak to and beguile women — mobile and yet firm, arch, and kind, with a beautiful procacity or petulance about it, that you would not like absent in him, or present in any one else. Michael Angelo Taylor, the conjunction of whose names is glory and peculiarity enough. John Archibald Murray, handsome, courtly, bountiful ; strong and full of courage when put to it, and not to be trifled with. The Honourable John Elliott, who still is what he was then, 'the life and soul of the party.' Count Flahault bright, galant, and gallant, proud of his English, prouder of his French and his whist. And moving about, the greatest and naturallest of them all, like a Newfoundland dog or his own Maida among his fellows. Sir Walter, the healthiest, manliest of all our men of letters — frank, open, and full of work as the day ; with that homely, burly to equal it. We all remember his ' Edinburgh is as quifet as the grave, or even Peebles.' One day, coming down the Mound from Court, about five P.M., a friend met him, and said, ' You're looking tired ; have you been all this time in Court?' 'Yes,' he said querulously; 'it's that man .' ' Does he take up your time at that rate ?' ' Time ! he ex- hausts Time, and encroaches on Eternity.' There was genius in that word ' encroach. ' 1 62 Horce Subsecivcs. frame, that shrewd, pawky face, with its grey eyes and heavy eyebrows, its tall, tower-like skull (he used to say his hat was small, but then he filled it) — eyes when at rest heavy, filled with latent genius and story, like music slumbering on its instrument ; when awake and lighted from within, how alive, how full of fun, making his rich voice, and rich laugh all the richer ! He was then at his zenith ; he was after that to go down in that miserable fight — fighting as few men ever did against such odds — ruined as such a man could only be ruined, by himself, by his own romantic, fatal weaknesses ; we have no nobler piece of virtue in the old Greek sense of manliness, than in his leading on alone his forlorn hope, sticking to his colours to the last, and giving in only when the brain, his weapon, gave way and failed. I remember him about that time : he used to walk up and down Princes Street, as we boys were coming from the High School, generally with some friend, and every now and then he stopped, and resting his lame leg against his stick, laughed right out at some joke of his friend's or his own : he said a good laugh was worth standing for, and besides required it for its completion. How we rejoiced when we took off our bonnets, to get a smile and a nod from him, thinking him as great as Julius Caesar or Philopcemen, Hector or Agricola, any day. I can fancy I see and hear him as he bends down to ' Mrs. Arbuthnott of Mystifications. 163 Balwylie,' and says, with his rich burr rolhng in his mouth, and in her ear, 'Awa! awa ! the deil's ower gritvi\' ye.'i And the ladies, or, as I prefer calUng them, the women of these times, how worthy — how, in scientific phrase, complementary of the men ! — meeting them in all common interests half way, neither more nor less, — their companions, well read, well bred, free yet refined, full of spirit and sense — with a strong organ of adhesiveness, as our friends the phrenologists would say. I wish we had more, or many of such women now-a-days : women who, with all their gifts and graces, were always womanly in their ways and speech, and as distinct in character each from the other as were the men — as much so as a beech is from a birch, or a lily from a rose. Now our flowers are what are called composite, and too often double, one of the effects of over cultivation. Our men are like larches — if you have seen one you have seen a ' All the stories about Scott are good. I had one from his attached and grateful friend the late James Russell, that accomplished actor and tine gentleman, which is perhaps not generally known. John Kemble was acting in the Edinburgh Theatre, and being out of sorts, played langifidly and ill, when suddenly he blazed out into his full power, and went on magnificently to the close. William Murray said to him afterwards, ' How was it that you began so ill and finished so well ?' ' Oh ! ' said Kemble, ' didn't you see ? Walter came in ; ' and he played up to Walter. 164 Hora Subsecivce. thousand, and if you have seen one of his sides, you have seen all the others. Then, while they were not all oaks or Scotch firs, though some were but ash, elm, crab-tree, or thorn as each might be, they had all characters of their own, so that if nature had been reversed, and their minds had become visible and their bodies unseen, no one would have mistaken Lord Newton for Lord Jeffrey, or either for Sir Walter or ' Holmhead.' If this same Mystification were applied to many of our men and women now, how hard to make out who was who, when everybody speaks as well as reads the news- papers, and nothing else. It is one of my best pleasures to know, besides the author of this volume which I have so ' unconscion- ably ' rifled, two who were companions of the men of renown, whose names and work are all that now remain to us. The one to whom Miss Graham so affectionately dedicates her book, was then beautiful and good, shrewd and sincere, gracious and full of grace. She is all these still, and more. She has that wise, deep, gentle goodness which comes from time and sorrow, and a long life of love to man and love to God : were she .a modern lady, when our women are too much of everything except women, she would have given us something better than the Cottagers of Glenbttmie, and as good as The Inherit- ance. And her sister, who again keeps house with Mystifications. 165 her, meaning to end life as they began it, under the same roof, as natural, as unhmt by the world, by custom and by praise, as when they were girls in George Square ; had she been a French woman, which I am thankful she was not, she would have been a Madame de Stael, with much of her genius and power, her eloquence and ' large discourse,' her strength of thought, of feeling, and of expression, her public heart, without any of her faults or foibles. She is the only woman I ever knew who is not only eloquent but an orator. She has the gift of great speech, can wield a long sentence like a man, and keep it alive and make it tell — make it sting, or flash, or convince as she desires. With all these great, and as I may call them public powers, she is, like her sister, more of a woman than of all these, — truthful, full of sympathy for suffering, indeed her feeling for long-continued bodily pain — a by no means common but very true virtue-^I have never known equalled, having herself been too well quali- fied to be so ; fuU of public spirit, but fuller of private worth and heart To know such women, to have the privilege of familiar life with them, is of itself, as Steele said, ' a liberal education.' They were worthy to be the wives and companions of Adam GiUies and of Malcolm Laing. I have seen many deaths, but these come vividly into my mind. i66 Horce Subsecivce. Mrs. Gillies, after being kept alive for years by. keeping her in bed in winter, was dying, and, like her life, her death was gentle. A very short time before it came she took her round, little, embossed gold watch, which she always when awake carried in her shut left hand, with a short black ribbon and its key; collecting her breath and holding out the watch, she said to her sister Mrs. Laing, her life-long com- panion, ' Take that, Margaret, I am done with Time.' Another fine old lady was dying, and could not lie down. Not many minutes before the end — sitting up — she had heart disease — she caught sight of her own face in a console mirror. She looked steadfastly at herself, then, with a serious smile, gave a nod, as if to say ' good-bye,' and died. A very old man — thoroughbred — a great salmon fisher — a lover of pleasure and of nicety of body — sent for me in the middle of the night : he was fast dying, and knew it — and, with a strange frown said. Doctor, this is a most disgusting process ; and, look- ing to a bottle of laudanum on the mantelpiece, said, ' Give me that, and end it.' I said what any one would say. His anger deepened, and settling himself straight, and setting his mouth, he, by what I believe was a supreme act of the will, ceased to live MISS STIRLING GRAHAM OF DUNTRUNE. r played imth the bairnies at bmvls and at bd'. And left them a' greeting when I cam' awa' ; Ay I mitliers and bairnies, and lassies and a\ Were a' sobbin' loudly when I cam' awa'. MISS STIRLING GRAHAM OF DUXTRUXE. THIS gifted, excellent, and most delightful old lady, the perfect type of a Scottish gentle- woman, died yesterday afternoon, 23d August 1877, at her beautiful seat Duntrune, in Forfarshire, above Broughty Ferry, overlooking the Tay, with the woods of Ballumbie on one side, and those of Linlathen, her dear friend Mr. Erskine's estate, on the other, and with St Andrews and the noble tower of St. Rule standing out clear on the sky line to the south. Miss Graham was in her ninety-sixth year, having been born in 1782. Her fether, Patrick Stirling of Pittendreich, in the county of Forfar, and a much esteemed merchant in Dundee, married the heiress of Duntrune, and Miss Graham, the eldest of two daughters, a brother having predeceased her, in- herited the property. The otlier daughter was the wife of Colonel Lacon, and to her daughters' unfailing love Miss Graham owed much of the best happiness of her life. Her birthplace was an old bouse in a narrow back lane, leading off the main 1 70 Hoi'tz Subsecivcs. thoroughfare of Dundee, which is still, we believe, pointed out to strangers as the place where the authoress of the Mystifications first saw the light. Her life may almost be said to have been one long summer day, not without its clouds, but on the whole happy, delightful, and beneficent in no ordinary degree. Few have left the world so regarded with immediate, unmixed, and deserved affection, and fewer still have retained to the last, as she did, the pure fresh unblunted attachments of childhood to their friends. Dying at ninety-five, she was as gay and truthful and artless as a girl, with all the serious and 'thoughtful breath' that becomes a 'traveller between life and death.' Always full of benevolence and public spirit, one of the earliest manifestations of this was some time ago amusingly told by an old Forfarshire farmer whom a friend of ours happened to fall in with in the neighbourhood of Dundee. When Dr. Jenner's great discovery was first announced it immediately attracted Miss Graham's interest and enthusiasm, and long before the Faculty became alive to its importance she used to ride about on her little white pony vaccinating with a needle every child whose birth she heard of in her neighbourhood. We have been told that in this way she protected from the terrible scourge of the smallpox not less than about 300 infants. Our farmer friend had Miss Stirling Graham. 171 been one of her early patients. So carefully was it done that it used to be said that none of those operated on by Miss Graham ever took smallpox. In public affairs it was the same thing — always on the side of the right and the true. She was a life- long Liberal — liberal in all the senses of the word. Though intimate with Sir Walter Scott, who has recorded his admiration of her in one of his diaries, she consorted mainly with the men of the Edinburgh Rei'iew. Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Gillies, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, Murray, and all that great race whom we had and have not, were among her friends. It was to her that Sydney Smith made that famous joke, of the day being so hot that 'he wished he could put off his flesh and sit in his bones, and let the wind whistle through them.' In her own county, where everybody knew her and she knew everybody and who their forebears were, she will be long remembered. The love of the people for her and their pride in her were wonderful. Those who were nearest to her — the inmates of her household, her servants, her dependants, her tenants — cherished for her something like adoration — she was so tender- hearted, and, interested in all their interests, so steadfast a friend. So modest was she, so just in her sense of herself, that every one was at ease with her, and felt that whatever she did and said and felt was as real as the material objects about them. 172 Horcs Subsecivcs. She was always being and doing good in multitudes of unseen ways. To her intimate friends, it is not for us to say what she was and what her loss is. But even to the outside public she is endeared by her marvellous Mystifications, which, as far as we know, are quite unique in literature. We have all heard how, in the pleasantest and most thorough way, she 'took in' Jeffrey, Sir Walter, Sir Daniel. Sandford, William Clerk, Count Flahault, and everybody ; how with a fine faculty for satire she never pained ; with so much sense she was never dull ; with so much wit and pleasantry she was never excessive in any way ; for her nature was based on love and goodness. Who among us does not remember — though we have hardly the heart now to think of them — the wonderful interview at 92 George Street between Jeffrey and the Lady Pitlyal — the ' pykin ' of the king's teeth and the royal patent of ' weel pykit,' the stiff clay land that ' grat a' winter and girned a' simmer,' which threw Dr. Coventry, the agricultural professor, into convulsions of delight ? It was a singular gift. Meet Miss Graham in company and you found her quiet, unpretending, sensible, shrewd, kindly — perhaps you did not remark anything extraordinary in her. But let her put on the old lady, and immediately it was as if a warlock's spell had passed over her. Not merely her look but her nature was Miss Stirling Graham. 173 changed. Her spirit had passed into the character she represented, and jest, quick retort, whimsical fancy, the wildest humour flowed from her lips with a freedom and truth to nature which would have been impossible in her own personality. The Mystifications were at first privately printed, and it was with some difficulty she was prevailed on to give them to the public. They soon passed here and in America into permanent favourites. Miss Graham also published in 1829 The Bee Book, a translation of M. de Gelieu's work, and fifty years afterwards she republished it, to the great benefit of all bee-keepers. She retained to the last all her faculties and affections — her memory, her humour, her interest in life, her tender fidelity to friends, her love, we might almost say her happy-heartedness, passion for nature and iall things fair. One little scene of her earl)- life we like to recall. She and her next neighbour, the late Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, were always great friends, and some now alive, we believe, can still remember seeing them occasionally riding out together — the two so like in some respects, and so unlike — II Penseroso and L'Allegra^ — he discoursing doubtless even then, in those young days, of ' righteousness,' and she listening, but with her eyes wide awake the while, to the outward nature which she loved so well, and with a keen and kindly look to the country folk who passed them on the road. 1 74 Hoi'cB SubsecivcE. Until the last few years Miss Graham used to spend her winters in Edinburgh, and her modest house in Forth Street (No. 29), with its bright happy evenings of which she was the heart and life, can never be forgotten by those who survive them. With her have perished a thousand memories of old Edin- burgh and Forfarshire society. Some of these are added as an appendix to the last edition of the Mystifications ; but they want, of course, the life and spirit which, when telling them to her friends, she used to put into many a happy story of these old times. To those who know the Mystifications it is hardly necessary to say that she possessed a true literary faculty. The writing is always clear, simple, unaffected, and in perfect taste. With all her sense of humour there was an underlying seriousness in her character ; very touching and tender, ' for instance, are the dedication of Mystifications to Mrs. Gillies, and the lines with which she concludes. 'Few,' she says, writing in December 1868, 'are now alive who shared or assisted in these joyous scenes, and the Mystifier, at an advanced age, waits in humble reliance the certainty of her summons.' ' Blessed shades of the past. In the future I see ye, so fedr I Ties that were nearest, Forms that were dearest, The truest and fondest are there. Miss Stirling Graham. i 75 They are flowerets of earth, That are blooming in heaven, so fair ! And the stately tree, Spreading wide and free. The sheaves that were ripened are there. The tear-drop that trembled In Pity's meek eye ; and the prayer, Faith of the purest, Hope that was surest. The love all-enduring are there. And the loved, the beloved, Whose life made existence so fair ! The soft seraph voice Bade the lowly rejoice. Is heard in sweet harmony there.' THACKERAY'S DEATH. THACKERAY'S DEATH. THIS great writer — our greatest novelist since Scott (and in some senses greater, because deeper, more to the quick, more naked than he), our foremost wit and man of letters since Macaulay — has been taken from us with an awful unexpected- ness. He was found dead in bed on the morning of 24th December 1863. This is to us so great a personal as well as public calamity; that we feel little able to order our words aright or to see through our blinding tears. Mr. Thackeray was so much greater, so much nobler than his works, great and noble as they are, that it is difficult to speak of him without apparent excess. What a loss to the world the disappearance of that large, acute, and fine understanding; that searching, inevitable inner and outer eye ; that keen and yet kindly satiric touch ; that wonderful humour and play of soul ! And then such a mastery of his mother tongue ! such a style ! such nicety of word and turn ! such a flavour of speech ! such genuine originality of genius and expression ! such an insight lyS Horcs Subsecivcs. into the hidden springs of human action ! such a dissection of the nerves to their ultimate fibrillm ! such a sense and such a sympathy for the worth and for the misery of man ! such a power of bring- ing human nature to its essence, — detecting at once its basic goodness and vileness, its compositeness ! In this subtle, spiritual analysis of men and women, as we see them and live with them ; in this power of detecting the enduring passions and desires, the strengths, the weaknesses, and the deceits of the race, from under the mask of ordinary worldly and town life, — making a dandy or a dancing-girl as real, as ' moving delicate and full of life,' as the most heroic incarnations of good and evil ; in this vitality and yet lightness of handling, doing it once and for ever, and never a touch too little or too much, — • in all these respects he stood and stands alone and matchless. He had a crystalline translucency of tliought and language; there was no mistaking or missing his meaning. It was like the finest etching, done with a needle and bitten in with the best aqua- fortis, — the manilre incisive to perfection; while, when needed, he could rise to the full diapason of passion and lofty declamation : and this was not the less striking from being rare and brief, like a flash of close lightning with its thunder quick and short. Besides his wit, his quiet, scrupulous, and unerring eye, his proper satiric gifts, his amazing faculty of Thackeray s Death. 1 79 making his men and women talk each in their own voice and tongue, so that you know them before they are named, Mr. Thackeray had, as the condition under which all these acted, a singularly truthful, strong, and roomy understanding. There was an immense quantity, not less than the finest quality of mind in everything he said. You felt this when with him and when you measured with your eye his enormous brain. His greatest work, one of the great masterpieces of genius in our, or indeed in any language, without doubt, is Vanity Fair. This set him at once and by a bovmd in the first rank of fiction. One returns again and again to it, with its freshness, its depth, and terrible truth and power, its easy yet exquisite characterisation, its living talk, its abounding wit and fun. We remember how, at the dinner given to him many years ago here, the chairman (Lord Neaves), with equal felicity and truth, said that two of Mr. Thackeray's master powers were satire and sympathy, for without both of them he would not have been all that he peculiarly was. It should never be forgotten that his specific gift was creative satire, — not caricature, nor even sarcasm, nor sentiment, nor romance, nor even character as such, — but the delicate satiric treatment of human nature in its most superficial aspects as well as in its inner depths, by a great-hearted, and tender and I So • Horcs SubsecivcB. genuine sympathy, unsparing, truthful, inevitable, but with love and the love of goodness and true loving-kindness over-arching and indeed animating it all. It was well said by Brimley, in his subtle and just estimate of our great author in his Essays, that he could not have painted ' Vanity Fair as he has, unless Eden had been shining in his inner eye.' It was this sense of an all-perfect good, of a strict good-: ness laid upon each one of us as an unescapable law, it was this glimpse into the Paradise, not lost, of the lovely and the pure, which quickened his fell insight into the vileness, the vanity, the shortcomings, the pitifulness of us all, of himself not less than of any son of time. But as we once heard him say, he was Created with a sense of the ugly, of the odd, of the meanly false, the desperately wicked ; he laid them bare : them under all disguises he hunted to the death. And is not this something to have done.'' Something inestimable, though at times dreadful and sharp ? It purges the soul by terror and pity. This, with his truthfulness, his scorn of exaggera- tion in thought or word, and his wide, deep, living sympathy for the entire round of human wants and miseries, goes far to make his works in the best, because a practical sense, wholesome, moral, honest, and of ' good report.' It is needless to enumerate his works. We not only all know and possess them, — they possess us ; Thackeray s Death. i8i for are not Becky Sharp, Colonel Newcome, Major Pendennis, the Little Sister and Jeames, the Mulli- gan, and the terrific Deuceace, more really existing and alive in our minds than many men and women we saw yesterday ? Mr. Thackeray had, we believe, all but if not entirely, finished a novel which was to appear in the Cornhill next spring. It will be a sad pleasure to read the last words of the great genius and artist to whom we owe so much of our best entertainment. He had a genuine gift of drawing. The delicious Book of Snobs is poor without his own woodcuts ; and he not only had the eye and the faculty of a draughtsman, he was one of the best of art critics. He had the true instinct and relish, and the nicety and directness, necessary for just as well as high criticism : the white light of his intellect found its way into this as into every region of his work. We should not forget his verses, — he would have laughed if they had been called poems ; but they have more imaginative vis, more daintiness of phrase, more true sensibility and sense, than much that is called so both by its authors and the public. AVe all know the abound- ing fun and drollery of his ' Battle of Limerick,' the sweet humour and rustic Irish loveliness of ' Peg of Limavaddy,' and the glorified cockneyism of ' Jacob Omnium's 'Oss.' ' The Ballad of Eliza Davis,' and the joys and woes of ' Pleaceman X,' we all know ; 1 82 Horce Subsecivce. but not so many know the pathetic depth, the dreamy, unforgetting tenderness, of the 'Ballad of Bouilla- baisse,' 'The White Squall,' and 'The End of the Play,' — the last written, strangely as it now reads, for Christmas 1848, this day fifteen years ago. From it we take the following mournful and exquisite lines : — ' I 'd say we suffer and we strive. Not less nor more as men than boys ; With grizzled beards at forty-five, As erst at twelve in corduroys. And if, in time of sacred youth, We learned at home to love and pray. Pray Heaven that early Love and Trutli May never wholly pass away. And in the world, as in the school, I 'd say, how fate may change and shift ; The prize be sometimes with the fool. The race not always to the swift. The strong may yield, the good may fall. The great man be a vulgar clown. The knave be lifted over all, The kind cast pitilessly down. We bow to Heaven that willed it so. That darkly rales the fate of all. That sends the respite or the blow, That 's free to give, or to recall. So each shall mourn, in life's advance, Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed ; Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance And longing passion unfulfilled. Thackeray s Death. 183 Amen ! whatever fate be sent, Pray God the heart may kindly glow, Although the head with cares be bent, And whitened with the winter snow. Come wealth or want, come good or ill. Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the Awful Will, And bear it with an honest heart. My song, save this, is little worth ; I lay the weary pen aside, And wish you health, and love, and mirth, As fits the solemn Christmas-tide. As fits the holy Christmas birth. Be this, good friends, our carol still — Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will ' Gentle and sacred as these words are, they are as much an essential part of their author's nature as that superfluity of naughtiness, the Marquis of Steyne, in Vanity Fair, or the elder and truly infernal Deuceace, or the drunken and savage parson, in Philip. It was no ordinary instrument which embraced so much, and no ordinary master who could so sound its chords. Mr. Thackeray had a warm heart to Edinburgh. It was here he took courage from the cordial, appre- ciative reception he got when he lectured here, and he always returned to us Avith renewed relish. Many of us will now think over with a new and deeper interest — the interest of the sudden grave and the 1 84 . HorcB Subseciva. irrevocable and imperishable past — on those pleasant times when he read his 'Wit and Humour' and his 'Curate's Walk,' and, with a solemn tenderness, simplicity, and perfectness, such as it is now hopeless ever again to hear, read to us ' The spacious firma- ment on high,' and Johnson's noble and touching lines on poor Levett. We know of no death in the world of letters since Macaulay's which will make so many mourners, — for he was a faithful friend. No one, we believe, will ever know the amount of true kindness and help, given often at a time when kindness cost much, to nameless, unheard-of suffering. A man of spotless honour, of the strongest possible home affections, of the most scrupulous truthfulness of observation and of word, we may use for him his own words to his ' faithful old gold pen ' : — ' Nor pass the words as idle phrases by ; Stranger ! I never writ a flattery, Nor signed the page that registered a lie.' He has joined the immortals ; for we may say of him, what we can say of few, — he is already and for ever classic. He is beyond the fear of forgetfulness or change, for he has enshrined his genius in a style crystalline, strong, beautiful, and enduring. There was much of many great men in him, — of Montaigne, Le Sage, Swift, and Addison, of Steele and Gold- smith, of Fielding, Molifere, and Charles Lamb ; but Thackeray s Death. 185 there was more of himself than of all others. As a work of art, his Esmond is probably the most con- summate : it is a curious iour de force, — a miracle not only of story-telling, but of archaic insight and skill. The foregoing estimate of his genius must stand instead of any special portraiture of the man. Yet, before concluding, we would mention two leading traits of character traceable, to a large extent, in his works, though finding no appropriate place in a literary criti- cism of them. One was the deep steady melancholy of his nature. He was fond of telling how on one occa- sion, at Paris, he found himself in a great crowded salon; and looking from the one end across the sea of heads, being in Swift's place of calm in a crowd,i he saw at the other end a strange visage, staring at him with an expression of comical woebegoneness. After a little he found that this rueful being was himself in the mirror. He was not, indeed, morose. He was alive to and thankful for every-day blessings, great and small ; for the happiness of home, for friendship, for wit and music, for beauty of all kinds, for the pleasures of the 'faithful old gold pen ;' now running into some felicitous expression, now playing itself into some droll initial letter; nay, even for the creature comforts. But his persistent state, especially ' 'An inch or two above it.' 1 86 HorcB SubsecivcB. for the later half of his life, was profoundly morne, — there is no other word for it. This arose in part from temperament, from a quick sense of the littleness and wretchedness of mankind. His keen perception of the meanness and vulgarity of the realities around him contrasted with the ideal present to his mind could produce no other effect. This feeling, embittered by disappointment, acting on a harsh and savage nature, ended in the smva indignatio of Swift ; acting on the kindly and too sensitive nature of Mr. Thackeray, it led only to compassionate sadness. In part, too, this melancholy was the result of private calamities. He alludes to these often in his writings, and a knowledge that his sorrows were great is necessary to the perfect appreciation of much of his deepest pathos. We allude to them here, painful as the subject is, mainly because they have given rise to stories, — some quite untrue, some even cruelly injurious. The loss of his second child in infancy was always an abiding sorrow, — described in the 'Hoggarty Diamond,' in a passage of surpassing tenderness, too sacred to be severed from its context. A yet keener and more constantly present affliction was the illness of his wife. He married her in Paris when he was ' mewing his mighty youth,' preparing for the great career which awaited him. One likes to think on these early days of happiness, when he could draw and write with that loved companion by his side: Thackeray s Death. 187 he has himself sketched the picture : ' The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend watch- ing at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work in her lap, and with fond smiles or talk or silence, cheering his labours.' After some years of marriage, Mrs. Thackeray caught a fever, brought on by im- prudent exposure at a time when the effects of such ailments are more than usually lasting both on the system and the nerves. She never afterwards re- covered so as to be able to be with her husband and children. But she has been from the first intrusted to the good offices of a kind family, tenderly cared for, surrounded with every comfort by his unwearied affection. The beautiful lines in the ballad of the ' Bouillabaisse ' are well known : — ' Ah me ! how quick the days are flitting ! I mind me of a time that 's gone, When here I 'd sit as now I 'm sitting. In this same place — but not alone. A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me — There 's no one now to share my cup.' In one of the latest Roundabouts we have this touching confession : ' I own for my part that, in reading pages which this hand penned formerly, I often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the words I see; but that past day; that bygone page of life's history ; that tragedy, comedy it may 1 88 Hor(v Sudsecivts. be, which our little home-company was enacting; that merry-making which we shared; that funeral which we followed ; that bitter, bitter grief which we buried.' But all who knew him know well, and love to recall, how these sorrows were soothed and his home made a place of happiness by his two daughters and his mother, who were his perpetual companions, delights, and blessings, and whose feeling of inestimable loss now will be best borne and comforted by remembering how they were everything to him, as he was to them. His sense of a higher Power, his reverence and godly fear, is felt more than expressed — as indeed it mainly should always be — in everything he wrote. It comes out at times quite suddenly, and stops at once, in its full strength. W't could readily give many instances of this. One we give, as it occurs very early, when he was probably little more than six-and-twenty ; it is from the paper, Madame Sand and the Nnv Apocalypse. Referring to Henri Heine's frightful words, ' Dint qui se meurf' ' Z?/V// est mart,' and to the wild godlessness of Spt'ridion, he thus bursts out : ' O awful, awful name of God ! Light unbearable 1 Mystery unfathomable ! Vastness immeasurable ! Who are these who come forward to explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light, and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair ? O name, that God's people of Thackeray' s Death. 189 old did fear to utter ! O light, that God's prophet would have perished had he seen ! Who are these that are now so familiar with it?' In ordinary inter- course the same sudden ' Te Deum ' would occur, always brief and intense, like lightning from a cloud- less heaven ; he seemed almost ashamed, — not of it, but of his giving it expression. We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December, when he was walking with two friends along the Dean Road, to the west of Edinburgh — one of tlie noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening, — such a sunset as one never forgets ; a rich dark bar of cloud hovered over the sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed in amethystine bloom ; between this cloud and the hills there was a narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip colour, lucid, and as if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness ; every object standing out as if etched upon the sky. The north-west end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the heart of this pure radiance, and there a wooden crane, used in the quarry below, was so placed as to assume the figure of a cross; there it was, unmistakeable, Hfted up against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at it silently. As they gazed, he gave utterance in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what all were feeling, in the word ' Calvary !' The friends I go HorcB Subsecivce. walked on in silence, and then turned- to other things. All that evening he was very gentle and serious, speaking, as he seldom did, of divine things, — of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation ; express- ing his simple faith in God and in his Saviour. There is a passage at the close of the 'Round- about Paper,' No. xxiii., De Finibus, in which a sense of the ebb of life is very marked : the whole paper is like a soliloquy. It opens with a drawing of Mr. Punch,^ with unusually mild eye, retiring for the night ; he is putting out his high-heeled shoes, and before disappearing gives a wistful look into the passage, as if bidding it and all else good-night He will be in bed, his candle out, and in darkness in five minutes, and his shoes found next morning at his door, the little potentate all the while in his final sleep. The whole paper is worth the most careful study ; it reveals not a little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret of his work, the vitality, and abiding power of his own creations : how he ' invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of characters,' and met the original the other day, without surprise, in a tavern parlour. The following is beautiful : ' Years ago I had a quarrel with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be quite ' See note on page 194. Thackeray's Death. igi incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I said to his brother, "Why is your brother's soul still dark against me ? It is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the wrong!"' Odisse quern Iceseris was never better contravened. But what we chiefly refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the following strain, as if written with a presentiment of what was not then very far off: 'Another Finis written; another mile- stone on this journey from birth to the next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this story-telling business, and be voluble to the end of our age ? ' ' Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to hold your tongue?' And thus he ends: — ' Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages ; oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again ! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last; after which, behold Finis itself comes to an end, and the Infinite begins.' He sent the proof of this paper to his ' dear neighbours,' in Onslow Square (Sir Theodore and Lady Martin), to whom he owed so much almost daily pleasure, with his corrections, the whole of the last paragraph in manuscript, and above a first sketch of it also in ms., which is. fuller and more 13 r92 HorcB SubsecivcB. impassioned. His fear of ' enthusiastic writing ' had led him, we think, to sacrifice something of the sacred power of his first words, which we give with its interhneations : — ' Another Finis, another slice of life which Tempus edax has devoured ! And I may have to write the word once or twice perhaps, and then an end of disputes, the troubles, the cares, the ennui, the ce=:iilisaiJas», the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again, and here and there and oh the delightful passages, the dear, the brief, the forever remembered ! And. tbsi3 A few chapters more, and then the last, and then behold Finis itself coming to an end and the Infinite beginning ! ' How like music this, — like one trying the same air in diff'erent ways ; as it were, searching out and sounding all its depths. 'The dear, the brief, the for ever remembered;' these are like a bar out of Beethoven, deep and melancholy as the sea! He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel enemy. He fixed with his friend and surgeon to come again on Tuesday; but with that dread of anticipated pain, which is a common condition of sensibility and genius, he put him off with a note from ' yours unfaithfully, W. M. T.' He went out on Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. Thackeray's Death. 193 He went to his room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit with him. He hated to malce others suffer. He was heard moving, as if in pain, about twelve, on the eve of ' That the happy mom, Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King, Of wedded maid, and virgin-mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring.' Then all was quiet, and then he must have died — in a moment. Next morning his man went in, and opening the windows found his master dead, his arms behind his head, as if he had tried to take one more breath. We think of him as of our Chalmers ; found dead in like manner ; the same childlike, unspoiled open face ; the same gentle mouth ; the same spaciousness and softness of nature ; the same look of power. What a thing to think of, — his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst of his own mighty London ; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it may be, dreaming of his goodness. God help them, and us all ! What would become of us, stumbling along this our path of life, if we could not, at our utmost need, stay ourselves on Him ? Long years of sorrow, labour, and pain had killed him before his time. It was found after death how little life he had to live. He looked always fresh with that abounding, silvery hair, and his young, almost infantine face, but he was worn to a shadow, 194 HorcB Subsecivte, and his hands wasted as if by eighty years. With him it is the end of Ends ; finite is over, and infinite begun. What we all felt and feel can never be so well expressed as in his own words of sorrow for the early death of Charles Buller : — ' Who knows the inscrutable design ? Blessed be He who took and gave ! Why should your mother, Charles, not mine. Be weeping at her darling's grave ? We bow to Heaven that willed it so. That darkly rules the fate of all, That sends the respite or the blow. That 's free to give, or to recall.' NOTE. Mr. Thackeray's connection with Punch began very early in the history of that periodical, and he continued a constant con- tributor at least up to 1850. The acquisition was an invaluable one to Mr. Punch. Without undue disparagement of that august dignitary, it may now be said that at first he was too exclusively metropolitan in his tone, too much devoted to ' natural histories ' of medical students and London idlers, — in fact, somewhat Cockney. Mr. Thackeray at once stamped it with a different tone ; made its satire universal, adapted its fun to the appreciation of cultivated men. On the other hand, the connection with Punch must have been of the utmost value to Mr. Thackeray. He had the widest range, could write with- out restraint, and without the finish and completeness necessary in more formal publications. The unrestrained practice in Punch, besides the improvement in style and in modes of thought which practice always gives, probably had no small share in teaching him wherein his real strength lay. For it is worthy of notice in Mr. Thackeray's literary career that this knowledge did not come easily or soon, but only after hard Thackeray s Death. 195 work and much experience. His early writings both in Eraser and Punch were as if groping. In these periodicals his happier efforts come last, and after many preludes, — some of them broken off abruptly. ' Catherine ' is lost in ' George de Barnwell;' ' Yellowplush ' and ' Fitz-boodle ' are the pre- ambles to ' Barry Lyndon ' and ' The Hoggarty Diamond ;' Punch's ' Continental Tour ' and the ' Wanderings of the Fat Contributor ' close untimely, and are succeeded by the ' Snob Papers ' and the kindly wisdom of the elder Brown. Fame, indeed, was not now far off; but ere it could be reached there remained yet repeated effort and frequent disappointment. With peculiar pleasure we now recall the fact that these weary days of struggle and obscurity were cheered in no inconsider- able degree by the citizens of Edinburgh. There happened to be placed in the window of an Edinburgh jeweller a silver statuette of Mr. Punch, with his dress en rigueur, his comfortable and tidy paunch, with all its buttons ; his hunch; his knee-breeches, with their tie; his compact little legs, one foot a little forward ; and the intrepid and honest, kindly little fellow firmly set on his pins, with his customary look of up to and good for anything. In his hand was his weapon, a pen ; his skull was an inkhom, and his cap its lid. A passer-by — who had long been grateful to our author, as to a dear unknown and enriching friend, for his writings in Fraser and in Punch, and had longed for some way of reaching him, and telling him how his work was relished and valued — be- thought himself of sending this inkstand to Mr. Thackeray. He went in, and asked its price. ' Ten guineas, sir.' He said to himself, ' There are many who feel as I do ; why shouldn't we send him up to him ? I '11 get eighty several half-crowns, and that will do it ' (he had ascertained that there would be discount for ready money). With the help of a friend, who says he awoke to Thackeray, and divined his great future, when he came, one evening, in Fraser for May 1844, on the word kinopium,^ the half-crowns were soon forthcoming, and it is 1 Here is the passage. It is from Little Travels and Roadside Sketches. Why are they not republished? We must have his 196 Horez SubsecivcB. pleasant to remember, that in the 'octogint ' are the names of Lord Jeffrey and Sir William Hamilton, who gave their half- crowns with the heartiest good-will. A short note was written telling the story. The little man in silver was duly packed, and sent with the following inscription round the base : — GULIELMO MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. ARMA VIRUMQUE GRATI NECNON GRAT^ EDINENSES LXXX. D. D. D. To .this the following reply was made : — * 13 Young Street, Kensington Square, May II 1848. 'My dear Sir, — The arms and the man arrived in safety yesterday, and I am glad to know the names of two of the eighty Edinburgh friends who Have taken such a kind method of showing their good-will towards me. If you are grati I am gratior. Such Opera Omnia. He is on the top of the Richmond omnibus. ' If I were a great prince, and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of the best Havanas in my pocket, not for my own smoking, but to give them to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poison the air with the odour of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above simple precaution. 'A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back, and asked for a light. He was a footman. Or rather valet. He had no Hvery, but the three friends who accompanied him were tall men in pepper-and-salt undress jackets, with a duke's coronet on their buttons. 'After tapping me on the back, and when he had finished his cheroot, the gentleman produced another wind instrument, which he called a " kinopium," a sort of trumpet, on which he showed a great inclination to play. He began puffing out of the kinopium an abominable air, which he said was the "Duke's March." It was played by the particular request of the pepper-and-salt gentry. ' The noise was so abominable, that even the coachman ob- jected, and said it was not allowed to play on his bus. "Very well," said the valet, "7ue're only of the Duke of B 's establish- ment, THAT'S ALL.'" Thackeray s Death. 197 tokens of regard & sympathy are very precious to a writer like my- self, who have some difficulty still in making people understand what you have been good enough to find out in Edinburgh, that under the mask satirical there walks about a sentimental gentle- man who means not unkindly to any mortal person. I can see exactly the same expression under the vizard of my little friend in silver, and hope some day to shake the whole octogint by the hand gratos & gratas, and thank them for their friendliness and regard. I think I had best say no more on the subject, lest I should be tempted into some enthusiastic writing of w*" I am afraid. I assure you these tokens of what I can't help acknowledging as popularity — make me humble as well as grateful — and make me feel an almost awful sense of the responsibility w'' falls upon a man in such a station. Is it deserved or undeserved ? Who is this that sets up to preach to mankind, and to laugh at many things w"" men reverence? I hope I maybe able to tell the truth always, & to see it aright, according to the eyes w*" God Almighty gives me. And if, in the exercise of my calling I get friends, and find en- couragement and sympathy, I need not tell you how much I feel and am thankful for this support. Indeed I can't reply lightly upon this subject or feel otherwise than very grave when people begin to praise me as you do. Wishing you and my Edinburgh friends all health and happiness, believe me, my dear Sir, most faithfully yours, W. M. Thackeray.' How like the man is this gentle and serious letter, written these long years ago ! He tells us frankly his ' calling : ' he is a preacher to mankind. He ' laughs, ' he does not sneer. He asks home questions at himself as well as the world : ' Who is this?' Then his feeling ' not otherwise than very grave ' when people begin to praise, is true conscientiousness. This servant of his Master hoped to be able ' to tell the truth always, and to see it aright, according to the eyes which God Almighty gives me. ' His picture by himself will be received as correct now, 'a sentimental gentleman who means not unkindly to any mortal person, ' — sentimental in its good old sense, and a gentleman in heart and speech. And that little touch about enthusiastic writ- ing, proving all the more that the enthusiasm itself was there. MARJORIE FLEMING. MARJORIE FLEMING. ONE November afternoon in 1810 — the year in which Waverley was resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in India — three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escap- ing like schoolboys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm-in-arm down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet. The three friends sought the Meld of the low wall old Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout west wind. The three were curiously unlike each other. One, ' a little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace,' slight, with ' small,, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her weaknesses.' Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be ; homely, almost 200 Horce Subsecives. common, in look and figure ; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material ; what redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness, were his eyes, deep set, heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in, as if they could be danger- ous ; a man to care nothing for at first glance, but somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power ; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; ' a stout, blunt carle,' as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills — • a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders, was set that head which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the world. He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their fill of the fun ; there they stood shaking with laughter, 'not an inch of their body free' from its grip. At George Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church, one to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle Street. We need hardly give their names. The first was Marjorie Fleming. 201 William Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath — ' And at the touch of wrong, without a strife, Slipped in a moment out of life.' There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his youth. The second was William Clerk, the Darsie Latimer of Redgauntlet ; ' a man,' as Scott says, ' of the most acute intellects and powerful apprehension,' but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little more than the report of what he might have been, — a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his brother Lord Eldin, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best of all the humours, called good. The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us ? Who else ever, except Shake- speare, so diverted mankind, entertained and enter- tains a world so liberally, so wholesomely ? We are fain to say, not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion, something higher than plea- sure, and yet who would care to split this hair ? Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a change he would see ! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the Parliament House and of the world ; 202 HorcB Sttdsecivcs. and next step, moody, the light of his eye with- drawn, as if seeing things that were invisible ; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so innocent, so sad ; he was now all within, as before he was all without ; hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, ' How it raves and drifts ! On-ding o' snaw — ay, that 's the word — on-ding — ' He was now at his own door, ' Castle Street, No. 39.' He opened the door, and went straight to his den ; that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote Peveril of the Peak, Quetitin Durward, and St. Ronan's Well, besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but mark the solemnising effect of sitting where the great magician sat so often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky and that back green, where faithful Camp lies.^ He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow- chair, drew himself close to his table, and glowered ' This favourite dog 'died about January 1809, and was buried in a fine moonlight night in the little garden behind the house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family in tears about the grave as her father himself smoothed the turf above Camp, ^N\'Ca the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologised, on account of the death of "a dear old friend.'" — Lockhart's Life of Scott. Marjorie Fleming. 203 and gloomed at his writing apparatus, a very hand- some old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such order, that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an hour before. He took out his paper, then starting up angrily, said, ' " Go spin, you jade, go spin." No, d — it, it won't do, — " My spinnin' wheel is auld and stiff, The rock o't wunna stand, sir, To keep the temper-pin in tiff Employs ower aft my hand, sir." I am off the fang.^ I can make nothing of Waverley to-day; I'll awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief.' The great creature rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a maud (a plaid) with him. ' White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo !' said he, when he got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow, and his master strode across to Young Street, and through it to i North Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. WilUam Keith of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said at her death, eight years after, ' Much tradition, and that of the best, has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness and ' Applied to a pump when it is dry, and its valve has lost its 'fang;' from the German, ya«^?«, to liold. 204 HorcB Subsecivcs. freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable.' Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. ' Marjorie ! Marjorie !' shouted her friend, 'where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?' In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. 'Come yer ways in, Wattie.' ' No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap.' 'Tak' Marjorie, and it on-dtng o' snaw !' said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, ' On-ding — that's odd — that is the very word.' 'Hoot, awa! look here,' and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made to hold lambs — (the true shepherd's plaid, con- sisting of two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or cul de sac). ' Tak' yer lamb,' said she, laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet was first well happit up, and then put, laugh- ing silently, into the plaid-neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb, — Maid a gambolling through the snow, and running races in his mirth. Didn't he face ' the angry airt,' and make her bield his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy, little wifie, who took it all with great composure ! There the Marjorie Fleming. 205 two remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and standing sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be — 'Ziccoty, diccoty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccoty, diccoty, dock.' This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers, — he saying it after her, — ' Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven ; Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven ; Pin, pan, musky, dan ; Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, Twenty-wan ; eerie, one, ourie, You, are, out.' He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um Twoddle-um made him roar with laugh- ter. He said Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind ; she getting quite bitter in her displeasure at his ill behaviour and stupidness. Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement 14 2o6 Horce Subseciva. over Gil Morrice or the Baron of Smailholm ; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat Constance's speeches in King John, till he swayed to and fro sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed, repeating — ' For I am sick, and capable of fears, Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears ; A widow, husbandless, subject to fears ; A woman, naturally born to fears. ' ' If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim. Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb. Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious — .' Or, drawing herself up ' to the height of her great argument ' — ' I will instruct my sorrows to be proud. For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout. Here I and sorrow sit.' Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over him, saying to Mrs. Keith, ' She 's the most extra- ordinary creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does.' Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, who has much of the sensibility and fun of her who has been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Marjorie — before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, bright and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the paper, ' Cut out in her last illness,' and two pictures of her by her beloved Isabella, Marjorie Fleming. 207 whom she worshipped; there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over which her warm breath and her warm little heart had poured them- selves ; there is the old water-mark, 'Lingard, 1808.' The two portraits are very like each other, but plainly done at different times ; it is a chubby, healthy face, deep-set, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going on within, as to gather in all the glories from without ; quick with the wonder and the pride of life ; they are eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing ; eyes that would devour their object, and yet childlike and fearless ; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satisfied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, . which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most mobile, and speak- ing feature. There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him — fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Wordsworth's hnes on poor Hartley Coleridge : — ' O blessed vision, happy child ! Thou art so exquisitely wild, I thought of thee with many fears, Of what might be thy lot in future years. I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, Lord of thy house and hospitality ; And Grief, uneasy lover ! ne'er at rest, But when she sat within the touch of thee. 2o8 Horce SubsecivcB. Oh, too industrious folly ! Oh, vain and causeless melancholy ! Nature will either end thee quite, Or, lengthening out thy season of delight. Preserve for thee by individual right, A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock. ' And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately friend's lines : — ' Loving she is, and tractable, though wild. And Innocence hath privilege in her, To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes, And feats of cunning ; and the pretty round Of trespasses, affected to provoke Mock chastisement and partnership in play. And as a fagot sparkles on the hearth, Not less if unattended and alone, Than when both young and old sit gathered round, And take delight in its activity. Even so this happy creature of herself Is all-sufficient ; solitude to her Is blithe society ; she fills the air With gladness and involuntary songs. ' But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really Marjorie's as was this light brown hair ; indeed you could as easily fabricate the one as the other. There was an old servant — Jeanie Robertson — who was forty years in her grandfather's family. Marjorie Fleming, or as she is called in the letters, Marjorie Fleming. 209 and by Sir Walter, Maidie, was the last child she kept. Jeanie's wages never exceeded £,■>, a year, and when she left his service, she had saved ^^40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, rather despis- ing and ill-using her sister Isabella — a beautiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie apt at times to domineer over Isabella. 'I mention this' (writes her surviving sister) ' for the purpose of telling you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. When only five years old — when walking in Raith grounds, the two children had run on before, and old Jeanie remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill-lade. She called to them to turn back. Maidie heeded her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isabella to "give it her" for spoiling her favourite's dress; Maidie rushed in between crying out, " Pay (whip) Maidjie as much as you like, and I '11 not say one word ; but touch Isy, and I '11 roar like a bull !" Years after Maidie was resting in her grave, my mother used to take me to the place, and told the story always in the exact same words.' This Jeanie must have been a character. She took great pride in exhibiting Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic acquirements when nineteen months old, to the ofificers of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This performance was so amusing that 2IO Horcs SubsecivcB. it was often repeated, and the little theologian was presented by them with a cap and feathers. Jeanie's glory was ' putting him through the carritch' (cate- chism) in broad Scotch, beginning at the beginning with ' Wha made ye, ma bonnie man ?' For the correctness of this and three next replies, Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the child's face as she demanded, ' Of what are you made ?' ' Dirt ' was the answer uniformly given. ' WuU ye never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil?' with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder. Here is Maidie's first letter before she was six : the spelling unaltered, and there are no ' commoes.' 'My dear Isa, — I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters whicli you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of my acquaintance praises me dreadfully. I repeated something out of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for the stage, and you may think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a little birsay — birsay is a word which is a word that William com- posed which is as you may suppose a little enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt is beauti- Marjorie Fleming. 2 1 1 full which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature.' What a peppery little pen we wield ! What could that have been out of the sardonic Dean? what other child of that age would have used 'beloved' as she does ? This power of affection, this faculty of Moving, and wild hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well— we know indeed that it was far better — for her that this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the law of her earthly life. Love was, indeed ' her Lord and King ;' and it was perhaps well for her that she found so soon that her and our only Lord and King, Himself is Love. Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead : — ' The day of my existence here has been delightful and enchanting. On Saturday I expected no less than three well made Bucks the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith — the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Crakey and I walked to Crakyhall (Craigiehall) hand in hand in Innocence and matita- tion (meditation) sweet thinking on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. 2 1 2 Horce Subseciva. Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck and pretty good-looking. 'I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The birds are singing sweetly — the calf doth frisk and nature shows her glorious face.' Here is a confession : — ' I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she never whiped me but said Marjory go into another room and think what a great crime you are committing letting your temper git the better of you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got the better of me but she never never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it and the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she never never does it. . . . Isabella has given me praise for checking my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an hole hour teaching me to write.' Our poor little wifie, she has no doubts of the personality of the Devil ! ' Yesterday I behave extremely ill in God's most holy church for I would never attend myself nor let Isabella attend which was a great crime for she often often tells me that when to or three are geathered together God is in the Marjorie Fleming. 213 midst of them, and it was the very same Divil that tempted Job that tempted me I am sure; but he resisted Satan though he had boils and many many other misfortunes which I have escaped. ... I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure.' This is delicious ; and what harm is there in her 'Devilish?' it is strong language merely; even old Rowland Hill used to say ' he grudged the Devil those rough and ready words.' ' I walked to that delightful place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by all his friends espacially by me his loveress, but I must not talk any more about him for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of gentalmen but I will never forget him ! . . . I am very very glad that satan has not given me boils and many other misfortunes — In the holy bible these words are written that the Devil goes like a roaring lyon in search of his pray but the lord lets us escape from him but we' {^auvre petite !) ' do not strive with this awfull Spirit. . . . To-day I pronunced a word which should never come out ot a lady's lips it was that I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you what I think made me in so bad a humor is I got one or two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day,' — a better excuse for bad humour and bad language than most. 2 1 4 Horcs Subsecivce. She has been reading the Book of Esther : ' It was a dreadful thing that Haman was hanged on the very gallows which he had prepared for Mordeca to hang him and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel to hang his sons for they did not commit the crime ; but then Jesus was not then come to teach us to be merciful.' This is wise and beautiful — ^has upon it the very dew of youth and of holiness. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He perfects His praise. 'This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I have play half the Day and I get money too but alas I owe Isabella 4 pence for if I am finned 2 pence whenever I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme colings nots of interrigations peorids coramoes, etc. ... As this is Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and Religious subjects. First I should be very thankful I am not a begger.' This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to have been all she was able for. ' I am going to-morrow to a delightful place, Brae- head by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there is ducks cocks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I think it is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them' (this is a meditation physiological), 'and they are drowned after all. I would rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they do not bear like women- dogs ; it is a hard case — it is shocking. I cam here Marjorie Fleming. 2 1 5 to enjoy natures delightful breath it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose oil.' Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, ' the gudeman o' Ballengiech,' as a reward for the services of his flail when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gipsies. The farm is un- changed in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition of the possessor being ready to present the King with a ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having done this for his unknown king after the splore, and when George the Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was performed in silver at Jlolyrood. It is a lovely neuk this Braehead, preserved almost as it was 200 years ago. ' Lot and his wife ' mentioned by Maidie — two quaintly cropped yew-trees — still thrive, the burn runs as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune — as much the same and as different as Now and Then. The house full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shining on them through the small deep windows with their plate glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and chattering contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of eld, have been in the ark, and domineered over and deaved the dove. Everything about the place is old and fresh. This is beautiful : — ' I am very sorry to say that I 2 1 6 HorcB SubsecivcB. forgot God— that is to say I forgot to pray to-day and Isabella told me that I should be thankful that God did not forget me — if he did, O -what become of me if I was in danger and God not friends with me — I must go to unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin — how could I resist it O no I will never do it again — no no — if I can help it.' (Canny wee wifie !) ' My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my charecter is lost among the Braehead people. I hope I will be religious again — but as for regaining my charecter I despare for it.' (Poor little 'habit and repute !') Her temper, her passion, and her ' badness ' are almost daily confessed and deplored : — ' I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that I cannot be good without God's assistance — I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me — it will indeed.' ' Isa has giving me advice, which is, that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that I flea him and he would flea me.' ' Remorse is the worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a marter to it.' Poor dear little sinner ! — Here comes the world again : — ' In my travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esq., and from him I got ofers of marage — offers of marage, did I say ? Nay plenty heard me.' A fine scent for ' breach of promise !' Marjorie Fleming. 2 1 7 This is abrupt and strong : — ' The Divil is curced and all works. 'Tis a fine work Newton on the profecies. I wonder if there is another book of poems comes near the Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight of the Bible.' 'Miss Fortune' (her ' simpliton ' friend) ' is very fat ; she pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a stone that dropt from the skies; but she is a good Christian.' Here come her views on church government : — ' An Anni- babtist is a thing I am not a member of — I am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and ' (Oh you little Laodicean and Latitudinarian !) ■ a Prisbeteran at Kirkcaldy !' — {Blandula ! Vagula ! cxlum et animum mufas qucB trans mare (i.e. trans Bodotriam)- curris !) — ' my native town.' ' Sentiment is not what I am acquainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like to practise it' (!) 'I wish I had a great, great deal of gratitude in my heart, in all my body.' 'There is a new novel published, named Self- Control' (Mrs. Brunton's) — ' a very good maxim forsooth ! ' This is shocking : ' Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John Balfour, Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry me, though the man ' (a fine direct- ness this !) ' was espused, and his wife was present and said he must ask her permission ; but he did not. I think he was ashamed and confounded before 3 gentelman — Mr. Jobson and 2 Mr. Kings.' ' Mr. Banester's' (Bannister's) 'Budjet is to-night; I hope 2i8 HorcB Subsecivts. it will be a good one. A great many authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally.' You are right, Marjorie. ' A Mr. Burns writes a beautiful song on Mr. Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him — truly it is a most beautiful one.' 'I like to read the Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, Dickey, flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some were good birds and others bad, but Peccay was the most dutiful and obedient to her parients. 'Thomson is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. Macbeth is a pretty composition, but awful one.' 'The Newgate Calender \& very instructive' (!) 'A sailor called here to say farewell; it must be dreadful to leave his native country when he might get a wife ; or perhaps me, for I love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me to speak about love.' This antiphlogistic regimen and lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins again : — ' Love is a very papithatick thing' (it is almost a pity to correct this into pathetic), ' as well as troublesome and tiresome — but O Isabella forbid me to speak of it.' Here are her reflections on a pine-apple : — ' I think the price of a pine-apple is very dear : it is a whole bright goulden guinea, that might have sustained a poor family.' Here is a new vernal simile : — ' The hedges are sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly hatched or, as the vulgar say, Marjorie Fleming. 219 clacked^ ' Doctor Swift's works are very funny ; I got some of them by heart.' ' Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised, but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers.' Bravo, Mar- jorie ! She seems now, when still about six, to have broken out into song : — ' EPHIBOL (epigram OR EPITAPH — WHO KNOWS WHICH ?) ON MY DEAR LOVE ISABELLA. Here lies sweet Isabell in bed, With a night-cap on her head ; Her skin is soft, her face is fair, And she has very pretty hair ; She and I in bed lies nice, And undisturbed by rats or mice ; She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan, Though he plays upon the organ. Her nails are neat, her teeth are white, Her eyes are very, very bright ; In a conspicuous town she lives, And to the poor her money gives : Here ends sweet Isabella's story, And may it be much to her glory. Here are some bits at random : — ' Of summer I am very fond, And love to bathe into a pond ; The look of sunshine dies away, And will not let me out to play ; I love the morning's sun to spy Glittering through the casement's eye, 2 20 HorcB SubsecivcB. The rays of light are very sweet, And puts away the taste of meat ; The balmy breeze comes down from heaven, And makes us like for to be living.' ' The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigantic crane, and the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth holds a bucket of fish and water. Fighting is what ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas ! we females are of little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is amusing.' Still harping on the Newgate Calendar ! ' Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the companie of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight of my soul.' ' I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, and he killed another ! I think he ought to be transported or hanged.' ' Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes Street, for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beggars, parade there.' ' I should like to see a play very much, for I never saw one in all my life, and don't believe I ever shall ; but I hope I can be content without going to one. I can be quite happy without my desire being granted.' ' Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the Marjorie Fleming. 221 toothake, and she walked with a long night-shift at dead of night like a ghost, and I thought she was one. She prayed for nature's sweet restorer — balmy sleep — but did not get it — a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake from top to toe. Superstition is a very mean thing, and should be despised and shunned.' Here is her weakness and her strength again : — ' In the love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste.' ' Miss Egward's (Edgeworth's) tails are very good, particu- larly some that are very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc. etc' 'Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country churchyard are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men.' Are our Marjories now-a-days better or worse because they cannot read Tom Jones unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat Gray's Lines on a distant prospect of Eton College as could our Maidie ? Here is some more of her prattle : — ' I went into Isabella's bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus ' (the Venus de Medicis) ' or the statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap. All was now hushed IS 222 Hor<2 SubsecivcB. up again, but again my anger burst forth at her biding me get up.' She begins thus loftily : — ' Death the righteous love to see. But from it doth the wicked flee. ' Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter) — ' I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them ! ' ' There is a thing I love to see, That is our monkey catch a flee.' ' I love in Isa's bed to lie. Oh, such a joy and luxury ! The bottom of the bed I sleep. And with great care within I creep ; Oft I embrace her feet of lillys, But she has goton all the pillys. Her neck I never can embrace. But I do hug her feet in place. ' How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words ! — ' I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily.' Here is one of her swains — ' Very soft and white his cheeks, His hair is red, and grey his breeks ; His tooth is like the daisy fair, His only fault is in his hair.' Marjorie Fleming. 223 This is a higher flight : — ' Dedicated to Mrs. H. Crawford by the Author, M. F. Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, And now this world for ever leaved ; Their father, and their mother too, They sigh and weep as well as you ; Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched. Into eternity theire laanched. A direful death indeed they had. As v/ad put any parent mad ; But she was more than usual calm. She did not give a single dam. ' This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, not to speak of the want of the n. We fear ' she ' is the abandoned mother, in spite of her previous sighs and tears. ' Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, and not rattel over a prayer — for that we are kneeling at the footstool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us from eternal damnation, and from unquestionable fire and brimston.' She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots : — ' Queen Mary was much loved by all. Both by the great and by the small. But hark ! her soul to heaven doth rise ! And I suppose she has gained a prize — For I do think she would not go Into the awful place below ; There is a thing that I must tell, Elizabeth went to fire and hell ; He who would teach her to be civil. It must be her great friend the divU ! ' 224 HorcB Subsecivcs. She hits off Darnley well : — ' A noble's son, a handsome lad, By some queer way or other, had Got quite the better of her heart, With him she always talked apart ; SiUy he was, but very fair, A greater buck was not found there.' 'By some queer way or other;' is not this the general case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen ? Goethe's doctrine of ' elective affinities ' discovered by our Pet Maidie. Sonnet to a Monkey. ' O lively, O most charming pug Thy graceful air, and heavenly mug ; The beauties of his mind do shine, And every bit is shaped and fine. Your teeth are whiter than the snow. Your a great buck, your a great beau ; Your eyes are of so nice a shape, More like a Christian's than an ape ; Your cheek is like the rose's blume. Your hair is like the raven's plume ; His nose's cast is of the Roman, He is a very pretty woman. I could not get a rhyme for Roman, So was obliged to call him woman. ' This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of James the Second being killed at Roxburgh : — ' He was killed by a cannon splinter, Quite in the middle of the winter ; Perhaps it was not at that time. But I can get no other rhyme ! ' Marjorie Fleming. 225 Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, i2th October 181 1. You can see how her nature is deepening and enriching : — ' My dear Mother, — You will think that I entirely forget you but I assure you that you are greatly mistaken. I think of you always and often sigh to think of the distance between us two loving creatures of nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and then play till ten then we get our music till 1 1 when we get our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till i after which I get my gramer and then work till five. At 7 we come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. This is an exact description. I must take a hasty farewell to her whom I love, reverence and doat on and who I hope thinks the same of ' Marjory Fleming. '■ P.S. — An old pack of cards (!) would be very exeptible.' This other is a month earlier : — ' My dear little Mama, — I was truly happy to hear that you were all well. We are surrounded with measles at present on every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was near Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her out of bed, and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. Heron said, " That lassie's deed 2 26 HorcB Subsecivcs. noo'' — "I'm no deed yet." She then threw up a big worm nine inches and a half long. I have begun dancing, but am not very fond of it, for the boys strikes and mocks me. — I have been another night at the dancing ; I like it better. I will write to you as often as I can ; but I am afraid not every week. / long for you with the longings of a child to embrace you — to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all the respect due to a mother. You dont know how I love you. So I shall remain, your loving child — M. Fleming.' What rich involution of love in the words marked ! Here are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July 1811 :— ' There is a thing that I do want. With you these beauteous walks to haunt, We would he happy if you would Try to come over if you could. Then I would all quite happy be Now and for all eternity. My mother is so very sweet, And checks my appetite to eat ; My father shows us what to do ; But O I 'm sure that I want you. I have no more of poetry ; O Isa do remember me, And try to love your Marjory.' In a letter from ' Isa ' to ' Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming, favored by Rare Rear- Admiral Fleming,' Marjorie Fleming. 227 she says — ' I long much to see you, and talk over all our old stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I am pining for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and wicked Richard. How is the dear Multiplication table going on ? are you still as much attached to 9 times 9 as you used to be?' But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee — to come ' quick to confusion.' The measles she writes- of seized her, and she died on the 19th of December 181 1. The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with a tremulous old voice repeated the following lines by Burns — heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the phantasy of the judgment-seat — the publican's prayer in para- phrase : — ' Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene ? Have I so found it full of pleasing charms ? Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms ; Is it departing pangs my soul alarms ? Or Death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode ? For guilt, for GUILT, my terrors are in arms ; I tremble to approach an angry God, And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. Fain would I say, ' Forgive my foul offence ! ' Fain promise never more to disobey ; But, should my Author health again dispense. Again I might desert fair virtue's way ; Again in folly's path might go astray ; Missing Page Missing Page 230 Horce Sttbsecivis. ness, her little sins and rages, her great repentances ! We don't wonder Walter Scott carried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself with her for hours. The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was at a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. The company had all come — all but Marjorie. Scott's familiars, whom we all know, were there — all were come but Marjorie ; and all were dull because Scott was dull. ' Where 's that bairn ? what can have come over her ? I '11 go myself and see.' And he was getting up and would have gone ; when the bell rang, and in came Duncan Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her in ecstasy — 'hung over her enamoured.' 'Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you ;' and forthwith he brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he lifted her up and marched to his seat with her on his stout shoulder, and set her down beside him ; and then began the night, and such a night ! Those who knew Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie and he were the stars; and she gave them Constances speeches and Helvellyn, the ballad then much jn vogue — and all her repertoire, Scott showing her off, and being ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders. Marjorie Fleming. 231 We are indebted for the following — and our readers will be not unwilling to share our obligations — to her sister: — 'Her birth was 15th January 1803; her death 19th December 181 1. I take this from her Bibles. 1 I believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigour of body, and beautifully formed arms, and until her last illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. Keith, residing in No. i North Charlotte Street, who was not Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately acquainted with that old lady. My aunt was the daughter of Mr. James Rae, surgeon, and married the younger son of old Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphine Hill belonged to my aunt's husband; and his eldest son. Sir Alexander Keith, succeeded his uncle to both Ravelstone and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by rela- tionship with the Howisons of Braehead, but my grandfather and grandmother (who was), a daughter of Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on the most intimate footing with our Mrs. Keith's grand- father and grandmother ; and so it has been for three generations, and the friendship consummated by my cousin William Keith marrying Isabella Craufurd. ' As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate footing. He asked my aunt to be god- ' ' Her Bible is before me ; a pair, as then called ; the faded marks are just as she placed them. There is one at David's lament over Jonathan. ' 232 HorcB Subsecivcs. mother to his eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss Edgeworth's "Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy," for long, which was "a gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott," probably the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted " Frank," which is always now published as part of the series, under the title of Early Lessons. I regret to say these little volumes have disappeared. ' Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie's, but of the Keiths, through the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grand-aunt Mrs. Keith ; and it was while seeing him there as a boy, that another aunt of mine com- posed, when he was about fourteen, the lines prog- nosticating his future fame that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of "The Flowers of the Forest " : — ■ " Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you ; Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, By timely culture, to their native skies ; Go, and employ the poet's heavenly art, Not merely to delight, but mend the heart." Mrs. Keir was my aunt's name, another of Dr. Rae's daughters.' We cannot better end than in words from this same pen : — •' I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's last days, but I have an almost sacred feel- ing to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct Marjorie Fleming. 233 in stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unHke her ardent, impulsive nature ; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's day came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, " Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for' my dear Isa Keith." Again, when lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she wished : " Oh yes ! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play ' The Land o' the Leal,' and I will lie and think, and enjoy myself" (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlour. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who idolised this child, and never after- wards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms ; and while walking her up and down the room, she said, " Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you like?" He said, "Just choose yourself, Maidie." She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, "Pew are thy days, and full of woe,'' and the lines of Burns 234 • -Horis Subseciz'(v. already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remark- able choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem ; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, "Just this once;" the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, " To her loved Cousin on the Author's recovery," her last work on earth : — " Oh ! ^a, pain did visit me, I was at tlie last extremity ; How often did I tliink of you, I wished your graceful form to view, To clasp you in my weak embrace, Indeed I thought I 'd run my race : Good care, I 'm sure, was of me taken, But still indeed I was much shaken. At last I daily strength did gain. And oh ! at last, away went pain ; At length the doctor thought I might Stay in the parlor all the night ; I now continue so to do. Farewell to Nancy and to you." 'She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, " My head, my head !" Three days of the dire malady, " water in the head," followed, and the end came.' ' Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly.' It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to Marjorie Fleming. 235 this : the fervour, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, the lovely and glowing eye, the perfect nature of that bright and warm intelligence, that darling child, — Lady Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea hushing themselves to sleep in the dark; — the words of Bums, touching the kindred chord, her last numbers ' wildly sweet ' traced, with thin and eager fingers, already touched by the last enemy and friend, — moriens canit, — and that love which is so soon to be her everlasting light, is her song's burden to the end. ' She set as sets the morning star, which goes Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides Obscured among the tempests of the sky, But melts away into the light of heaven.' On looking over some old letters of Thackeray's the other day, I found this by Marjorie in her seventh year ; it is copied by her sister ; it is worthy of the rest. The turtles who ' coo for everlasting and fight ' are not unknown to us in domestic life : — ' My dear Mud, — I hope you are well ; give my love to Isa, and I will send her something. I 've been often at Ravelstone. I've been acquainted with many very genteel girls, and Janetta is a very fine one. Help is been con- fined another time. My sleeves is tucked up, and it was 236 Horcs SubsecivcB. very disagreeable, my collar, and I abhor it amoniable (abominable !) I saw the most prettyist two tame pidgeons and two very wee small kittens like our cat. I am very much acquainted with a young gentleman called Mor- decai, that I 'm quite in love with, and another called Capt. Bell, and Jamie Keith, and Willie's my great tor- mentor. A good-natured girl gave me a song-book, and I'm very happy. I'll go down and be thinking when I 'm eating my dinner more to tell you, Mud. Aunt has got two of the most beautifuUest turtle doves you ever saw, they coo for everlasting and fight ; the hawk is in good spirits, it is a nice beast, the gentlest animal that ever was seen ; six canaries, two green linnets, and a thrush. I play in the back green, and bring in worms for the thrush. I get very long tasks, and when I behave I get them short. Orme Keir is the greatest enemy that ever was, and his thinking about business. My aunt lets out the birds to get the air in her room ; — the young gentleman I was speaking of, Mordecai, he's very funny; — James Keith hardly ever spoke to me, he said, " Girl, make less noise;" and, when there was a storm of thunder, "take away all your iron;" and once before he said, " Maidgie, go and dance," which I was very proud of I 've forgot to say, but I 've four lovers, the other one is Harry Watson, avery delightful boy.^ Help is very like a tiger when he bites his fleas, a fine, gentle, wise creetyer. Willie was at the moors, but he soon came back again for the moors was like a fish pond. The whole house plagues me about "Come haste to the Wedding," for there is no sense in it ; they think, because it is an Merican Eliza Purves taught me, they plague me about it exceed- ing much. I 'm affronted to say it, it is so awkward. Remember your dear Madgy. Amen. Finis.' 1 This 'very delightful boy' was the venerable founder of the Fine Arts Chair in our University. MINCHMOOR. ' Sweet smells the birk, green gi'ows, green grows the grass, . Yellow on Yarrow's banks the goivan, Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, ^weet the wave of Yarrow jlowan. Flows Yarrow sweet ? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, As green its grass, its gowan yellow, As sweet smells on its braes the birk. The apple frae the rock as mellow. ' Hamilton of Bangour. i6 There is moral as well as bodily wholesomeness in a mountain walk, if the walker has the understanding heart, and eschews pic- nics, // is good for any man to he alone with nature and himself, or with a friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk — ' In the wilderness alone. There where nature worships God.' It is well to be in places where man is little and God is great — where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process, ' It is not favourable to religious feeling to hear only of the actions and interference of man, and to behold nothing but what human ingenuity has completed. There is an image of God^s greatness impressed upon the outward face of nature fitted to make us all pious, and to breathe into our hearts a purifying and salutary fear, - /:: -r;-:'; i everything is man, and man alone. He seems to move II, and be the Providence of cities ; and there we do not "cBsar the things which are Cmsar's, and unto God the are God's ; but God is forgotten, and Cissar is supreme ■^.^i.. .- ,,^.. tan policy, human foresight, human power; nothing reminds us of invisible dominion, and concealed omnipotence — it is all earth, and no heaven. One cure of this is prayer and the solitary place. As the body, harassed with the noxious air of cities, seeks relief in the freedom and the purity of the fields and hills, so the mind, wearied by commerce with men, resumes its vigour in solitude, and repairs its dignity.' — From Sydney Smith's Sermon ' On the effects which the tumultuous life passed in great cities produces upon the moral and religious character.' — i8oq. MINCHMOOR. Now that everybody is out of town, and every place in the guide-books is as well known as Princes Street or Pall Mall, it is something to dis- cover a hill everybody has not been to the top of, and which is not in Black. Such a hill is Minch- moor, nearly three times as high as Arthur Seat, and lying between Tweed and Yarrow. The best way to ascend it is from Traquair. You go up the wild old Selkirk road, which passes almost right over the summit, and by which Montrose and his cavaliers fled from Philiphaugh, where Sir Walter's mother remembered crossing, when a girl, in a coach-and-six, on her way to a ball at Peebles, several footmen marching on either side of the carriage to prop it up or drag it out of the moss haggs ; and where, to our amazement, we learned that the Duchess of Buccleuch had lately driven her ponies. Before this we had passed the grey, old- world entrance to Traquair House, and looked down its grassy and untrod avenue to the pallid, forlorn mansion, stricken all o'er with eld, and 240 Horce Subsecivce. noticed the wrought-iron gate embedded in a foot deep and more of soil, never having opened since the '45. There are the huge Bradwardine bears on each side — most grotesque supporters — with a superfluity of ferocity and canine teeth. The whole place, like the family whose it has been, seems dying out — everything subdued to settled desolation. The old race, the old religion, the gaunt old house, with its small, deep, comfortless windows, the decaying trees, the stillness about the doors, the grass over- running everything, nature reinstating herself in her quiet way — all this makes the place look as strange and pitiful among its fellows in the vale as would the Earl who built it three hundred years ago if we met him tottering along our way iTi the faded dress of his youth ; but it looks the Earl's house still, and has a dignity of its own. We soon found the Minchmoor road, and took at once to the hUl, the ascent being, as often is with other ascents in this world, steepest at first. Nothing could be more beautiful than the view as we ascended, and got a look of the ' eye sweet ' Tweed hills, and their ' silver stream.' It was one of the five or six good days of this summer — in early morning, ' soft ' and doubtful ; but the mists drawing up, and now the noble, tawny hills were dappled with gleams and shadows — ' Sunbeams upon distant hills gliding apace ' — Minchmoor. 241 the best sort of day for mountain scenery — that ripple of light and shadow brings out the forms and the depths of the hills far better than a cloudless sky ; and the horizon is generally wider. Before us and far away was the round flat head of Minchmoor, with a dark, rich bloom on it, from the thick, short heather — the hills around being green. Near the top, on the Tweed side, its waters trotting away cheerily to the glen at Bold, is the famous Cheese Well — always full, never overflowing. Here every traveller — Duchess, shepherd, or houseless mugger — stops, rests, and is thankful ; doubtless so did Montrose, poor fellow, and his young nobles and their jaded steeds, on their scurry from Lesly and his Dragoons. It is called the Cheese Well from those who rest there dropping in bits of their provisions, as votive offerings to the fairies whose especial haunt this mountain was. After our rest and drink, we left the road and made for the top. When there we were well rewarded. The great round-backed, kindly, solemn hills of Tweed, Yarrow, and Ettrick lay all about like sleeping mastiffs — too plain to be grand, too ample and beautiful to be common- place. There, to the north-east, is the place — William- hope ridge — where Sir Walter Scott bade farewell to his heroic friend Mungo Park. They had come up from Ashestiel, where Scott then lived, and where 242 HorcB Subsecivce. ' Marmion ' was written and its delightful epistles inspired — where he passed the happiest part of his life — leaving it, as Hogg said, ' for gude an' a' ;' for his fatal ' dreams about his cottage ' were now begun. He was to have ' a hundred acres, two spare bed- rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of which will on a pinch have a couch-bed.' We all know what the dream, and the cottage, and the hundred acres came to — ^the ugly Abbotsford; the over-burdened, shattered brain driven wild, and the end, death, and madness. Well, it was on that ridge that the two friends — each romantic, but in such different ways — parted never to meet again. There is the ditch Park's horse stumbled over and all but fell. ' I am afraid, Mungo, that 's a bad omen,' said the Sheriff ; to which he answered, with a bright smile on his handsome, fearless face — ' Freits (omens) follow those who look to them.' With this expression, he struck the spurs into his horse, and Scott never saw laim again. He had not long been married to a lovely and much-loved woman, and had been speak- ing to Scott about his new African scheme, and how he meant to tell his family he had some business in Edinburgh — send them his blessing, and be off— alas ! never to return ! Scott used to say, when speaking of this parting, ' I stood and looked back, but he did not' A more memorable place for two such men to part in would not easily be found. Minchmoor. 243 Where we are standing is the spot Scott speaks of when writing to Joanna Baillie about her new tragedies — 'Were it possible for me to hasten the treat I expect in such a composition with you, I would promise to read the volume at the silence of noonday upon the top of Minchmoor, The hour is allowed by those skilful in dtmonoXo^, to be as full of witching as midnight itself; and I assure you I have felt really oppressed with a sort of fearful loneliness when looking around the naked towering ridges of desolate barrenness, which is all the eye takes in from the top of such a mountain, the patches of cultivation being hidden in the little glens, or only appearing to make one feel how feeble and ineffectual man has been to contend with the genius of the soil. It is in such a scene that the unknown and gifted author of Albania places the superstition which consists in hearing the noise of a chase, the baying of the hounds, the throttling sobs of the deer, the wild hollos of the huntsmen, and the "hoof-, thick beating on the hollow hill." I have often repeated his verses with some sensations of awe in this place.' The lines — and they are noble, and must have sounded wonder- ful with his voice and look — are as follows. Can no one tell us anything more of their author ? — ' There oft is heard, at midnight, or at noon, Beginning faint, but rising still more loud, And nearer, voice of hunters, and of hounds, 244 Horcs Sudseciv^. And horns hoarse-winded, blowing far and keen ; Forthwith the hubbub multiplies ; the gale Labours with wilder shrieks, and rifer din f Of hot pursuit ; the broken cry of deer Mangled by thrbttling dogs ; the shouts of men. And hoofs thick beating on the hollow hill. Sudden the grazing heifer in the vale Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears Tingle with inward dread — aghast he eyes The mountain's height .and all the ridges round. Yet not one trace of living wight discerns, Nor knows, o'erawed and trembling as he stands. To what or whom he owes his idle fear — To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend ; But wonders, and no end of wondering finds. ' We listened for the hunt, but could only hear the wind sobbing from the blind 'Hopes.' ^ The view from the, top reaches from the huge Harestane Broadlaw — nearly as high as Ben Lomond — whose top is as flat as a table, and would make a racecourse of two miles, and where the clouds are still brooding, to the Cheviot ; and from the Maiden Paps in Liddesdale, and that wild huddle of hills at Moss Paul, to Dunse Law, and the weird Zammer- moors. There is Ruberslaw, always surly and dark. The Dunion, beyond which lies Jedburgh. There are the Eildons, with their triple heights; and you can get a glimpse of the upper woods of Abbotsford, and the top of the hill above Cauldshiels Loch, that very spot where the 'wondrous potentate,'— when ' The native word for hollows in the hills : thus, Dryhope, Gameshope, Chapelhope, etc. Minchmoor. 245 suffering from languor and pain, and beginning to break down under his prodigious fertility, — composed those touching lines : — 'The sun upon the Weirdla-w Hill In Ettrick's vale is sinking sweet ; The westland wind is hushed and slill ; The lake lies sleeping at my feet. Yet not the landscape to mine eye Bears those bright hues that once it bore, Though evening, with her richest dye. Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore. With listless look along the plain I see Tweed's silver current glide, And coldly mark the holy fane Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. The quiet lake, the balmy air, The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree, Are they still such as once they were. Or is the dreary change in me? Alas ! the warped and broken board. How can it bear the painter's dye ! The harp of strained and tuneless chord. How to the minstrel's skill reply I To aching eyes each landscape lowers. To feverish pulse each gale blows chill ; And Araby's or Eden's bowers Were barren as this moorland hill.' There, too, is Minto Hill, as modest and shapely and smooth as Clytie's , shoulders, and Earlston Black Hill, with Cowdenknowes at its foot ; and there, standing stark and upright as a warder, is the stout old Smailholme Toiver, seen and seeing all around. It is quite curious how unmistakeable and 246 Horce Subsecivce. important it looks at what must be twenty and more miles. It is now ninety years since that 'lonely infant, who has sung its awful joys, was found in a thunderstorm, as we all know, lying on the soft grass at the foot of the grey old Strength, clapping his hands at each flash, and shouting, ' Bonny ! bonny !' I We now descended into Yarrow, and forgathered with a shepherd who was taking his lambs over to the great Melrose fair. He was a fine specimen of a border herd — young, tall, sagacious, self-contained, and free in speech and air. We got his heart by praising his dog Jed, a very fine collie, black and comely, gentle and keen — ' Ay, she 's a fell yin , she can do a' but speak.' On asking him if the sheep dogs needed much teaching — ' Whyles ay and whyles no; her kind (Jed's) needs nane. She sooks't in wi' her mither's milk.' On asking him if the dogs were ever sold, he said — 'Never, but at an orra time. Naebody wad sell a gude dowg, and naebody wad buy an ill ane.' He .told us with great feeling, of the death of one of his best dogs by poison. It was plainly still a grief to him. ' What was he poisoned with?' 'Strychnia,' he said as decidedly as might Dr. Christison. 'How do you know?' 'I opened him, puir fallow, and got him analeezed !' Now we are on Birkindale Brae, and are looking down on the same scene as did 'James Boyd (the Earle of Arran, his brother was he),' Minchmoor. 247 when he crossed Minchmoor on his way to deliver James the Fifth's message to , ' Yon outlaw Murray, Surely whaur bauldly bideth he.' ' Down Birkindale Brae when that he cam He saw the feir Foreste wi' his ee.' How James Boyd fared, and what the outlaw said, and what James and his nobles said and did, and how the outlaw at last made peace with his King, and rose up ' Sheriffe of Ettricke Foreste,' and how the bold ruffian boasted, ' Fair Philiphaugh is mine by right, And Lewinshope still mine shall be ; Newark, Foulshiels, and Tinnies baith My bow and arrow purchased me. And I have native steads to me The Newark Lee and Hangingshaw ; I have mony steads in the Forest schaw. But them by name I dinna knaw.' And how King James snubbed ' The kene Laird of Buckscleuth, A stalwart man and steine was he.' When the Laird hinted that, ' For a king to gang an Outlaw till, Is beneath his state and dignitie. The man that wins yon Forest intill. He lives by reif and felonie. Then out and spak the nobil King, And round him cast a wilie ee — 248 HorcB SubsecivtB. Now baud tliy tongue, Sir Walter Scott, Nor speak o' reif nor felonie — For, had every honest man his awin kye, A richt puir clan thy name wud be! ' (by the by, why did Professor Aytoun leave out this excellent hit in his edition?) — all this and much more may you see if you take up The Border Minstrelsy, and read 'The Sang of the Outlaw Murray,' with the incomparable notes of Scott. But we are now well down the hill. There to the left, in the hollow, is Permanscore, where the King and the ©utlaw met — ' Bid him mete me at Permanscore, And bring four in his companie ; Five Erles sail cum wi' mysel', Gude reason I suld honoured be.' And there goes our Shepherd with his long swing- ing stride. As different from his dark, wily com- panion, the Badenoch drover, as was Harry Wakefield from Robin Oig; or as the big, sunny Cheviot is from the lowering Ruberslaw ; and there is Jed trot- ting meekly behind him — may she escape strychnia, and, dying at the fireside among the children, be laid like ' Paddy Tims — ^whose soul at ais; is — With the point of his nose And the tips of hds toes Turn'd up to the roots of the daisies ' — unanaleezed, save by the slow cunning of the grave. And may her master get the top price for his lambs ! Minchmoor. 249 Do you see to the left that little plantation on the brow of Foulshiels Hill, with the sunlight lying on its upper corner ? If you were there you might find among the brackens and foxglove a little headstone with ' I. T.' rudely carved on it. That is Tibbie Tamsoiis grave, known and feared all the country round. This poor outcast was a Selkirk woman, who, under the stress of spiritual despair — that sense of perdition which, as in Cowper's case, often haunts and overmasters the deepest and gentlest natures, making them think themselves ' Damn'd below Judas, more abhorr'd than he was, — committed suicide ; and being, with the gloomy, cruel superstition of the time, looked on by her neighbours as accursed of God, she was hurried into a rough white deal coffin, and carted out of the town, the people stoning it all the way till it crossed the Ettrick. Here, on this wild hill-side, it found its rest, being buried where three lairds' lands meet. May we trust that the light of God's reconciled countenance has for all these long years been resting on that once forlorn soul, as His blessed sunshine now lies on her moorland grave ! For, ' the moun- tains shall depart, and the hills be removed ; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.' 250 Hortz Subsecivcs. Now, we see down into the Yarrow — there is the famous stream twinkling in the sun. What stream and valley was ever so be-sung ! You wonder at first why this has been, but the longer you look the less you wonder. There is a charm about it — it is not easy to say what. The huge sunny hills in which it is embosomed give it a look at once gentle and serious. They are great, and their gentleness makes them greater. Wordsworth has the right words, ' pastoral melancholy ;' and besides, the region is ' not uninformed with phantasy and looks that threaten the profane ' — the Flowers of Yarrow, the Douglas Tragedy, the Dowie Dens, Words- worth's Yarrow Unvisited, Visited, and Re-Visited, and, above all, the glamour of Sir Walter, and Park's fatal and heroic story. Where can you find eight more exquisite lines anywhere than Logan's, which we all know by heart : — ' His mother from the window looked With all the longing of a mother ; His little sister, weeping, walked The greenwood path to meet her brother. They sought him east, they sought him west. They sought him all the forest thorough — They only saw the cloud of night, They only heard the roar of Yarrow.' And there is Newark Tower among the rich woods ; and Harehead, that cosiest, loveliest, and hospitablest of nests. Methinks I hear certain Minchmoor. 251 ^oung voices among the hazels ; out they corae on ;he little haugh by the side of the deep, swiriing itream, fabulostts as was ever Hydaspes. There ;hey go ' running races in their mirth,' and is not :hat — an me ludit atnabilis insania 1 — the voice of ma tauvre petite — animosa infans — the wilful, rich-eyed, delicious Eppie ? ' Oh blessed vision, happy child, Thou art so exquisitely wild !' And there is Black Andro and Glowr owr'ein and Foulshieh, where Park was born and bred ; and there is the deep pool in the Yarrow where Scott found him plunging one stone after another into the water, and watching anxiously the bubbles as they rose to the surface. ' This,' said Scott to him, ' appears but an idle amusement for one who has seen so much adventure.' ' Not so idle, perhaps, as you suppose,' answered Mungo ; ' this was the way I used to ascertain the depth of a river in Africa.' He was then meditating his second journey, but had said so to no one. We go down by Broadmeadows, now held by that Yair ' Hoppringle ' — who so well governed Scinde — and into the grounds of Bowhill, and passing Philip- haugh, see where stout David Lesly crossed in the mist at daybreak with his heavy dragoons, many of them old soldiers of Gustavus, and routed the 252 Hora Subsecivce. gallant Graeme ; and there is Slainmen's Lee, where the royalists lie ; and there is Carterhaugh, the scene of the strange wild story of Tamlane and Lady Janet, when ' She prinked Iiersel' and prinned hersel' By the ae light of the moon. And she 's awa' to Carterhaugh To speak wi' young Tamlane. ' Noel Paton might paint that night, when ' 'Twixt the hours of twelve and yin A north wind tore the bent ;' when ' fair Janet ' in her green mantle ' • heard strange elritch sounds Upon the wind that went.' And straightway ' About the dead hour o' the night She heard the bridles ring ; ' Their oaten pipes blew wondrous shrill, The hemlock small blew clear ; And louder notes from hemlock large And bog reed, struck the ear,' and then the fairy cavalcade swept past, while Janet, filled with love and fear, looked out for the milk- white steed, and ' gruppit it fast,' and ' pu'd the rider doon,' the young Tamlane, whom, after dipping ' in a stand of milk and then in a stand of water,' ' She wrappit ticht in her green mantle, And sae her true love won ! ' Minchmoor. 253 This ended our walk. We found the carriage at the PhiUphaugh home-farm, and we drove home by Yair and Fernilee, Ashestiel and Elibank, and passed the bears as ferocious as ever, ' the orange sky of evening ' glowing through their wild tusks, the old house looking even older in the fading light. And is not this a walk worth making ? One of our number had been at the Land's End and Johnnie Groat's, and now on Minchmoor ; and we wondered how many other men had been at all the three, and how many had enjoyed Minchmoor more than he. But we must end, and how can we do it better, and more to our readers' and our own satisfaction, than by giving them the following unpublished lines by Professor Shairp,i which, by means we do not care to mention, are now before us ? — THE BUSH ABOON TRAQUAIR. Will ye gang wi' me and fare To the bush aboon Traquair ? Owre the high Minchmuir we '11 up and awa', This bonny simmer noon, While the sun shines fair aboon, And the licht sklents saftly doun on holm and ha'. ' No longer unpublished. The reader will find them, along •with much else that is delightful, in Kilmahoe, a Highland Pastoral, with other Poems. 17 254 HorcB Subsecivce. And what wad ye do there. At the bush aboon Traquair? A lang dreich road, ye had better let it be ; Save some auld scrunts o' birk r the hill-side lirk,> There 's nocht i' the warld for man to see. But the blythe lilt o' that air, 'The Bush aboon Traquair,' I need nae niair, it 's eneuch for me ; Owre my cradle its sweet chime Cam sughin' frae auld time, Sae tide what may, I '11 awa' and see. And what saw ye there. At the bush aboon Traquair ? Or what did ye hear that was worth your heed ? I heard the cushies croon Thro' the gowden afternoon, And the Quair burn singing doun to the vale o' Tweed. And birks saw I three or four, Wi' grey moss bearded owre. The last that are left o' the birken shaw, Whar mony a summer e'en Fond lovers did convene, Thae bonny, bonny gloamins that are lang awa'. Frae mony a but and ben. By muirland, holm, and glen, They cam ane hour to spen' on the greenwood swaird ; But lang ha'e lad an' lass Been lying 'neth tlie grass, The green green grass o' Traquair kirkyard. • ' The hills were high on ilka side And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill.' Ballad of Ccnvdcnnnowes. Minchmoor. 255 They were blest beyond compare, When they held their trysting there, Amang thae greenest hills shone on by the sun ; And then they wan a rest, The lownest and the best, I' Traquair kirkyard when a' was dune. Now the birks to dust may rot. Names o' luvers be forgot, Nae lads and lasses there ony mair convene ; But the blythe lilt o' yon air Keeps the bush aboon Traquair, And the luve that ance was there, aye fresh and green. Have not these the true flavour of that gentle place and life, — as musical and as melancholy as their streams and glens, as fragrant as their birks and gale ?' They have the unexpectedness of nature, of genius, and of true song. The ' native wood-notes wild ' of ' the mountain nymph, sweet Liberty.' There must surely be more of this ' lilting ' in our minstrel's wallet ; and he may be assured that such a gift of genuine Scottish feeling and verse will be welcomed if revealed. It breathes the caller, strong air of the south country hills, and is a wild ' flower o' the forest ' not likely soon to be ' wede awa.' ' Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass, Yellow on Yarrow's banks the gowan, Fair hangs the apple frae the rock. Sweet the wave ol Yarrow flowan. 1 The Bog-Myrtle. 256 Horce SiibsecivcB. Flows Yarrow sweet ? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, As green its grass, its gowan yellow, As sweet smells on its braes the birk, The apple frae the rock as mellow.' August 1862. Traquair House. IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION.' 'IN CLEAR DREAM AND SOLEMN VISION.' I HAD a friend, and, though he is now elsewhere, why shouldn't I say I have him still ? He was a man of great powers and of greater gifts. He might have made himself almost anything a man may be ; but he died unfulfilled, ' deprived of the residue of his years ;' and this owing much, among other things, to an imperfect and damaged organism and an inter- mittent will. He was an advocate and judge, and had in him the making of a great lawyer, — good sense, vast and exact memory, a logical, vigorous understanding, and readiness, fulness, and felicity of speech. He had in him, as Jonathan Edwards would have said, more than the average quantity of being ; and, now that he is gone, I feel what a large space he filled in my mind. His was a large, multilocular brain, with room for all sorts of customers. But it is to his ' study of imagination ' I now refer in what follows. He was a mighty dreamer, especially in the diluculum, or ' edge o' dark,' before full awakening ; and he used to relate to his cronies these Kubla Khan-like visions with amazing particularity. Many 26o HorcB Siibsecivce. of us would have it that he made up his dreams, but I had the following proof of the opposite. Many years ago when we were at college, I had gone up to his lodgings to breakfast with him. I found him sound asleep, his eyes open and fixed as in a mesmeric trance ; he was plainly rapt in some internal vision. I stood by him for some seconds, during which his colour and his breathing came and went as if under some deep feeling, first of interest and wonder, finally of horror, from which he awoke into full consciousness, scared and excited, asking me instantly to write. He then, in an anxious, eager voice began thus : — "Tis noon, but desolate and dun The landscape lies, For 'twixt it and the mounting sun A cloud came crawling up the skies ; From the sea it rose all slowly, Thin and grey and melancholy, And gathered darkness as it went Up into the firmament. ' Here he stopped, and, with a shrug of regret, said, 'It's gone!' The blanks were two words I could not make out, and which he never could recall. It would be curious if those who may read these lines were to try what adjectives of two syllables they liked best, and send them on to Mr. Macmillan;! it would form an odd poetico-statistical inquiry. ' This paper was originally published in Macmillan's Maga- '/« Clear Di'eam and Solemn Vision! 261 He then gave the following fragments of his vision, wliich he said was complete, and in verse : — He found himself in the midst of a vast marshy- plain, in utter solitude, nothing around him but the dull, stagnant waters, overrun with dry reeds, through which by fits there stirred a miserable sough, leaving the plain oppressed with silence, and the dead, heavy air. On the small bit of ground where he stood was a hut, such as the hunters of water-fowl might frequent in the season ; it was in ruins, everything rude and waste, and through its half-shut, broken door, he was aware of the presence and of the occasional move- ments of a man, at times as if fiercely struggling in the darkness with some one else. Opposite the door sat and brooded a large white dove, — its lustrous dark eyes fixed on the door, — all its feathers as if 'stirred with prayer,' and uttering a low croodlin sound as in an ecstasy of compassion and entreaty, leaning gently towards its object. Suddenly, and without noise, an ugly bird, long- legged, lean, mangy, and foul, came poking with measured steps round the end of the hut. It was like the adjutant crane of Eastern cities, and had an evil eye, small and cruel. It walked jauntily past the dove, who took no heed, and stood like a fisher on the edge of the dead and oozy water, his head to one side, and his long sharp beak ready to strike. He stood motionless for an instant ; then, with a jerk, 262 Horee Subseciva. brought up a large, plump, wriggling worm, shining and of the colour of jasper. He advanced to the dove, who was yearning more and more towards the door. She became agitated, and more earnest than ever, never lifting her eyes from their object, and quivering all over with intensity. The evil bird was now straight in front, and bent over her with the worm. She shut her eyes, shuddered all through ; he put his dirty black foot on her snowy back and pressed her down so that she opened her mouth wide, into which the worm was instantly dropped. She reeled over dead, towards the hut, as if the last act of life was to get nearer it. Up to this moment the struggle inside the hut had gone on, lulling and coming again in gusts, like the wind among the reeds, and the arms of more than one might be seen across the dark ragged doorway, as if in fell agony of strife. The instant the dove died, all sound and motion ceased within, and the whole region, as my friend said, ' shook throughout' He was aware that within Judas, 'the son of perdition,' lay alone and dead. Such was this ' clear dream,' and these are many of the words my friend used. It has always seemed to me full of poetry in posse, amorphous and uncrystallised, but the germ there, to which the author of The Devil's Dream, Mr. Aird, might have given or if he likes may yet give, 'the accomplishment of verse.' 'In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision! 263 That lonely and dismal place and day, desolate and overshadowed as in eclipse at noon, — the wretch within and his demon, — the holy, unfailing dove, ' White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure, ' in such a place, — the tall, stealthy fellow, with the small cruel eye, — the end, — what was going on else- where on that same day, — ' the hour and the power of darkness,' — the eternity and the omnipotence of light and love, — ' the exceeding bitter cry,' — ' the loud voice,' and ' It is finished,' — was there not here something for the highest fantasy, some glimpse of 'the throne and equipage of God's almightiness'? The above dreamer was the well-known (on his own side of the Tweed) A. S. Logan, Sheriff of Forfarshire. He was the successor, but in no wise the ape, in the true Yorick line, — 'infinite jest most excellent fancy,' — of the still famous Peter Robertson, who served himself heir to that grotesque, sardonic wit, John Clerk of Eldin. Logan differed from each as one wine or one quaint orchid — those flower-jesters which seem always making faces and fun at us and all nature, — from another. He had not the merciless and too often unspeakable Swiftian humour of Lord Eldin, nor the sustained wild burlesque and jocosity of Lord Robertson; but he had more imagination and thought, was more kindly affectioned than either, and his wit was 264 HorcB Stibsecivee. more humorous, his humour more witty. Robertson was a wonderful being : it is not easy to exaggerate his comic powers. A natural son of Falstaff, he had his father's body as well as soul, such a mass of man, such an expanse of countenance, — probably the largest face known among men, — such eyes gleaming and rolling behind his spectacles, from out their huge rotundity, chubby-cheeked, and by way of innocent, like a Megalopis Garagantua unweaned, — no more need of stuffing for his father's part than had Stephen Kemble ; while within was no end of the same rich, glorious, overtopping humour ; not so much an occasional spate of it, much less a tap, or a pump ; not even a perennial spring ; rather say an artesian well, gushing out for ever by hogsheads, as if glad to escape from its load of superincumbent clay ; or like those fountains of the great oil deep, which are astonishing us all. To set Peter agoing was like tapping the Haggis in that Nox Ambrosiana, when Tickler fled to the mantelpiece, and 'The Shepherd ' began stripping himself to swim ; the imperial Christopher warding off the tide with his crutch in the manner and with the success of Mrs. Partington, — so rich, so all-encompassing, so 'finely confused ' was his flood of Rabelaisian fun. I dare say most of us know the trick played him by his old chum, John Lockhart (what a contrast in mind and body, in eye and voice !) when reviewing his friend's 'In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision.' 265 trashy ' Gleams of Thought ' in the Quarterly, how he made the printer put into the copy for the poet this epitaph, — ' Here lies that peerless paper-lord. Lord Peter, Who broke the laws of God and man and metre.' There were eight or ten more lines, but Peter de- stroyed them in his wrath. In the region of wild burlesque, where the ridi- culous, by its intensity and mass, becomes the sublime, I never met any one to approach ' Peter,' except our amazing Medea-Robson. He could also abate a tiresome prig as effectually as Sydney Smith or Harry Cockbum, though in a different and ruder way. He had face for anything ; and this is by half (the better half) the secret of success in joking, as it is in more things. Many of us — glum, mute, and inglorious as we are — have jokes, which, if we could but do them justice, and fire them off with a steady hand and eye, would make great havoc ; but, like the speeches we all make to our- selves when returning from our Debating Society, — those annihilating replies, those crushing sarcasms, — they are only too late, and a day after the fair. But Lord Peter had no misgivings. When quite a lad, though even then having that spacious expanse of visage, that endless amount of face, capable of any amplitude of stare, like a hillside, and a look of 266 Horee Subsecivcs. intentional idiocy and innocence, at once appalling and touching, — at a dinner-party, the mirth of which was being killed by some Oxford swell, who was for ever talking Greek and quoting his authorities, — Peter who was opposite him, said, with a solemnity amounting to awe : ' Not to interrupt you, sir ! but it strikes me that Diojiysius of Halicarnassus is against you,' keeping his eyes upon his victim with the deepest seriousness, — eyes like ordinary eyes seen close to the big end of an opera-glass of great magnifying power, opalescent, with fluctuating blinks, as if seen through water, the lamps as of some huge sea moon-calf on the gambol through its deep. The prig reeled, but recovered, and said : ' If I mistake not, sir, Dionysius of Halicarnassus was dead ninety or so years before my date.' ' To be sure, he was. I very much beg your pardon, sir; I always do make that mistake ; I meant Thaddeus of Warsaw /' But, indeed, there was the sad thing, — that which is so touchingly referred to by Sydney Smith in his lecture on Wit and Humour, — he became the slave of his own gifts. He gravitated downwards ; and life and law, friends and everything, existed chiefly to be joked on. Still, he was a mighty genius in his own line, and more, as I have said, like Falstaff than any man out of Shakespeare. There is not much said or done by that worthy — 'that irregular humorist,' ' that damned Epicurean rascal,' ■ ' a '/« Clear Dream and Solemn Vision.' 267 goodly, portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent, of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble pre- sence ' — which Peter might not have said and done, from the wildest, grossest joke up to ' babbling of green fields ' ; for ' Peter ' had a gentle, sweet, though feeblose, and too often falsetto, strain of poetic feeling and fancy. In active or receptive imagination, Logan was infinitely above him; he had far too much of the true stuff and sense of poetry ever to have written the ' Gleams of Tliought ' which their author, and, of course, no one else, thought not only poetry, but that of the purest water. Can an unpoetical man have poetic dreams? I doubt if he can. Your ordinary man may dream the oddest, wildest, laughablest, funniest nonsense. He will not likely dream such a dream as the one I have recorded. Shakespeare might have dull dreams, but I question if Mr. Tupper could have dreamt of a Midsummer Night's Dream, any more than a man will speak a language in his sleep he never learned or heard. If the master of the house is asleep, and some imp of darkness and misrule sets to playing all sorts of tricks, turning everything topsy-turvy, ransacking all manner of hidden places, making every kind of grotesque conjunction, and running riot in utter incongruity and drollness, he still must be limited to 268 HorcB Subsecivce. what he finds in the house, — to his master's goods and chattels. So, I believe, is it with dreams ; the stuff they are made of lies ready-made, is all found on the premises to the imp's hand ; it is for him to weave it into what fantastic and goblin tapestry he may. The kaleidoscope can make nothing of any- thing that is not first put in at the end of the tube, though no mortal ' can predict what the next shift may be. Charles Lamb was uneasy all the time he was at Keswick visiting Southey ; and he escaped to London and ' the sweet security of streets ' as fast as the mail could carry him, confessing afterwards that he slept ill ' down there,' and was sure ' those big fellows,' who were always lying all about, Skiddaw and Helvellyn, ' came down much nearer him at night and looked at him /' So we often feel as if in the night of the body and the soul, when the many-eyed daylight of the pure reason is gone, heights and depths, and many unspeakable things, come into view, looming vaster, and deeper, and nearer in that camera-obscura, when the shutters are shut and the inner lights lit, and ' When to the sessions of sweet silent thought We summon up remembrance of things past,' and often play such fantastic tricks. But the dreamer is the same ens rationis, the same unus quis, as the waking man who tells the dream. Philip who 'In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision.' 269 was drunk, and Philip who is sober and remembers his lapse, is one Philip. So it is only an imaginative man who can have imaginative dreams. You must first put in before you can take out. As Samson long ago put it to the Philistines, ' Out of the eater came forth meatj out of the strong came forth sweetness.' No food like lion's marrow ; no tender- ness like the tenderness of a strong nature. Or as old Fuller, with a noticeable forecasting of the modern doctrine of foods, as delivered by Prout and all the doctors, has it, ' Omne parnutrit suum par ; the vitals of the body are most strengthened by feeding on such foods as are likest unto them,' — a word this of warning as well as good cheer. He that sows to the flesh, and he who sows to the spirit, need not doubt what they are severally to reap. We all, more or less, sow to both ; it is the plus that makes the difference between others and ourselves, and between our former and present selves. I might give instances of my friend's wit and humour ; but I could not, in trying to do so, do him anything but injustice. His jokes were all warm and at once. He did not load his revolver before going to dinner, and discharge all its barrels at his friends. His fun arose out of the sociality of the hour, and was an integral part of it ; and he never repeated his jokes. He did not pick up his bullet and pocket it 18 270 HorcB Siibsecivce. and fire it off again. But I remember well his first shot at me, — it was not bad for nineteen. He and I were coming down the Bridges from college, and I saw an unkempt, bareheaded Cowgate boy, fluttering along in full-blown laughter and rags. He had a skull like Sir Walter's, round and high. I said, ' Logan, look at that boy's head, — did you ever see the like of it ? it 's like a tower.' ' Yes, at any rate a fort-a-lice.' You know the odd shock of a real joke going off like a pistol or a squib at your ear. It goes through you. That same week another quite as good squib went off in church. A cousin, now long dead, was listening with me to a young preacher-puppy, whose sermon was one tissue of unacknowledged plagiarisms of the most barefaced kind. We were doing little else than nudge each other as one amazing crib succeeded another, — for this ass did know his master's crib. William whispered to me, ' Look at him ! I declare his very whiskers are curving into inverted commas ;' and it was true, such was the shape of his whiskers, that his face, and especially his grin- ning and complacent mouth, which they embraced, looked one entire quotation. Lord Brougham and many others think that dreaming occurs only between sleeping and waking, — the stepping of the soul into or out of the land of forgetfulness, — and that it is momentary in its 'In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision! 2 7 1 essence and action, though often ranging over a lifetime or more, — ' Brief as the lightning in the collied night That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth.' There is much in favour of this. One hopes the soul — animula, blandula, vagula — may sometimes sleep the dreamless sleep of health, as well as its tired drudge. Dreaming may be a sort of dislocation of our train of ideas, a sort of jumble as it is shunted off the main line into its own siding at the station for the night. The train may stop there and then, for anything we know ; but it may not, for the like reason the telegraph-office is not open during night. Ideality, imagination, that sense of the merely beau- tiful and odd which delights to marry all sorts of queer couples, — which entertains the rest of the powers, when they are tired, or at their meals, telling them and making them stories, out of its own head, — this family poet, and minstrel, and mime, whom we all keep, has assuredly its wildest, richest splen- dours at the breaking up of the company for the night, or when it arouses them on the morrow, when it puts out or lets in the lights ; for many a dream awakes us, ' scattering the rear of darkness thin.' In optics, if you make a hole in the shutter at noon, or stick a square bit of blackness on the pane, and make the rays from the hole or around the square to pass through a prism, then we have, if we 272 Horce Subsecivts. let them fall on whiteness and catch them right, those colours we all know and rejoice in, that Divine spectrum, — ' Still young and fine,' as • When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abiam, Lot, The youthful world's grey fathers in one knot, Did with attentive looks watch every hour For thy new light, and trembled at each shower. ' The white light of heaven — lumen siccum — opens itself out as it were, tells its secret, and lies like a glorious border on the Edge o' Dark (as imaginative Lancashire calls the twilight, as we Scotsmen call it, the Gloamin'), making the boundaries between light and darkness a border of flowers, made out by each. Is there not something to think of in ' the Father of lights ' thus beautifying the limits of His light, and of His darkness, which to Him alone is light, so that here burns a sort of ' dim religious light,' — a sacred glory, — where we may take off our shoes and rest and worship ? Is not our light rounded with dark- ness, as our life is with a dream? and, the greater the area of our light, of our truth, ' won from the vast and formless Infinite,' the ampler, too, is the outer ring, — the iridescent edge lying upon the Unknown, — making a rainbow round the central throne of the Eternal. And is not the light of knowledge, after all, the more lovely, the more full of colour, and the more pleasant to the eye, when lying on and indicat- '/« Clear Dream and Solemn Vision! 2 73 ing what is beyond, and past all finding out, making glorious the skirts of ' the majesty of darkness '? It is at his rising out of, and his returning into ' old night,' that the sun is in the full flush of his plighted clouds, and swims in the depths of his ' daffodil sky,' making the outgoings of the evening and of the morning to rejoice before Him and us. But, thus talking of dreams, I am off into a dream ! A simile is not always even an illustration, much less an analogy, and more less an argument or proof. As you see every one likes to tell his own dreams, — so long as he has them by the tail, which soon slips, — and few care to listen to them, not even one's wife, as Sir Walter found to his cost. And so, good- natured reader, let me end by asking you to take down the fourth volume of Crabbe's Works, and turning to page 116, read his 'World of Dreams.' It is the fashion now-a-days, when he is read at all, which I fear is seldom, — to call Crabbe coarse, even dull, a mere sturdy and adroit versifier of prose as level as his native marshes, without one glimpse of the vision, one act of the faculty divine. Read these verses again, and ask yourself. Is this a daguerreo- typer of the Boeotian crimes and virtues, the sorrows and the humours, of his dull, rich Essex and its coast ? I wish we had more of this manly imagination ; we have almost too much now of mere wing and colour, mere flights, mere foliage, and, it may be, blossoms. 2/4 Horce SubsecivcB. — little fruit and timber. The imagination, like a gorgeous sunset or a butterfly's wing, tells no story, has no backbone, is for ever among the clouds and flowers, or down deep in denial and despair. The imagination should inform, and quicken, and flush, and compact, and clarify the entire soul; and it should come home from circling in the azure depths of air, and have its ' seat in reason, and be judicious,' and be a bird rather than a butterfly, or firefly, or huge moth of night. Many months after this little notice appeared, Mrs. Logan gave me the following fragment found in her husband's desk, — from which it appears he had begun to put his dream into form : — JUDAS THE BETRAYER— HIS ENDING. 'Tis noon, — yet desolate and dun The lonely landscape lies ; For shortly after day begun, Betwixt it and the mounting sun, A cloud went crawling up the skies. From the sea it rose all slowly, — Thin, and grey, and melancholy, — But gathered blackness as it went, Till, when at noon the stately sun Paused on his steep descent, This ghastly cloud had coiled itself Before his beamy tent : Where like a conscious thing it lay. To shut from men the living day. 'In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision.' 275 And yet all vainly as it seemed ; For on each side, beyond its shade, The sweet, triumphant sunbeams gleamed. Rejoicing in the light they made. On all they shone except that dell, On which the shadow darkly fell. ' O bear me to yon mountain brow That I may look below ; All that is in that unblest dell Full fainly would I know — Why is the sun to it denied ? O bear me to yon mountain side.' We cleave the air, now we are there. And what is it you see ? ' A little marsh, whence, low and harsh, A strange sound comes to me ; I marvel what that sound may be, For strange it lights upon mine ear ; My heart it fills with more than fear, With something of despair. This well I know, 'tis not the sound Of any beast that walks the ground. Of any bird that skims the air.' Right well you guess, for 'tis the wail Of a lost soul in endless bale, — The reward of mortal sinning, — Endless bale, but now beginning ; Nay, do not turn away your eyes. For long before the sun now shining Shall be towards yonder world declining, In that low dell the Lord's Betkayer dies. With fearful horror and surprise, On that low dell I fixed mine eyes. 276 Horce Subsecivce. The hills came down on every side, Leaving a little space betvceen, The ground of which, scarce five roods wide, Was of a cold rank green. And where it sloped down to the fen. Built part of reeds and part of wood, A low half-ruined hut there stood, — For man no home, for beast no den, — Yet through the openings might be seen The moving of a form within. By this the sound had passed away, And silence like a garment lay A moment on the little lake. If such it were, whose surface spake No tale of wakening breeze or sun. But choked wit^ reeds all rank and dun ; Which seemed to me as if they stirred And shivered, though no wind was heard. They gave a shrill and mournful sound, — 'Twas like, and yet unlike, the sighing You hear in woods when the year is dying, And leaves lie thickly on the ground. As creepingly my ear it sought, It might be fancy, yet methought That, of all sounds that live in air. This sounded likest to despair. All the while, Close by the hut a great white dove O sight of wonder and of love !) Sits with a quiet and brooding air, — White, and of none other hue. By its deep yearning eyes of blue, And by no sign beside, I knew It was a guardian spirit of air. What doth the lonely creature there ? 'In Clear Dream and Solemn Vision! 277 (To each man by pitying Heaven One of these at birth is given ; And such their love and constancy, That through all depths of sin and sadness, Tempting hope and baffling madness. They ever, ever with us be. Nor, till proud despair v^e cherish. Will Ihey leave our souls to perish.) What doth the lonely creature there ? ' Yon spirit quitteth not his side To whom he hath been given. Whilst yet his heart has not defied The wrath and grace of Heaven, Nor can his guardian watch be broken Till this defiance shall be spoken By Judas the Betrayer.' Hold on thy watch, thou blessed Bird ! One moment leave it not : A heart of faith even might be stirred To doubt in such a spot. Of him — the wretched traitor — friend, Thou long-forbearing dove ! Let no despairing words offend Thy faithfulness and love ; For in the dark extremes of ill The tongue will disobey the will, And words of sin the lips will pajt, Whilst holy feelings fill the heart ! It is another bird, — and lo ! Rounding the corner of the hut, It cometh silently and slow With outstretched head and eyes half shut ; The feathers do not hide its skin ; Long is its neck, its legs are thin, — 'Tis plain there is no health within. 278 HorcB Subseciva. It is the bird whose song so harsh. But lately sore dismayed me : Upward it walketh from the marsh. It treadeth cunningly. Too foul it is and melancholy To live on the upper ground ; And I know it for a thing unholy, On some bad errand bound. It rounds the comer of the hut, It stops and peers upon the dove : The unconscious creature sees it not, So full are its two eyes with love. On the dove it peers, and its head the while It pusheth out and it draweth in ; And it smileth, if that a bird may smile, At the thought and hope of a joyous sin. In a moment it thrusts its grisly neck With a silent jerk into the lake; In a moment it lifteth itself erect. And, in its bill, a snake. The snake is round, and small, and cold, And as full of venom as it can hold. With three long steps, all without noise. Close to the dove it cometh : That dreams no ill, for the while its voice A sweet low music hummeth. To the dove's fair neck with a gentle peck His long bill he applies : At the touch and the sound the dove turns round With a look of meek surprise, — 'Tis but one look, for swift as thought Tliat snaky neck is round its throat. JEEMS THE DOORKEEPER. JEEMS THE DOORKEEPER. WHEN my father was in Broughton Place Churcli, we had a doorkeeper called yctv/zj-, and a formidable little man and doorkeeper he was ; of unknown age and name, for he existed to us, and indeed still exists to me — though he has been in his grave these sixteen years — as Jfcnts, absolute and per sc; no more needing a surname than did or do Abraham or Isaac, Samson or Nebuchadnezzar. We young people of tlie congregation believed that he was out in the '45, and had his drum shot through and quenched at CuUoden ; and as for any indication on his huge and grey \isage, of his ever having been young, he might safely have been Boit^-'m the ^^'eaver in ' A Midsummer Night's Dream,' or that excellent, ingenious, and 'wise-hearted' Bezaleel, the son of Uri, whom Jeans regarded as one of the greatest of men and of weavers, and whose ' ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, each of them with fifty loops on tlie edge of the selvedge in the coupling, with their fifty taches of gold,' he, in confidential moments, gave it to be understood were 282 HorcB Subsecives. the sacred triumphs of his craft ; for, as you may infer, my friend was a man of the treddles and the shuttle, as well as the more renowned grandson of Hur. /eems's face was so extensive, and met you so formidably and at once, that it mainly composed his whole ; and such a face ! Sydney Smith used to say of a certain quarrelsome man, ' His very face is a breach of the peace.' Had he seen our friend's, he would have said he was the imperative mood on two (very small) legs, out on business in a blue great- coat. It was in the nose and the keen small eye that his strength lay. Such a nose of power, so undeniable, I never saw, except in what was said to be a bust from the antique, of Rhadamanthus, the well-known Justice-Clerk of the Pagan Court of Session ! Indeed, when I was in the Rectors class, and watched Jeems turning interlopers out of the church seats, by merely presenting before them this tremendous organ, it struck me that if Rhadamanthus had still been here, and out of employment, he would have taken kindly to Jeeyns's work, — and that possibly he was that potentate in a U.P. disguise. Nature having fashioned the huge face, and laid out much material and idea upon it, had finished off the rest of Jeems somewhat scrimply, as if she had run out of means ; his legs especially were of the shortest, and, as his usual dress was a very long blue yeems the Doorkeeper. 283 greatcoat, made for a much taller man, its tails resting upon the ground, and its large hind buttons in a totally preposterous position, gave him the look of being planted, or rather after the manner of Milton's beasts at the creation, in the act of emerg- ing painfully from his mother earth. Now, you may think this was a very ludicrous old object. If you had seen him, you would not have said so ; and not only was he a man of weight and authority, — he was likewise a genuine, indeed a deeply spiritual Christian, well read in his Bible, in his own heart, and in human nature and life, knowing both its warp and woof; more peremptory in making himself obey his Master, than in getting himself obeyed, and this is saying a good deal ; and, like all complete men, he had a genuine love and gift of humour,! kindly and uncouth, lurking in those small, deep-set grey eyes, shrewd and keen, which like two sharpest of shooters, enfiladed that massive and redoubtable bulwark, the nose. One day two strangers made themselves over to Jeems to be furnished with seats. Motioning them to follow, he walked majestically to the farthest in ' On one occasion a descendant of Nabal having put a crown piece into 'the plate ' instead of a penny, and starting at its white and precious face, aslced to have it back, and was refused — 'In once, in for ever.' 'Aweel, aweel,' grunted he, 'I'll get credit for it in heaven. ' ' Na, na, ' said yeems, ' ye "i get credit only for the penny ! ' 284 Horcs Subsecivcs. corner, where he had decreed they should sit. The couple found seats near the door, and stepped into them, leaving Jeems to march through the passages alone, the whole congregation watching him with relish and alarm. He gets to his destination, opens the door, and stands aside ; nobody appears. He looks sharply round, and then gives a look of wrath ' at lairge.' No one doubted his victory. His nose and eye fell, or seemed to fall on the two culprits, and pulled them out instantly, hurrying them to their appointed place ; Jeems snibbed them slowly in, and gave them a parting look they were not likely to misunderstand or forget. At that time the crowds and the imperfect ventila- tion made fainting a common occurrence in Broughton Place, especially among ' thae young hizzies,' zs Jeems called the servant girls. He generally came to me, ' the young Doctor,' on these occasions with a look of great relish. I had indoctrinated liim in the philosophy of syncopes, especially as to the propriety of laying the 'hizzies' quite flat on the floor of the lobby, with the head as low as the rest of the body; and as many of these cases were owing to what Jeems called 'that bitter yerkin' of their boddices, he and I had much satisfaction in relieving them, and giving them a moral lesson, by cutting their stay-laces, which ran before the knife, and cracked 'like a bowstring,' as my coadjutor said. yeems the Doorkeeper. 285 One day a young lady was our care. She was lying out, and slowly coming-to. Jeems, with that huge terrific visage, came round to me with his open gully in his hand, whispering, ' Wull 00 ripp 'er up noo ?' It happened not to be a case for ripping up. The gully was a great sanitary institution, and made a decided inroad upon the yerking system — Jeems having, thanks to this and Dr. Combe, every year fewer opportunities of displaying and enjoying its powers. He was sober in other things besides drink, could be generous on occasion, but was careful of his siller ; sensitive to fierceness ('we're uncommon zeelyous the day,' was a favourite phrase when any church matter was stirring) for the honour of his church and minister, and to his too often worthless neighbours a perpetual moral protest and lesson — a living epistle. He dwelt at the head of Big Lochend's Close in the Canongate, at the top of a long stair — ninety-six steps, as I well know — where he had dwelt, all by himself, for five-and-thirty years, and where, in the midst of all sorts of flittings and changes, not a day opened or closed without the well-known sound of Jeems at his prayers, — his 'exercise,' — at 'the Books.' His clear, fearless, honest voice in psalm and chapter, and strong prayer, cjime sounding through that wide ' land,' like that of one crying in the wilderness. Jeems and I got great friends ; he called me John, 286 Horce Subsecives. as if he was my grandfather; and though as plain in speech as -in feature, he was never rude. I owe him much in many ways. His absolute downrightness and yaefauldness ; his energetic, unflinching fulfilment of his work ; his rugged, sudden tenderness ; his look of sturdy age, as the thick silver-white hair lay on his serious and weatherworn face, like moonlight on a stout old tower; his quaint Old Testament exe- getics, his lonely and contented life, his simple godliness, — it was no small privilege to see much of all this. But I must stop. I forget that you didn't know him ; that he is not yonxjeems. If it had been so, you would not soon have wearied of telling or of being told of the life and conversation of this ' fell body.' He was not communicative about his early life. He would sometimes speak to me about ' her,' as if I knew who and where she was, and always with a gentleness and solemnity unlike his usual gruff ways. I found out that he had been married when young, and that ' she ' (he never named her) and their child died on the same day, — the day of its birth. The only indication of married life in his room, was an old and strong cradle, which he had cut down so as to rock no more, and which he made the depository of his books — a queer collec- tion. I have said that he had what he called, with a yeems the Doorkeeper. 287 grave smile, family worship, morning and evening, never failing. He not only sang his psalm, but gave out or chanted the line in great style ; and on seeing me one morning surprised at this, he said, ' Ye see, John, 00,^ meaning himself and his wife, ' began that way.' He had a firm, true voice, and a genuine though roughish gift of singing, and being methodi- cal in all things, he did what I never heard of in any one else, — he had seven fixed tunes, one of which he sang on its own set day. Sabbath morning it was French, which he went through with great birr. Monday, Scarborough, which, he said, was like my father cantering. Tuesday, Coleshill, that soft, ex- quisite air, — monotonous, and melancholy, soothing and vague, like the sea. This day, Tuesday, was the day of the week on which his wife and child died, and he always sang more verses then than on any other. Wednesday was Irish; Thursday, Old Hundred; Friday, Bangor; and Saturday, Black- burn, that humdrummest of tunes, 'as long, and lank, and lean, as is the ribbed sea-sand.' He could not defend it, but had some secret reason for stick- ing to it. As to the evenings, they were just the same tunes in reversed order, only that on Tuesday night he sang Coleshill again, thus dropping Black- burn for evening work. The children could tell the day of the week by Jeems's tune, and would have been as much astonished at hearing Bangor on 238 Horn Subsecivcs. Monday, as at finding St. Giles' half-way down the Canongate. I frequently breakfasted with him. He made capital porridge, and I wish I could get such butter- milk, or at least have such a relish for it, as in those days. Jeems is away — gone over to the majority ; and I hope I may never forget to be grateful to the dear and queer old man. I think I see and hear him saying his grace over our bickers with their brats on, then taking his two books out of the cradle and reading, not without a certain homely majesty, the first verse of the 99th Psalm, ' Th' eternal Lord doth reign as king, Let all the people quake ; He sits between the cherubims, Let th' earth be mov'd and shake ;' then launching out into the noble depths of Irish. His chapters were long, and his prayers short, very scriptural, but by no means stereotyped, and wonder- fully real, immediate, as if he was near Him whom he addressed. Any one hearing the sound and not the words, would say, ' That man is speaking to some one who is with him — who is present,' — as he often said to me, ' There 's nae gude dune, John, till ye get to close grups.' Now, I daresay you are marvelling-^irf/, Why I brought this grim old Rhadamanthus, Bezaleel, U.P. Naso of a doorkeeper up before you ; and secondly, yeems the Doorkeeper. 289 How I am to get him down decorously in that ancient blue greatcoat, and get at my own proper text. And first oi \}a.e. first. I thought it would do you young men — the hope of the world — no harm to let your affections go out toward this dear, old-world specimen of homespun worth. And as to the second, I am going to make it my excuse for what is to come. One day soon after I knew him, when I thought he was in a soft, confidential mood, I said : '/eems, what kind of weaver are you?' ' I'm in the fandcal line, maister John,' said he somewhat stiffly ; ' I like its leecence.' So exit Jeems — impiger, iracundm, acer — torvus visu — placide quiescat 1 Now, my dear friends, I am in \h& fandcal line as well as Jeems, and in virtue of my leecence, I begin my exegetical remarks on the pursuit of truth. By the by, I should have told Sir Henry that it was truth, not knowledge, I was to be after. Now all knowledge should be true, but it isn't ; much of what is called knowledge is very little worth even when true, and much of the best truth is not in a strict sense knowable, — rather it is felt and believed. Exegetical, you know, is the grand and fashionable word now-a-days for explanatory ; it means bringing out of a passage all that is in it, and nothing more. For my part, being in Jeems' s line, I am not so par- ticular as to the nothing more. Wefanciccil men are 290 Horcs SubsecivcB. much given to make somethings of nothings; indeed, the nobie Italians call imagination and poetic fancy the little more (it poco piu) ; its very function is to em- bellish and intensify the actual and the common. Now you must not laugh at me, or it, when I announce the passage from which I mean to preach upon the pursuit of truth, and the possession of wisdom : — ' On Tintock tap there is a Mist, And in the Mist there is a Kist, And in the Kist there is a Cap ; Tak' up the Cap and sup tlie drap, And set the Cap on Tintock tap. ' As to what Sir Henry ^ would call the context, we are saved all trouble, there being none, the passage being self-contained, and as destitute of relations as Melchisedec. Tintock, you all know, or should know, is a big porphyritic hill in Lanarkshire, standing alone, and dominating like a king over the Upper Ward. Then we all understand what a mist is ; and it is worth remembering that as it is more difficult to penetrate, to illuminate, and to see through mist than darkness, so it is easier to enlighten and overcome ignorance than error, confusion, and mental mist. Then a kist is Scotch for chest, and a cap the same for cup, and drap for drop. Well, then, I draw out of these queer old lines — ' This was read to Sir Henry W. Moncreiffs Young Men's Association, November 1862. "jfeems the Doorkeeper. 291 First, That to gain real knowledge, to get it at first-hand, you must go up the Hill Difficulty — some Tintock, something you see from afar — and you must climb; you must energise, as Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Chalmers said and did ; you must turn your back upon the plain, and you must mainly go alone, and on your own legs. Two boys may start together on going up Tinto, and meet at the top; but the journeys are separate, each takes his own line. Secondly, You start for your Tintock top with a given object, to get into the mist and get the drop, and you do this chiefly because you have the truth- hunting instinct ; you long to know what is hidden there, for there is a wild and urgent charm in the unknown ; and you want to realise for yourself what others, it may have been ages ago, tell they have found there. Thirdly, There is no road up ; no omnibus to the top of Tinto ; you must zigzag it in your own way, and as I have already said, most part of it alone. Fourthly, This climbing, this exaltation, and buckling-to of the mind, of itself does you good ; ^ it is capital exercise, and you find out many a thing by the way. Your lungs play freely ; your mouth fills with the sweet waters of keen action ; the hill ' ' In this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service. '^Burke. 292 HorcB Subseciva. tries your wind and mettle, supples and hardens your joints and limbs ; quickens and rejoices, while it tests your heart. Fifthly, You have many a fall, many a false step ; you slip back, you tumble into a moss-hagg ; you stumble over the baffling stones ; you break your shins and lose your temper, and the finding of it makes you keep it better the next time; you get more patient, and yet more eager, and not unoften you come to a standstill ; run yourself up against, or to the edge of, some impossible precipice, some insoluble problem, and have to turn for your life; and you may find yourself overhead in a treacherous ■well-ee, whose soft inviting cushion of green has de- coyed many a one before you. Sixthly, You are for ever mistaking the top ; thinking you are at it, when, behold ! there it is, as if further off than ever, and you may have to humble yourself in a hidden valley before reascending ; and so on you go, at times flinging yourself down on the elastic heather, stretched panting with your face to the Bky, or gazing far away athwart the widening horizon. Seventhly, As you get up, you may see how the world below lessens and reveals itself, comes up to you as a whole, with its just proportions and rela- tions ; how small the village you live in looks, and the house in which you were born j how the plan of yeems the Doorkeeper. 293 the place comes out ; there is the quiet churchyard, and a lamb is nibbling at that infant's grave ; there, close to the little church, your mother rests till the great day ; and there far off you may trace the river winding through the plain, coming like human life, from darkness to darkness, — from its source in some wild, upland solitude to its eternity, the sea. But you have rested long enough, so, up and away ! take the hill once again ! Every effort is a victory and joy — new skill and power and relish — takes you farther from the world below, nearer the clouds and heavens ; and you may note that the more you move up towards the pure blue depths of the sky — the more lucid and the more unsearchable — the farther off, the more withdrawn into their own clear affinity do they seem. Well, then, you get to the upper story, and you find it less difficult, less steep than lower down ; often so plain and level, that you can run off in an ecstasy to the crowning cairn, to the sacred mist — within whose cloudy shrine rests tlie unknown secret ; some great truth of God and of your own soul ; something that is not to be gotten for gold down on the plain, but may be taken here ; something that no man can give or take awayj something that you must work for and learn your- self, and which, once yours, is safe beyond the chances of time. Eighthly, You enter that luminous cloud, stooping 294 Horcs Subsecivcs. and as a little child — as, indeed, all the best king- doms are entered— and pressing on, you come in the shadowy light to the long-dreamt-of ark, — the chest. It is shut, it is locked; but if you are the man I take you to be, you have the key, put it gently in, steadily, and home. But what is the key ? It is the love of truth ; neither more nor less ; no other key opens it ; no false one, however cunning, can pick that lock ; no assault of hammer, however stout, can force it Open. But with its own key, a little child may open it, often does open it, it goes so sweetly, so with a will. You lift the lid ; you are all alone ; the cloud is round you with a sort of tender light of its own, shutting out the outer world, filUng you with an eerie joy, as if alone and yet not alone. You see the cup within, and in it the one crystalline, unimaginable, inestimable drop ; glowing and tremulous, as if alive. You take up the cup, you sup the drop ; it enters into, and becomes of the essence of yourself; and so, in humble gratitude and love, ' in sober certainty of waking bHss,' you gently replace the cup. It will gather again, — it is for ever ever gathering ; no man, woman, or child ever opened that chest, and found no drop in the cup. It might not be the very drop expected ; it will serve their purpose none the worse, often much the better. And now, bending down, you shut the lid, which you hear locking itself afresh against all but the y cents ike Doorkeeper. 295 sacred key. You leave the now hallowed mist. You look out on the old familiar world again, which somehow looks both new and old. You descend, making your observations over again, throwing the light of the present on the past ; and past and pre- sent set against the boundless future. You hear coming up to you the homely sounds — the sheep- dog's bark, ' the cock's shrill clarion ' — from the farm at the hill-foot ; you hear the ring of the blacksmith's study, you see the smoke of his forge ; your mother's grave has the long shadows of evening lying across it, the sunlight falling on the letters of her name, and on the number of her years ; the lamb is asleep in the bield of the infant's grave. Speedily you are at your own door. You enter with wearied feet, and thankful heart; you shut the door, and you kneel down and pray to your Father in heaven, the Father of lights, your reconciled Father, the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and our God and Father in and through Him. And as you lie down on your own delightful bed before you fall asleep, you think over again your ascent of the Hill Difficulty, — its baffling heights, its reaches of dreary moorland, its shifting gravel, its precipices, its quag- mires, its little wells of living waters near the top, and all its ' dread magnificence ; ' its calm, restful summit, the hush of silence there, the all-aloneness of the place and hour ; its peace, its sacredness, its 296 HorcB Subsecivce. divineness. You see again the mist, the ark, the cup, the gleaming drop, and recalling the sight of the world below, the earth and all its fulness, you say to yourself, — ' These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good, Almighty ! Thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair ; Thyself, how wondrous then ! Unspeakable ! who sitt'st above these heavens.' And finding the burden too heavy even for these glorious lines, you take refuge in the Psalms — ' Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the Lord from the heavens : praise him in the heights. Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise ye him, all his angels : praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon : praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps ; Fire and hail ; snow and vapour ; stormy wind fulfilling his word : Mountains, and all hills ; fruitful trees, and all cedars ; Beasts, and all cattle ; creeping things, and flying fowl : Kings of the earth, and all people ; princes and all judges of the earth ; Both young men and maidens ; old men and children : Let them praise the name of the Lord : For his name alone is excellent ; his glory is above the earth and heaven. Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Bless the Lord, O my soul ! ' I need hardly draw the moral of this, our some- what /a««Va/ exercitation and exegesis. You can all yeems the Doorkeeper. 297 make it out, such as it is. It is the toil, and the joy, and the victory in the search of truth ; not the taking on trust, or learning by rote, not by heart, what other men count or call true ; but the vital appropria- tion, the assimilation of truth to ourselves, and of ourselves to truth. All truth is of value, but one truth differs from another in weight and in bright- ness, in worth ; and you need not me to tell you that spiritual and eternal truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, is the best. And don't think that your own hand has gotten you the victory, and that you had no unseen, and it may be unfelt and unacknowledged hand guid- ing you up the hill. Unless the Lord had been at and on your side, all your labour would have been in vain, and worse. No two things are more inscrut- able or less uncertain than man's spontaneity and man's helplessness, — Freedom and Grace as the two poles. It is His doing that you are led to the right hill and the right road, for there are other Tintocks, with other kists, and other drops. Work out, there- fore, your own knowledge with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, and to know of His good pleasure. There is no explaining and there is no disbelieving this. And now, before bidding you good-bye, did you ever think of the spiritual meaning of the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, as con- nected with our knowledge and our ignorance, our light 298 HorcB SubsecivcB. and darkness, our gladness and our sorrow? The everyday use of this divine alternation to the wander- ing children of Israel, is plain enough. Darkness is best seen against light, and light against darkness ; and its use in a deeper sense of keeping for ever before them the immediate presence of God in the midst of them, is not less plain; but I sometimes think, that we who also are still in the wilderness, and coming up from our Egypt and its fleshpots, and on our way let us hope, through God's grace, to the celestial Canaan, may draw from these old-world signs and wonders, that, in the mid-day of knowledge, with daylight all about us, there is, if one could but look for it, that perpetual pillar of cloud — that sacred darkness which haunts all human knowledge, often the most at its highest noon ; that ' look that threatens the profane;' that something, and above all, that sense of Some One, — that Holy One, who inhabits eternity and its praises, who makes darkness His secret place. His pavilion round about, darkness and thick clouds of the sky. And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of doubt, of fear, of sorrow, of despair ; that then, and all the most then — if we will but look in the right airt, and with the seeing eye and the understanding heart — there may be seen that Pillar of fire, of light and of heat, to guide and quicken and cheer ; know- ledge and love, that everlasting love which we know Jeems the Doorkeeper. 299 to be tlie Lord's. And how much better off are we than the chosen people ; their pillars were on earth, divine in their essence but subject doubtless to earthly perturbations and interferences; but our guiding light is in the heavens, towards which may we take earnest heed that we are journeying. ' Once on the raging seas I rode, The storm was loud, the night was dark ; The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed The wind that toss'd my foundering bark. Deep horror then my vitals froze, Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem, When suddenly a star arose. It was the Star of Bethlehem I It was my guide, my light, my all. It bade my dark foreboding cease ; And through the storm and danger's thrall It led me to the port in peace. Now safely moored, my perils o'er, I '11 sing first in night's diadem, For ever and for evermore The Star, the Star of Bethlehem 1' SIR E. LANDSEER'S PICTURE ' THERE 'S LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET." ETC. ETC. 20 SIR E. LANDSEER'S PICTURE 'THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET.' 1851. WE have had several of Landseer's best pictures lately, but we are not likely soon to cry, ' Hold, enough !' The natural eye and heart is not easily wearied by nature and her true interpreters, be they poets, philosophers, or painters ; the great point is to get nature, and then render her aright. It is, by the way, a new element in the fine arts, this setting famous pictures on their travels, and is on the whole a good one. We cheerfully adopt the peripa- tetic or to-and-fro doctrine thus far. Abrisk circulation- is the great thing in the body, natural, social, and com- mercial, — keep things going, large and quick returns ; and it is one proof of a higher organisation, or, to use the cant phrase, ' development ' of the body politic, as it is of the individual animal, when there is a heart, and when it sends its life-giving stream swiftly round. Caterpillars, and dead, degraded, and somnolent nations have a local half-and-half sort of circulation, they want the one grand central organ ; but lest our readers should mistake us, we don't think this organ in our body politic is London, though Wordsworth 304 HorcB Subsecivce. calls it this \ mighty heart,' — it is the grand amount of the intelligence, refinement, and goodness of the whole people. We therefore do not despair of having a visit of the Venus de Medici Or of the Dying Gladiator, or even the entire Tribune of Florence, with its riches ; and getting tickets from Mr. Hill or Mr. Crichton, that they are on view, and thus seeing in our own ' Auld Reekie' what has so long 'entranced the world.' This picture of Sir Edwin's is remarkable in several respects : it is very large ; it is twenty years old ; it gives us a curious means of judging of his young and his present style, and seeing how he is the same and yet different ; it has the grand English qualification of being worth ;^Sooo, or ;^2oo a year at 4 per cent. ; and best of all, it is a truly great and honest picture. By honest, we mean that the painter does his part in truth and honour, no blinking of difficulties, no filling up out of the lumber-room of other people's odds and ends, called his imagination ; his is the truthful loving study of nature. This picture bears this out in every part, and it is worth remarking that being of so large a size, he had the ready temptation to ' generalise ' and paint for effect. But he loved nature and honesty and himself too well to do this, and he has had his reward. Look at his last picture at Mr. Hill's, the ' Random Shot,' that dead mother and her suckling calf, on the cold mountain- top, and you will see the recompence of true work at Sir E. Landseers Picture. 305 the beginning of life and of art. There he has reached the domain of the 'shaping spirit of imagination;' he has got the flower in summer because he planted the seed in spring, and cherished the plant. We will not describe this picture ; it does that for itself. The entire ' scene ' strikes us as wonderfully real. That wild place, out of the reach probably for ages of anything but a bird, a moonbeam, or a light- ning stroke, is filled at once to our eyes with the interest of death, life, human sympathy, and the grandeur of nature. You hear the gruff honest fellow, with his handsome face, his iron grey hair, wet with exertion and his speaking hand, shouting out (in Gaelic from his mouth, and in the universal language from his eyes), 'There's life in the old Dog yet,' and you know by his curved lip, his loud look, his anxious eye, and trumpet hand, how far above him is his audience, and the thorough-bred deerhound, happy and contented even in its suffering, for he has got his gende head on the breast of his master, who is his god. Let our readers mark the blush of its skin through the hair, as indicating the fierce race, and how its tail is drawn in by pain and terror ; but there is no end of admiring. It is humanely and beautifully managed, that the other two are quite dead and at rest ; it is a true touch of nature to leave the light springing deerhound alone alive of the three. We need hardly speak of the miraculous antlers. 3o6 Horcs Subsecivtz. Of course we know, by an act of our understand- ing, that in Mr. Crichton's room, in the heart of Edinburgh, and within that gilded frame, they must be ' painted * horns ; but who does not ' feel ' thera to be veritable hartshorn ? The colour of the whole is deep and rich, perhaps a little too rich, in the figures ; but it is finely harmonised. The management of the ' reds ' is a study to artists. The great subdued mass on the plaid, the smaller on the tartan stock- ings, the dead dog's open mouth and gums, the stag's tongue, and the small, intense, living tongue of the deerhound, the stony, obdurate look of the granite blocks, the wild confusion and the verdure, those soothing bits of nature's life-giving touch, working her will sweetly in the midst of desolation, the receding distance, with its mists and ghostly waterfalls, giving to the ear the idea of continual, vague murmuring, the rack of clouds drifting across, — the rope telling the story — all this who else could do so well ? It is a great beauty in Landseer, as it is in Rubens, that landscape, dogs, men, flowers, everything is 'his own,' seen with his own eye, rendered by his own hand. It would be well that our young dashing artists, who are for bold-handling execution, would take a lesson from this picture. Landseer must have been young when he painted' this, and yet how ' conscientious ' (we say this seriously) the whole performance, how thoroughly Sir E. Landseers Picture. 307 honest, and paid in full. Let our young friends take a note of this. The only thing in this picture left to what some of them would call their fancy, is wrong. It is the twist of the double rope ; the twist is going the same way in the up and down rope. The etching by Ryall is first-rate; it looks like an original sketch by the artist himself, so bold and free and subtle his handling, so up to the full idea. We would despair of him making the remaining work equal had we not before us his Columbus, by Wilkie. We can most cordially recommend this engraving. There is a common, and, we may be allowed to call it, a somewhat vulgar and ' lassieish ' objection to Landseer's subjects, that they are pain- ful, as in the case of such representations as those of the 'Otter Hunt,' where that indomitable wretch, 'game' to the last, is held up transfixed and writhing under the adoring and praying eyes, and shaggy muzzles and legs, of up-looking little sturdy ruffians, the terriers and otter hounds, there is too much that is painful ; but in such a picture as this of the ' Old Dog ' we think the prevailing feeling is, and should be, pleasurable, and that humane and hearty sym- pathy which is one of the best results of painting, or of anything else. Young ladies of a tender turn, and who weep their fine eyes and handkerchiefs ugly and sad with sympathetic tears for distressed lovers — in a book 3o8 Hores Stibsecivce. (they do very different when they rheet them in real life, except they be themselves in the case)^would say on seeing this picture, Oh ! shocking ! What a horrid sight ! Blood and tongues ! What a horrid man Landseer must be ! Let us analyse the dear creature's horror. It is her own pain chiefly that is horrid, it is not her feeling for the animals. It is the same sort of dislike to the sight that a bad smell causes to the nose, it has little better in it than this. A moderate measure of pain, — a real moral sym- pathy with the lower animals, and a feeling of uneasi- ness on account of their sufferings, — a going-out towards them, to love and be good to them, is a useful lesson for us all. Art is not a mere toy to be joked with and laughed at,^t is a deep and too little read passage in the nature and in the mind of man, and, with all reverence, it is one of the true mani- festations of Him who made, and governs, and blesses us all. HALLE'S RECITAL. January 20, 1863. If it be a great pleasure to see others pleased, and a greater to be the pleaser, then must this gifted and accomplished artist have been very happy during his two hours on Saturday afternoon. Here was he, all Halle's Recital. 309 by himself, sitting down at his piano, as if he were at his own fireside, and having his ' At Home ' with some fifteen hundred happy people, to each one of whom the hours seemed all too short. We seldom see, or rather feel (for we were all so much engaged that there was little seeing and less looking, even the perennial cough was checked, to the near suffocation of some self-sacrificing people whom we heard in by-corners tampering with apoplexy and asphyxia), so many people having so much of the same enjoyment all at once, and yet each ear making its own of all it heard, telling its own secret story to itself. What it was to see Taglioni make music to the eye, gliding about like a shadow, or bounding like a pard, or merely walking; or to see Ducrow in his ' Dumb Man of Manchester,' making his every action speak ; what it was to hear Grisi sing, or William Murray or his sister act — the same quiet mastery of expression, the same perfection of feeling and making to feel, the same power of making little into much, and much into more ; so it is to come under the charm of this pure, consummate musician. You think of him at first simply as the cause of what he achieves ; you find yourself as little thinking of him —of the means of what is to you the pleasant end-^ as he himself plainly is — each, giver and receivers, are taken up with the idea and its expression, he 3IO HorcB Subsecivcs. giving it out, they taking it in ; or rather it is so per- fectly expressed that you reach it asi it were imme- diately, and get to its life and soul at once, and straight. Much of this arises from his quiet, simple, sensible face and manner. He knows that he is a means' to an end — not an end in himself, as too many of our performers are, — and he gets the best reward in being ultimately himself an end as well, and all the better. You think him not the less clever, not the less executive, brilliant, subtle, penetrating, delicate, firm, and up to 'impossible passages,' — in a word, not the less expressive, that he never says to you, ' Now, listen, how clever, how delicious, how miraculous I am !' And it is this pos- session of his theme, and his self-possession in the best sense, that makes one great secret of his playing ; it is not less unaffected and to the point (only much more delightful) than the talk of your man of busi- ness. Then think of the rest and satisfying play of the mind, of the diversion in its true meaning, of the many jaded minds, and heavy and weary hearts, and it may be vexed ears, of our busy men and women. Music can soothe other than savage beasts ; and next to active exercise — to a ride across the Pent- lands or a walk across Corstorphine Hill, and in some deeper and gentler ways, better even than these, though both are best — is the passing two hours of a Saturday, after the week's toil and worry. Halle s Recital. 3 1 1 its wear and tear, in hearing pure good masterpieces purely expressed. We are all the better of heartily- admiring the same thing, the same thought, and the same giver or transmitter of the thought. Therefore it is that we miss the old Saturday subscription con- certs, where the great classics were worthily rendered. Who can forget Mozart's ' Jupiter,' or the overture to ' Der Freischiitz,' or the delicious, innocent, Elysian ' Surprise ' of Haydn — as if it had wandered out of Paradise ; or the many-voiced sonatas of Beethoven — deep, mobile, unfathomable, melancholy as the sea ; or the quartettes with violins and violoncello, rising each above the other like larks singing at ' Heaven's gate,' or like transcendental nightingales in a sweet strife — ' That crowds, and huiries, and precipitates Witli fast thick waible [their] delicious notes. They answer and provoke each other's song, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, And one low piping sound more sweet than all.' Why should not we have these pleasures back again? I daresay we might if we all asked them loud enough. Beethoven's Grand Sonata in D was the first and largest recital; and is it not a great achievement this sitting down without anything but memory, and what a memory ! his fingers, and his genius, his tact and taste, and for anything we see, telling us his 3 1 2 Horcs Subsecivcs. own present Presto and Largo t Mesto, his special at the moment Minuetto Allegro and his last Rondo Allegro — taking us into his confidence, and getting ours for the asking. As is often the case, we speak in profoundest ignorance of the science or the art beyond being the delighted subjects of their emo- tional effects. Beethoven begins with a trouble, a wandering and groping in the dark, a strange emerg- ence of order out of chaos, a wild rich confusion and misrule. Wilful and passionate, often harsh, and as it were thick with gloom ; then comes as if ' it stole upon the air,' the burden of the theme, the still sad music — Largo i Mesto — so human, so sorrowful, and yet the sorrow overcome, not by gladness but by something better, like the sea after a dark night of tempest falling asleep in the young light of morning, and ' whispering how meek and gentle it can be.' This likeness to the sea, its immensity, its un- certainty, its wild strong glory and play, its peace, its solitude, its unsearchableness, its prevailing sadness, comes more into our minds with this great and deep master's works than with any other. If we think of Handel, his is 'the sea of glass,' and the overarch- ing ' body of heaven in its clearness,' the ' harpers harping on their harps,' the far-off ' sound of many waters,' echoing to ' the utmost bounds of the ever- lasting hills,' ' the voice Of a great multitude and of manythunderings,' the 'sevenfold chorus of halle- Halle s Recital. 3 1 3 lujahs and harping symphonies,' 'the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness.' But it seems to us that with the restless, capacious, unsatisfied and satisfying German, — so full of passion and tenderness, so full of the utterance of ' The still, sad music of humanity, ' — • the sea, we all know, and love, and fear is the likely symbol. Sebastian Bach's perfect Gavotte and Musette were given to perfection, his purity, his crystalline depth, his inveteracy, his working out absolutely and exquisitely his germinal idea, — nothing could be better. Somehow we did not much care for, and do not much remember Mendelssohii s Presto Scher- zando ; it was too fanciful, too soon, shall we say, after the great old Sebastian ? but we confess to not always liking, and sometimes not taking in, the main purpose of his music. Doubtless, we are in a pitiful minority as to this. Compared with the greatest masters, we feel him at times difficult, capricious, and thin. Weber's Invitation d la Valse was — as every- body's heart and feet, especially the young ones' feet, beat time to it in their minds — simply delicious from beginning to end. We confess to having been quite beside ourselves, indeed finding ourselves away altogether ; and in the full blaze of one of those ball- rooms which we can all dance our fill in, and choose our partners, and get no mischief— and behold ! — 314 HorcB Stibsecivce. ' Yestreen when to the stented string The dance gaed through the lichted ha'. ' We saw with our own eyes that splendid young fellow — a prince of course — with his dark hair and eyes, with that well-known glow in them finding her out at once in that shadowy recess, where her mother had left her for a moment, there he is bending down and asking her to tread a measure. Of course, he was Lochinvar, only much handsomer, gentler, altogether an unspeakabler being than that hasty young reiver who was so hard hunted across Can- nobie-lee. She — ' Her eyes like stars of twilight fair, Lilce twiliglit, too, her dusky hair ; But all things else about her drawn From Maytime and the cheerful dawn,'— looks Still more down, flushes doubtless, and quietly, in the shadow, — says ' No ' and means ' Yes,' — says 'Yes' and fully means it, and they are off! All this small whispered love-making and dainty device, this coaxing and being coaxed, is in the (all too short for us, but not for them) prelude to the waltz, the real business of the piece and evening. And then such a waltz for waltzing ! Such precision and decision 1 whisking them round, moulding them into twin orbs, hurrying them past and away from everything and every one but themselves. Now they all but disappear, and are far away, almost out of sight and hearing, round Halle s Recital. 3 1 5 they come ! here again ! happier than ever, he firmer, perfecter, abler, she playing with those little feet the nicest second in the world. Well, the waltz ends, and they and you have their fill, and they sit down in the same shadowy nook, happy and out of breathy and begin again the same ' murmurs made to bless,' only lower, more serious and more silent; and for our parts we must be excused for saying that we have good reason to believe, indeed we must believe our own eyes, that in this interesting case, the business adjourned to an alcove out of the moonlight, the sound of fountains and the dancers faintly heard, and our two young individuals sitting with excellent effect, for a well-known scene in Retzsch's Song of the Bell, to which we beg to refer our readers, old and young, — it being observed that the ' parients ' of both parties are at a respectful distance, under an old arbol d'amore, such as we have seen in the Royal Garden at Aranjuez a-blessing of the young people. But soberly, this was one of Mr. Halle's most perfect bits of art, as it is one of the most perfect flowers of the genius of that ' marvellous boy ' who perished in his bloom ; it is full of the sweetness and the sadness, the richness, the fresh blossoming of youth, like the Eclogues of Collins, or the Endymion of Keats, the ' first crush of the grapes,' the ' odorous breath ' and the swift vanishing of the ' sweet hour of prime.' Next came the Allegro con molto expressiom, and 3i6 Hora Subsecivts. the Allegretto ma non troppo e CantaMle, from Beet- hoven's Sonata in E minor. This piece, especially the latter half, which was cantabile indeed, is the one which lingers most in our ear and mind; it took more possession of us — was to us 'more moving delicate, and full of life,' — was the one thing we would more have rather not lost than any of the others ; its loveliness, its fulness, its happiness, its heavenliness can only be told by itself. It seemed as if it spoke out all its secret, told it to us and to itself for the first time, innocently as a child, or an angel, 'still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim ;' or like an ^olian harp with a soul and a will and purpose of its own, and a tune which it made the vagrant winds play as it listed, not as they. It had the unexpected- ness, the swells as of music from a far country, come and gone, of that witching but unsatisfying instrument. For, unlike it, this had a story to tell with all its caprice and swift changes, and was not a mere wandering voice, bent upon nothing. But we are too hard on the harps that we used long ago to get from Keswick, and which we pleased ourselves with think- ing, sang to us the songs of ' Glaramara's inmost caves,' not to speak of a stave from Scafell and the Pikes, and a weird sough through ' the pining umbrage ' of 'those fraternal Four of Borrowdale.' Do you re- member Coleridge's lines, ' composed at Clevedon, Somersetshire ?' when sitting with his ' pensive Sara ' Halle s Recital. 3 1 7 they heard ' the stilly murmur of the distant sea telling of silence ;' and then came the music of ' that simplest lute Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark ! How by the desultory breeze caressed, Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover, It pours such sweet upbraiding as must needs Tempt to repeat the wrong 1 And now, its strings Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes Over delicious surges sinlc and rise — Such a soft floating witchery of sound As twilight elfins make when they at eve Voyage on gentle gales from Fairyland, Where melodies round honey-drooping flowers, Footless and wild, lilie birds of paradise. Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing I O the one life within us and abroad, Which meets all motion and becomes its soul, A light in sound, a sound-like power in light. Rhythm in all thought and joyance everywhere, Methinks, it should have been impossible Not to love all things in a world so filled ; Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air Is Music slumbering on her instrument.' This is beautiful, is it not? But we prefer Beethoven's harping to that of .^Eolus ; there is method in his madness ; there is a greatness in his gentleness ; it soothes our wild discontents and regrets; it sings them, like blind giants, to sleep, like Ariel charming Caliban, the uncanny, clumsy and glum. Field's nocturne in E flat was pretty, but we could see to the bottom, and we suspect the J [8 HorcB Subsecivcs. kindly and modest reciter brought more out of it than Field ever put in. Heller's Dans les Bois was given con amore, as if Heller was Halle's brother ; it is original without being odd, and we can wish the author few better pleasures than hearing it played by his friend. The pieces from Chopin were finely chosen, full of the subtlety, the quick life, the intense subjectivity of this supersubtle, supersensi- tive, great and odd genius, whom we would think as difficult and deserving of translation as the unique Jean Paul, who needs a language for himself. This over, the delighted audience, like children only half full of pleasure, and asking for more, could not let their friend go without another last, and he gave the beautiful, lively, and most picturesque Spinning Wheel,' by Heller, the young maiden singing to herself and her wheel. So ended this enjoyable concert, and so ends our rhapsody. BIGGAR AND THE HOUSE OF FLEMING.i March 12, 1863. We owe some amends to this excellent book — to its sensible and genial author — and to the shrewd ' Biggar and the House of Fleming ; an account of the Biggar district, Archa;ological, Historical, and Biographical. By William Hunter. Biggar : David Lockhart. Biggar and the House of Fleming. 319 and sturdy auld-farrant little capital of the Upper Ward, for having been so long in noticing ' Biggar and the House of Fleming.' Biggar deserved a book to herself, and has now got it, and a good and a big one too, and a pub- lisher of her own — a book written not like an article for a gazetteer, in the dull, plodding style, but as a work proper to itself, and having at the same time reference to the rest of Scotland and its history mainly as ' adjacent,' in the sense of the good old Greater and Lesser Cumbray story. To Biggar people, Biggar is the centre of the world ; and this book is written by a Biggar man, and mainly for those who are or have been 'callants' there, and to whom the memories of the Corse Knowe and of Daft Jenny, Johnny Minio, The West Haw, Bow's Well, and the Cadgers Brig are sacred. But with all this — with the local colouring strong and keen — the book is good general reading, the work of a think- ing, judging, well-knowledged, well-languaged man, who could write as well on many a wider subject. It is not a book to analyse ; but we can assure our readers that, though they never saw Tinto, Coulter Fell, Cardon, or Bizzyberry, and never even heard the ancient joke, that ' London 's big, but Biggar 's bigger,' they will find much diversion, and not a little instruction, in this volume, especially under the chapters * Prehistoric Remains,' ' Biggar a Burgh of 320 H'orcB Subsecivce. Barony,' ' The Romans in the Upper Ward ;' Its Witches, Vagrants, and Crimes ; and, not the least curious, ' The Battle of Biggar,' in which the ques- tion is ably and entertainingly handled — Was Bhnd Harry right in asserting, in ' Ye Actis and Deidis of ye illuster and vailyand Campioun, Shyr William Wallace, knicht of Elrisle,' that Sir William and his friend. Sir John Tinto, gave battle to and defeated Edward i. and Sir Aylmer de Vallance, to east of Biggar, on Guildie's.Oxgait and the Stanehead, past which runs the little burn, the Red Syke, which, of course, all Biggar, past, present, and to come, held, holds, and will for ever hold, to be proof positive of the battle, as it ran of blood for days after ? But, seriously, this battle of Biggar is worthy of the attention of these mighty expiscators and exploders of myths, Sir George C. Lewis, and our own inevit- able Burton. Let them clear up it and the Wigtown martyrs. We shall now give ' a wheen swatches ' of this goodly volume : — ' Giein' himsel' a fleg.' John Brown the fiddler, full of genius and music, and also too frequently fou in the other sense, play- ing at the fairs, penny-weddings, and dancing-schools, and leading a wild throughother life, had been up all night fiddling and drinking at Broughton fair. Biggar and the House of Fleming. 3 2 1 He had seen his ' neebors ' all asleep, or prostrate, and betook himself in the cool, sober light of the morning, to the road. He was seized when near Heavyside with sudden qualms in the interior, and thought his end was come. Being a Calvinist as well as a fiddler and toper, he had sundry awful reflections on this subject; and to indulge them more fully, he sat down at the roadside, expecting every moment the final summons. After waiting and wondering, John got up with much alacrity, saying, ' If I maun dee, I may as well dee gaun as sittin',' and made victoriously for Biggar. Here is a good bit on the same drouthy genius : — ' On another occasion, after indulging in a round of rather hard drinking, he fell into the horrors. He viewed his conduct with any- thing but complacency. He considered that a feeling of sorrow and regret was not a sufficient atonement for his delinquencies, but that he was fairly entitled to receive some personal chastisement. Labouring under this impression, he went forthwith to the late Mr. James Paterson, commonly called " Oggie," from having lived with his father on the farm of Oggscastle, near Carnwath. Having found hira, he said, " Jeames, I maun hae the len o' a gun frae ye this mornin' ; I 'm gaun to tak' a bit daunder doon the length o' Bogha' castle." " The len o' a gun, John !" said James, "that's strynge. What on earth are ye gaun to dae wi' a gun ? Ye dinna mean to shute yersel' ?" 322 HvrcB Subsecivcc. " No exactly that, Jeames," said John, " but of coorse I mean to gie mysel' a deevil o' a fleg." ' BiGGAR AS A Medical School. ' Biggar from a remote period has had a staff of medical men. So early as the fourteenth century, mention is made, in a charter, of Simon the physi- cian of Biggar. We know very little regarding the Biggar doctors, however, prior to the beginning of last century. At that time Andrew Aikman flourished as a surgeon in Biggar. The earliest notice that we have of him is on the 28th June 1720, when he and James Thypland were brought before the Bailie's Court, and fined " in the soume of fyve punds Scots to the fiscall," for having, in the course of casting peats in Biggar Moss, encroached on their neighbour's room. In 1723, he and his family appear to have been greatly annoyed by William Liddell, a horse- couper, one of those restless and outrageous indivi- duals who give their neighbours and the powers that be a great amount of trouble. He therefore arraigned him before the Bailie's Court, and Luke Vallange, the presiding magistrate, condemned him, under a penalty of " fyve hundred merks Scots," to keep the doctor, and his wife, bairns, family, and others, harmless and skeathless, in their bodyes, lives, goods, and geir, and not to molest him nor his in any sort, directly or indirectly, in tyme coming. Biggar and the House of Fleming. 323 * Doctors William Baillie and William Boe were distinguished physicians at Biggar during a consider- able part of last century. Biggar, during the time they flourished, acquired some celebrity as a medical school. It was a common practice at that time for young men who wished to acquire a knowledge of the medical art, to serve an apprenticeship to some eminent practitioner. The fame of these two Biggar worthies drew round them many young men, some of whom distinguished themselves in their profession in after years. We may specially refer to Dr. Robert Jackson, the well-known army medical reformer.' Robert Forsyth, Advocate. The following notice of this strong-brained man, whose huge frame and head were well known twenty years ago in the Parliament House, where he invari- ably appeared at 9 a.m., nobody ever being before him, is characteristic of the times and of the class out of which, by his own native force, he so nobly raised himself. 'His father was Robert Forsyth, bellman and gravedigger, to whom we have already referred ; and his mother's name was Marion Pairman. This worthy couple were united in marriage in 1764, and their only child, Robert, was bom on the i8th January 1766. Their condition in life was very humble, and they had to struggle with all the disadvantages and sorrows of 324 HorcB SubsecivcB. extreme poverty ; but they resolved to give their son, who early showed an aptitude -for learning, a good education, in order to qualify him for the work ot the ministry. He was sent early to the parish school, but being the son of a poor man, he was treated with marked neglect, and made small progress. He soon, however, became extremely fond of reading. He borrowed such books as his neighbours could supply, and read them in the winter nights to his parents, to Robert Rennie, shoemaker, and others, who com- mended him highly for his industry and ability, and thus encouraged him to renewed exertions. In this way he became acquainted with such works as The History of the Devil, Satan's Invisible World Dis- covered, the Histories of Knox, Crookshank, and Josephus, Ross's View of all Religions, the poems of Butler, Young, Milton, Ramsay, Pennecuik, and Sir David Lindsay. It is remembered at Biggar, that one evening he was busily engaged in reading aloud the poems of Sir David Lindsay, by the blaze of a piece of Auchenheath coal, after his mother had gone to bed, when that worthy matron said, "O Robie man, steek the boords o' Davie Lindsay, and gie 's a blad o' the chapter bulk (the Bible), or I'll no fa' asleep the nicht." 'As he made slow progress in his classical studies at the parish school of Biggar, he was sent in his twelfth or thirteenth year to the burgh school of Lanark, then Biggar and the House of Fleming. 325 taught by Mr. Robert Thomson, a brother-in-law of the author of the Seasons. Here lie made more advancement in a few months than he had done for years previously. When attending this seminary, he returned to Biggar every Saturday, and remained till Monday. His aged grandmother was wont to " hirple " out the Lindsaylands road to meet him on his way home ; but young Forsyth sometimes spent a few hours in climbing trees at Carmichael, or looking for birds' nests at Thankerton, and this sorely tried the patience of the old dame as she sat by the wayside chafing at his delay, and longing for his return. ' Forsyth then studied four years at the University of Glasgow, and manfully struggled with all the obstructions arising from the irs angusta domi. During one of these years, a severe and protracted storm of frost and snow occurred, and prevented all communication from place to place by means of carts. The Biggar carrier was consequently imable to pay his usual visits to Glasgow for several weeks. Old Forsyth was thrown into great distress regarding the state in which he knew his son would be placed from want of his ordinary supply of provisions. He there- fore procured a quantity of oatmeal^ and carried it on his hack along the rough tracks on the top of the snow all the way to Glasgow, a distance of thirty-five miles, and just arrived when young Forsyth had been reduced to his last meal.' 326 Horce Subsecivce. He studied for the Church, but having no interest, though an eloquent preacher, and having then, perhaps, no great belief in what he preached, he gave up the ministry and took to the bar. 'At that time the men of the Parliament House were more exclusive than they are at present. They cared little for a new adherent to their ranks unless he came recommended by his connection with some aristocratic family. The idea of a sticket minister, and the son of a gravedigger, obtaining admission into their dignified order, was intolerable to the Dundases, the Forbeses, the Wedderburns, the Erskines, and others, who in those days ruled the roast in the Parliament House. One of their number connected with the Biggar district, but never dis- tinguished for obtaining any great amount of practice, was specially opposed to Forsyth, and one day had the audacity to say, " Who are you, sir, that would thrust yourself into the Faculty? Are ye not the poor bellman's son of Biggar?" "I am so," said Forsyth coolly, but sarcastically, " and I have a strong suspicion that, had you been a bellman's son you would have been your father's successor.'" Mary Youston and Professional Ethics. ' William Baillie's (the tinker's) wife, Mary Youston, was also a remarkable character. In height she was Biggar and the House of Fleming. 327 nearly six feet, her eyes were dark and penetrating, her face was much marked with the smallpox, and her appearance was fierce and commanding. She was even more dreaded than her husband, as she was more audacious and unscrupulous. Few persons cared to give her ofifence, because, if they, did, they were sure in the end to suffer some loss or injury. " It is like Mary Youston's awmous, gien mair for her ill than for her guid." She was, like her husband, a dexterous thief and pickpocket, so that it was a common observation regarding her, " Whip her up Biggar Street on a market day, wi' a man at ilka oxter, and she would steal a purse ere they got her to the head o't." Many stories of her sayings and exploits were at one time prevalent among the peasantry of the Biggar district. We give a speci- men or two. One day Mary arrived at the village of Thankerton, with several juveniles, who were usually transported from place to place in the panniers of the cuddies. She commenced hawking her com- modities amongst the inhabitants, when some of the children of the village came into the house where she was, and cried, " Mary, your weans are stealing the eggs out of the hen's nest." Mary quite exult- ingly exclaimed, " The Lord be praised ! I am glad to hear that the bamu are beginnmg to show some signs 0' thrift:" 328 Horce Subsecivcs. ' Langleathers. ' John Thomson, commonly called " Lang- leathers," was a person of great strength, and carried a budget of old iron implements and other articles on his back that few persons could lift. He was decidedly fatuous ; and the report was that he had received such a shock on witnessing the destruc- tion of the city of Lisbon by an earthquake in 1755, that he never again entirely recovered his reason. He used, in his contemplative moods, often to mutter to himself, " I saw a city sunk." He was inoffensive, except when roused by the annoyances and tricks of mischievous boys. He then became exceedingly noisy and outrageous ; and, being a dexterous " hencher " of stones, it required great nimbleness on the part of the youthful tormentors to avoid his aim. When he happened to be at Biggar on Sabbath, the boys and he were sure to come into collision, and then a great deal of noise and disturbance was the consequence. He had rather a fondness for these encounters, and was not easily prevailed on to give them up. When any person remonstrated with him, and said that he ought to pay more respect to the Sabbath, " Weel, weel, then," said Jock, " I '11 aff to Crawfordjohn ; there's nae Sabbath there.'" Biggar and the House of Fleming. 329 Jock Robertson, a clever ne'er-do-weel, who had been at Glasgow College with Campbell the poet, long haunted the Upper Ward, getting his bed, his supper, and his dram at the farm ' touns ' for his tricks and his fortune-telling, of which he thus gives the rationale: — Good Philosophy. — 'Such is the propensity of human nature to pry into futurity, that I am very successful as a spaeman; and as I take no money, I am less apt to be committed as a vagrant. I can hide my tongue in such a manner that it cannot be observed ; and though I am dumb, I am not deaf; I hear in one house what is going on in another, and can easily make a toler- able history. I first kneel down on the floor, then draw a magic circle with my chalk ; next I write the initials, J. S., which will serve for John Smith, James Sommerville, Joseph Sym, Jacob Simpson, and a thousand more. On seeing the initials, a girl per- haps whispers, " I '11 wager that 's our Johnnie that 's at the sea." Having found a clew, I draw a ship, and write Mediterranean, or whatever can be elicited from the tattle of the maidens. If, on inspecting the initials, they look grave, or give a hint about death, I draw a coffin ; but if the initials do not suit any absent friend of the parties, I make them a sentence, " I- say," and follow it up with anew set of letters till I can fabricate a story.' 330 Horcs Subsecivce. About a hundred years ago an old man, Adam Thomson, who made and sold heather besoms, and ' ranges,' and ' basses,' — mats of straw or rushes, ' threshes,' as they are called in that broad tongue which rejoices in Haup for Hope and WuU for Will — lived in a lonely cottage in the bleak muirland between Biggar and Carnwath. One night in mid- summer, when they were all in bed, Thomson, who had gone to the door to answer a loud knocking, was brutally murdered, his wife maltreated, and the house robbed : — ' Great efforts, by offering rewards, and otherwise, were made to discover the perpetrators of this foul outrage. Several persons were apprehended on sus- picion, and all manner of reports were put in circula- tion ; but no satisfactory discovery was made, and most persons began to consider that further search was hopeless. 'Adam Thomson, a son of the deceased, a man of strange notions and eccentric habits, and then schoolmaster of the parish of Walston, after ponder- ing for a long time over the mysterious death of his father, resolved to make personal efforts to discover the murderers. From time to time, so often as his vocation would permit, he left his native locaUty, and travelled over the greater part of Scotland and England, making minute inquiries after suspicious characters, visiting jails, and mixing with thieves. Biggar and the House of Fleming. 33 1 tinkers, and vagabonds of all sorts. Again and again he returned home baffled and disappointed. One evening as he lay in bed ruminating on the painful subject which had taken so firm a hold of his mind, he felt a strong and irresistible impulse once more to renew his search. He rose early next morning, and wended his way to Jedburgh, where, as was his wont, he repaired to the Tolbooth. Here he made the usual inquiries at the prisoners, if any of them knew the perpetrators of his father's murder, and it is understood that he obtained such informa- tion as enabled him to take effectual steps to appre- hend them and bring them to justice. It was thus ascertained that the murder was committed by two men, John Brown and James Wilson, and two women, Martha Wilson and Janet Greig. At what place James Wilson was apprehended we have not ascertained ; but John Brown was captured in a house near the Fort of Inversnaid, by a party of soldiers from the garrison, on Sabbath, the 3d January 1773, and conducted first to Stirling and then to Edinburgh. As no person had seen them commit the act, it would have been difficult to obtain a conviction against them ; but the two women basely agreed to turn king's evidence. The trial of the two men was fixed to take place on the 28th June; but it was postponed till the 12th August, on the plea that at least one of the panels 332 Horcs SubsecivcB. could bring evidence to prove an alibi. The indivi- dual who at length came forward and made this attempt was a person of their own kidney, called William Robertson ; but his statements were so inconsistent and contradictory that the Court com- mitted him to prison. The jury unanimously found the prisoners guilty ; and the sentence pronounced upon them was, that they should be executed in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, on Wednesday, the isth September, and their bodies given to Dr. Monro for dissection. ' The execution of Brown and Wilson took place on the day appointed ; and Adam Thomson, it is said, appeared with them on the scaffold and offered up a solemn prayer, an exercise of which he was very fond, and in which, it is allowed, he greatly excelled. On his return home, he erected a stone at the grave of his father in Carnwath Churchyard, with an inscrip- tion in Latin. It was long an object of attraction, and was visited by many persons at a distance who had heard the story of the murder, the extraordinary efforts made by young Thomson to discover the perpetrators of it, and the singular epitaph which he had composed. A relative of Thomson, some years ago, removed the stone to the neighbouring churchyard of Libberton, and there barbarously caused the inscription to be defaced or erased, and another one, regarding his own immediate relations. Biggar and the House of Fleming. 333 to be put in its place. So far as can be remembered the inscription ran as follows : — ' " Hie jacet Adamus Thomson, qui xv. ante Cal. Julii 1 77 1, cruentis manibus, Joannis Brown, Jacobi Wilson, et duarum feminarum, apud Nigram Legem, prope Novam ^diiicationem, crudelissime trucidatus erat. lUi, Adamo Thomson, defuncti filio et ludi- magistro de Walston, detecti erant. Ob quod crimen nefandum, Brown et Wilson, capitis damnati, et xvii. Cal. Oct. 1773, suspensi erant. ' " Hoc monumentum extructum fuit Adamo Thomson, rectore Academiae de Walston." ' The late Rev. William Meek of Dunsyre was wont to quote the above inscription as a curious sample of the Latinity of the dominies of the Upper Ward, putting special emphasis on the rendering of Blacklaw, near Newbigging, by " Nigram Legem, prope Novam ^lEdificationem," and the fine conceit of Thomson in styling himself " ludimagister " and " rector " of the Academy of Walston.' Adam Thomson tracking his father's murderers like a sleuth-hound, and then offering \ip a solemn prayer — ' an exercise of which he was very fond ' — at their gallows, is worthy of Matthew Wald and that fell shoemaker M'Ewan, whose predestinarian medi- tations on the sands at Lamlash, none who have read Lockhart's intense novel are likely to forget. And now for a bit of the comic. Robert Forsyth, 22 334 Horce Subseciv(Z. the father of the advocate, and himself gravedigger, bellman, and minister's man, was asked by his master, who was knowing in pigs, to take one of a very fine litter to his friend, the then minister of Dolphinton. Rob was told to be sure to inform the receiver of everything about its ' blood and culture ' — not only who its father and mother, but who its forebears generally were. ' And ye see, Rab, be shure ye tell this afore ye let it oot, for he '11 never heed a word ye say after that for glowerin' at its perfections.' So off Rob trudged with his pock and its high-bred burden. When he came to Candy Burn, a little way out of Biggar, where a dram was then sold, he met Richie Robb, a humourist and wag, who, seeing the bedral, says, ' Whaur are ye gaun?' ' Oo, I'm gaun to Dowfintoun, wi' joostthe wunnerfust pig ever was piggit ; it's for the minister.' ' Ay, man ! Come yer ways in and tak a dram, and let's see the pig.' The pig was seen and admired, and then the dram and a crack. Mean- time, Righie takes out the pig and puts in a young puppy-dog about the same weight, and Robbie trudges off, arriving in the afternoon at the manse of Dol- phinton. The minister was out looking about him, and knew Rob. ' What 's this in the pock, Robbie, my man?' 'Ay, ye may well speir, Mr. Meek. It's joost the maist extraordnar pig ever was. My maister has sent it as a parteekler present to you, wi' Biggar and the House of Fleming: 335 his compliments.' ' Let us see 't, Robbie.' 'Na, na, sir, I maun first put ye up to its generation, sae to speak.' He then detailed its antecedents, and let it solemnly escape at the corner. Out came the puppy, winkiiig and lively. ' That's a dowg, Robbie !' says the minister. ' A dowg ! a dowg ! as shure 's daith it is a dowg ; it was as shure, Mr. Meek — as fac 's daith -^it was a pig when it gaed in !' ' Weel, Robbie, it 's a dowg noo, so you may tak' it back. But come in and hae yer four oors.' Robbie took a fearful look at the beast, returned it with much subdued blasphemy, astonishment, and cruelty to the pock, and, making a hearty meal, started again, giving a sceptical keek into the pock every now and then on his way when he thought nobody saw him, to see what further change was going on. He arrived once more, disgusted, bewildered, and weary, at Candy Burn, where, of course, Richie was waiting for him. ' Ye 've been lang, Robbie, and what for are ye carryin' the pock ower yer shouther?' Robbie gave a grunt of disgust, and told his story. 'That's awfu', Robbie, perfectly fearsome ; ye maun stap in and hae a dram. Oo maun tell Tibbie.' Rob flung down his pock with its portentous contents — which gave an unmis- takeable yowl — and took his dram and told his woes. Of course Richie transposed the pig once more, and on went Rob, heartened by drink a little, but full of alarm as to his master, who met him at the door 336 HorcB SubsecivcB. eager to know what his friend thought of the pig. Robbie flung down his pock with a desperate air, took his stand, and, rubbing his forehead, poured out the prodigious story — ' A whaulp, an absolute whaulp, as ye may see, sir, wi' yer ain een.' Opening the pock and giving it a vindictive kick, out came the pig of the morning ! ' As fac 's death, Mr. Watson, it was a whaulp at Dowfinton, and I lookit in noos and thans to see if it was turnin' into onything else ; and it was a whaulp at Candy Burn, and that Richie Robb can aver and sweer.' 'Nae doot, Robbie, Richie kens a' aboot it,' said the more knowing minister. In its own small way, this is as good a joke as any since Boccaccio. What a finished per- sonation Matthews or Sir William Allan would have made, and Macnee or Peter Fraser would make of it ! There was — ' Ah for the change 'twixt now and then !' — an institution in Biggar as peculiar to it as is the Godiva procession to Coventry, — the ^ Hurley-hacket !' It has ceased for ever, because its possibility is no more. Forty years ago, the Corse Knowe, or Cross Hill, was as essential a feature in Biggar as St. Paul's in London, SL Regulus' Tower at St. Andrews, the Campanile in Venice, or our own Castle here. Biggar is no more Biggar as it was than the Apollo would be himself without his nose. This kTiowe was in the centre of the town, and middle of the street, and the market cross was on its top; and Biggar and the House of Fleming. 337 when there was a hard frost, it was the pleasure of the entire town, young and old, to go mad, and take to hurling themselves down the frozen slopes, ' keepin' the puddin' het ' in an astonishing way. As were the saturnalia to old, and the Carnival to present Rome, so was this short insanity to the staid town — its consummation being the Hurley-hacket, a sort of express train, headed by one or two first-raters, ' perfect deevils,' who could descend the steep stand- ing, like Hamlet in 'To be or not to be,' calm, and with their arms crossed, and their feet close heel-and- toe, shod with iron ; one fellow — he was afterwards hanged — was generally the leader, straight as an arrow shooting the rapids, and yielding, like a con- summate rider, to the perilous ups and downs ; behind him came the lads and lasses, scudding on their hunkers ; then their elders on their creepies, turned upside down, and then the ruck. Away it swept, yelling and swaying to-and-fro, like a huge dragon, lithe and supple — ' swingeing the horror ' of its mul- titudinous tail — down across the street, heedless of everything, running, it may be, right into Mr. Pairman's shop, or down on the other side into William John- stone's byre, and past the tail of his utmost coo. Then the confusion and scrimmage, and doubling of everybody up at the ending ! that was the glory, like emptying an express train into a 'free toom.' All this is gone, the Cross Knowe is levelled, the Hurley- 338 HorcB Subsecivce. hacket is unknown, no longer flames down the steep with half the town, and it may be the minister and the dominie secretly at its tail, with a fragment of a tar barrel flourishing and blazing at its- head. It was worthy of the pen of him who sang of Anster Fair. The old Biggar callants may say, with their native poet Robert Rae — ' Syne fancy leads me back to some Tremendous Hurley-hacket row, When "Roarin' Billie," langsyne dumb, Gaed thunderin' doon the auld Corse Knowe. ' 'London's big, but Biggar 's Biggar.'— yb/^^ of the District. THE ENTERKIN. '£" -J THE ENTERKIN. IF you have a holiday, and can trust your aneroid when it promises fair — if you can do twenty-one miles in seven hours, and wish, moreover, to see what you never saw before, and what you will never forget — then take six brown biscuits in your pocket, and a return ticket to Abington, on the Caledonian, starting at 6.20 a.m. There is not much from Edinburgh to Abington that everybody does not know; but as you pass Kirknewton you will not be the worse of remember- ing that the beautiful little wooded glen — ' dingle or bushy dell or bosky bourne ' — on the left, into whose recesses you get a brief, surreptitious glimpse, with the young Gogar trotting cheerily through it, is the once famous ' procul negotiis ' of the great philo- sophic physician Dr. Cullen, where it was his delight to walk, and muse, and delve. You may see the maze of his walks still. It was part of his little estate of Ormiston Hill. Behind the present handsome and sensible mansion the old house may still be seen, with its magnificent outlook across the Vale of the 342 Hora Subsecivce. Almond to the Ochils, and the outlying Grampians from Benlomond to Schiehallion, and across the Firth to Benarty and the Lomonds ; above its door are the words ' est ulubris,' from the well-known lines : — ' Coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt ; Strenua nos exeicet inertia : navibus atque Quadrigis petimus bene vivere. Quod petis, hie est ; Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit tequus. ' This is untranslateable, but we give its bones : ' It is clime not character they change, who run across the sea ; a strenuous idleness keeps us at work ; in our yachts and " drags " we seek a happy life. What you seek is here. Even in this our Ulubrae — our own homely out-of-the-way Ormiston Hill, if we but bring with us the even mind.' It is pleasant to think of this great old Doctor, leaving his town work and books, and giving himself up to gardening — the records of which, in outlandish plants and shrubs, still remain — ^and to farming, testing those original speculations as to soils and manures which he expounded in his lectures on chemistry, and which were in much anticipatory of the new doctrines and practice. You may — to while away the time past Carnwath and its dreary Lang Whang — fancy the old Doctor, as Dr. Benjamin Rush sketches him — ' tall and slender, and with a stoop in his shoulders, his face long, his under lip protruded a little beyond The Enterkin. 343 the upper, his nose large and inclined to a point down- wards, his eye of a blue colour, penetrating but soft, and on his whole face an air of mildness and thought ' — walking in his glen, and repeating to himself or to a friend his favourite beatitude of the old usurer — ' Beatus ille qui froml negoiiis,' etc., or that of Poli- tian : — ' Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, Quem non mendaci resplendens gloria fuco Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus. Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu Exigit innocuae tranquilla silentia vitas. ' We are glad, by the by, to learn that that our College of Physicians is about to repair the tomb of this, one of their greatest fellows ; it is in the old burying- ground of Kirknewton, and had fallen sadly into ruin and forgetfulness. We are now past Carnwath, and got to that station which a shivering Cockney, who was kept waiting some hours on a windy winter night in the old shed, said was well-named Curst airs (Carstairs), and past Thankerton — Tancred's Town — and Symington — Symon's — and are at Abington before nine. There is Mrs. Hunter's comfortable little roadside inn, where, in the Eglinton Tournament year, the present Emperor of the French arrived one evening alone, wet, hungry, and weary, having been grouse-shooting all day on Crawford Muir. He asked for a room. 344 Horcs SubsecivcB. but was told the only one was occupied by some young men who were surveying the Caledonian line. He sent up his card asking to be allowed to join them, and was requested to go to the place whence Mr. Kinglake seems to think his Majesty has a return ticket. He sat down by the kitchen fire, got his supper, slipped away to bed, and was off early next morning on foot. You now take the road to Leadhills by the Glen- gonar Burn, which, like the river Pison in the Eden of Genesis, ' compasses the land where there is gold.' Indeed this region was called in olden times 'God's treasure-house in Scotland,' and the four petty burns in which the precious yellow grains were found — Glengonar, Short Cleuch, Mennock, and Wanlock — were compared to the four rivers in the Garden of the Lord — Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates ! Here was got the gold of which King James's bomiet- pieces were made, hundreds of workmen being then employed in its search. The glittering sand is still occasionally to be found, and every now and then a miner, smit with the sacred hunger, takes to the deluding, feckless work, and seldom settles to any- thing again. It is six miles of a pleasant glen road from Abing- ton to Leadhills — a dreary, unexpected little town — which has lain great part in ruins for many years, owing to the suspension or spiritless working of the The Enter kin. 345 mines, during a long, baffling House of Lords law- suit. Things are better now under the new Com- pany, and we may soon see it as tidy and purpose-like as the Duke's neighbouring Wanlockhead. The people are thoughtful and solid, great readers and church-goers. They have a capital library. Like all natives of such forlorn, out-of-the-world places, they cannot understand how any one can be happy anywhere else ; and when one of them leaves the wild, unlovely place, they accompany him with won- dering pity to the outskirts of their paradise, and never cease to implore and expect his return for good. If you have a keen eye, you will not fail to observe something you never before didn't see in a Scottish village. There are the usual dogs and children about the doors, but there is not a hen to be seen I — they would be all poisoned by the lead in the gravel they pick up. You are now some twelve hundred feet above the sea, and as you pass the door of the good doctor — an old Peninsular surgeon, and a thoroughbred gentleman, who has returned to his birthplace, and is the honoured friend and healer of that solitary upland — you may see what is now a broken-down byre, in which the author of The Ge7itle Shepherd was born. Take now the road to the left ; the other goes to Wanlockhead and down Mennock to Sanquhar; 346 Horcs Subsecives. yours leads you by the shoulder of the huge Lowthers through the Enterkin Pass to Durrisdeer and Dalveen. The road is little more than a bridle one. You ascend steadily and gently, to a great height, the high hills lying all around — not sharp and ridgy like the Highland mountains, ' curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them,' like the fierce uplifted waves of a prodigious sea — they are more like round-backed, lazy billows in the after-swell of a storm, as if tumbling about in their sleep. They have all a sonsy, good-humoured, buirdly look. As compared with Ben Lomond, our young Jacobus pronounced them ' slow.' This must, however, be a perilous road in snow and drift ; for we passed several cairns, marking where some shepherd or bewildered traveller had stumbled on, blinded and sleepy, and taken his final rest. The east side of the Lowthers is an easy ascent, and the effect of this vast expanse, stretching miles in smoothest surface, when covered with new-fallen snow, is said to be wonderful ; shapely and rounded like some great recumbent creature, ' white, radiant, spotless.' At this time of the year, as we saw it, covered with thick, short, tawny grass and moss, one unbroken surface to the summit of 2377 feet, it was like the short close-grained fur of a lioness — the hills lying like her cubs, huddling round their mighty mother. On its summit the counties of Lanark and The Enterkin. ^47 Dumfries meet, as also three lairds' lands, and here it was the custom, up to fifty years ago, to bury suicides. Any more solitary and out-of-the-world place could hardly be conceived. The bodies were brought from great distances all around, and, in accordance with the dark superstitions of the time, the unblest corpse was treated with curious indignity — no dressing with grave-clothes, no strieking of the pitiful limbs ; the body was thrust, with the clothes it was found in, into a rude box, not even shaped like a coffin, and hurried away on some old shattered cart or sledge, with ropes for harness. One can imagine the miserable procession as it slunk, often during night, through the villages, and past the farmsteads, every one turning from it as abhorred. Then, arrived at this high and desolate region, the horse was taken out, and the weary burden dragged with pain up to its resting-place, and carried head foremost as in despite ; then a shallow hole dug, and the long, uncouth box pushed in — the cart and harness left to rot as accursed. The white human bones may sometimes be seen among the thick short grass ; and one who was there more than fifty years ago remembers with a shudder still, coming — when crossing that hill-top — upon a small out- stretched hand, as of one crying from the ground ; this one little hand, with its thin fingers held up to heaven as if in an agony of supplication or despair. •348 HorcB SubsecivcB. What a sight, seen against the spotless sky, or cross- ing the disc of the waning moon ! We are now nearing the famous Enterkin Pass ; a few steps and you are on its edge, looking down giddy and amazed into its sudden and immense depths. We have seen many of our most remark- able glens and mountain gorges— Glencroe and Glencoe — Glen Nevis, the noblest of them all — the Sma' Glen, Wordsworth's Glen Almain (Glen- almond), where Ossian sleeps — the lower part of Glen Lyon, and many others of all kinds of sublimity and beauty ; but we know nothing more noticeable, more unlike any other place, more impressive, than this short, deep, narrow, and sudden glen. There is only room for its own stream at its bottom, and the sides rise in one smooth and all but perpendicular ascent to the height, on the left, of 1895 feet, Thir- stane Hill, and on the right, of 1875, the exquisitely moulded Stey Gail, or Steep Gable — so steep that it is no easy matter keeping your feet, and if you slip you might just as well go over a bona fide mural pre- cipice. ' Commodore Rogers ' would feel quite at home here ; we all know his merits :— ' Commodore Rogers was a man — exceedingly brave — par- ticular ; He climbed up very high rocks — exceedingly high — per- pendicular ; And what made this the more inexpressible, These same rocks were quite inaccessible.' The Enter kin. 349 This sense of personal fear has a finely idealistic effect upon the mind, makes it impressionable and soft, and greatly promotes the after-enjoyment of the visit. The aforesaid Stey Gail makes one dizzy to look at — such an expanse of sheer descent. If a sheep dies when on its sides it never lies still, but tumbles down into the burn ; and when we were told that Grierson of Lagg once rode at full gallop along its slope after a fox, one feels it necessary to believe that either he or his horse were of Satanic lineage. No canny man or horse could do this and live. After our first surprise, we were greatly struck with the likeness of the place to a picture of it by Mr. Harvey, exhibited in our Academy in 1846, and now in Mr. Campbell of Blythswood's collection. This was one of the great painter's first landscapes, and gives the spirit, the idea of the place with wonderful truth and beauty — its solemnity and loneliness, its still power, its gentle gloom, its depth and height, its unity, its sacred peace — ' It is not quiet, is not ease, But something deeper far than these. The separation that is here Is of the grave ; and of austere. Yet happy feelings of the dead.' We have heard that the artist, who sat alone for hours sketching, got so eerie, so overpowered with the loneliness and silence, that he relieved himself 23 350 Horcs Subsecivce. from time to time by loud shouts, and was glad to hear his own voice or anything. It must be a won- derful place to be alone in on a midsummer's mid- night, or at its not less witching noon — ' In such a glen as this, on such a day, A poet might in solitude recline, And, while the hours unheeded stole away. Gather rich fancies in the art divine. Great thoughts that float through Nature's silent air. And fill the soul with hope and love and prayer. ' The glen is peculiar in being closed in, to all appearance, as much at the lower as the upper end — you feel utterly shut in and shut out. Half-way down is a wild cascade called Kelte's Linn — from Captain Kelte, one of Claverhouse's dragoons, who was killed here. Defoe's account of the affair and of its wild scene, in his Memoirs of the Church of Scotland, ,is so homely and to the quick, that we give it in full. It is not unworthy of Robinson Crusoe, and is unex- aggerated in local description : — ' This Entrekein is a very steep, and dangerous Mountain ; nor could such another Place have been easily found in the whole Country for their Purpose; and, had not the Dragoons been infatuated from Heaven, they would never have entered such a Pass, without well discovering the Hill above them. The Road for above a Mile goes winding, with a mode- rate Ascent on the side of a very high, and very The Enter kin. 35 1 steep Hill, 'till on the latter part, still ascending and the Height on the left above them being still vastly great, the Depth on their right below them makes a prodigious Precipice, descending steep and ghastly into a narrow deep Bottom, only broad enough for the Current of Water to run that descends upon hasty Rain : From this Bottom the Mountain rises instantly again steep as a Precipice on the other side to a stupendous Height. The passage on the side of the first Hill, by which, as I said, the Way creeps gradually up, is narrow ; so that two Horsemen can but ill pass in Front : And, if any Disorder should happen to them, so as that they step but a little a-wry, they are in danger of falling down the said Precipice on their right, where there would be no stopping 'till they came to the Bottom. And the writer of this has seen, by the Accident only of a sudden Frost, which had made the way slippery, 3 or 4 Horses at a Time of Travellers or Carryers lying in that dismal Bottom, which slipping in their way, have not been able to recover themselves, but have fallen down the Precipice, and rolled to the Bottom, perhaps, tumbling 20 Times over, by which it is impossible but they must be broken to pieces, ere they come to stop. * In this Way the Dragoons Were blindly marching 2 and 2 with the Minister and 5 Countrymen, whom they had takeii Prisoners, and were hauling them 352 HorcB Subsecivce. along to Edinburgh ; the Front of them being near, the Top of the Hill, and the rest reaching all aiong the steep part ; when on a sudden they heard a Man's Voice calling to them from the side of the Hill on their left a great Height above them. ' It was misty, as indeed it is seldom otherwise on the Height of that Mountain ; so that no Body was seen at first : But the Commanding Officer hearing some Body call, halted, and call'd aloud, What d'ye want, and who are ye ? He had no sooner spoke, but 1 2 Men came in sight upon the side of the Hill above them, and the Officer call'd again. What are ye 2 and bad Stand: One of the 12 answer'd by giving the Word of Command to his Men, Make Ready; and then calling to the Officer, said, Sir, Will ye deliver our Minister i The Officer answer'd with an Oath, No, Sir, an ye were to be damn'd. At which the Leader of the Country-, men fir'd immediately, and aim'd so true at him, the' the Distance was pretty great, that he shot him thro' the Head, and immediately he fell from his Horse ; His Horse fluttering a little with the Fall of his Rider, fell over the Precipice, rolling to the Bottom, and was dash'd to pieces. 'The rest of the 12 Men were stooping to give Fire upon the Body; when the next Commanding Officer call'd to them to hold their Hands, and desir'd a Tmce. It was apparent, that the whole The Enter kin. 353 Body was in a dreadful Consternation ; not a Man of them durst stir a Foot, or offer to fire a Shot And had the 1 2 Men given Fire upon them, the first "Volley, in all Probability, would have driven 20 of them down the side of the Mountain into that dread- ful Gulph at the Bottom. ' To add to their Consternation, their 2 Scouts who rode before, gave them Notice, That there apjiear'd another Body of Arm!d Countrymen at thz Top of the Hill in their front; which however was nothing but some Travellers, who, seeing Troops of Horse coming up, stood there to let them pass, the Way being too narrow to go by them : It 's true, there were about 25 more of the Countrymen in Arms, tho' they had not appear'd and they had been sufficient, if they had thought fit, to have cut this whole Body of Horse in pieces. ' But, the Officer having ask'd a Parley, and demanded. What it was they would have? they replied again, Deliver our Minister. Well, Sir, says the Officer, Ye's get your Minister, an ye will pro- mise to forbear firing : Indeed we 'II forbear, says the good man. We desire to hurt none of ye : But, Sir, says he. Belike ye have more prisoners : Indeed have we, says the Officer, and ye man deliver them all, says the honest Man. Well, says the Officer, Ye shall have them then. Immediately the Officer calls to Bring forward the Minister : But the Way was so 354 Ho7''ce Subsecivee. narrow and crooked he could not be brought up by a Horseman, without Danger of putting them into Disorder : So that the Officer bade them Loose him, and let him go ; which was done : So the Minister stept up the Hill a step or two, and stood still ; Then the Officer said to him, Sir, and I let you go, I expect you promise to oblige your People to offer no Hindrance to our March. The Minister promis'd them, He would do so. . Then go. Sir, said he. You owe your Life to this Damned Mountain. Rather, Sir, said the Minister, to that God that made this Mountain. When their Minister was come to them, their Leader call'd again to the Officer, Sir, We want yet the other Prisoners. The Officer gave Orders to the rear, where they were, and they were also deliver'd. Upon which the Leader began to march away, when the Officer call'd again^ Put hold. Sir, says he. Ye promised to be satisfied if ye had your Prisoners : I expect you 'II be as good as your Word. Indeed shall I, says the Leader, T am fust marching away ; it seems he did not rightly understand the Officer. Well, Sir, but, says the Officer, / expect you call off those Fellows you have posted at the Head of the Way. They belong not to us, says the honest Man, they are unarmed People, wailing till you pass by. Say you so? said the Officer ; Had I known that, you had not gotten your Men so cheap, or have come off so free: Says the Countryman, An ye are for Battle, The Enter kin. 355 Sir, We are ready for you still, if you think you are able for us, ye may trye your Hands ; we 'II quit the Truce, if you like. NO, says the Officer,- / think ye be brave Fellows, ^en gang your Gate.' In his curious account of his travels in Scotland, Defoe gives a more detailed description of the glen and of his own visit to it, saying with true London naivete, that the hills on each side ' are nearly as high as the Monument !' ^ ' ' From Drumlanrig I took a Turn to see the famous Pass of Enterkin, or Introkin Hill : It is indeed, Jiot easy to de- scribe ; but by telling you that it ascends through a winding Bottom for near half a Mile, and a Stranger sees nothing terrible, but vast high Mountains on either Hand, tho' all green, and with Sheep feeding on them to the very Top ; when, on a suddain, turning short to the left, and crossing a Rill of Water in the Bottom, you mount the Side of one of those Hills, while, as you go on, the Bottom in which that Water runs down from between the Hills, keeping its Level on your Right, begins to look very deep, till at Length it is a Precipice horrible and terrifying ; on the left the Hill rises almost per- pendicular, like a Wall ; till being come about half Way, you have a steep, unpassable Height on the Left, and a monstrous Casm or Ditch on your Right ; deep, almost, as the Monu- ment is high, and the Path, or Way, just broad 'enough for you to lead your Horse on it, and, if his Foot slips, you have nothing to do but let go the Bridle, least he pulls you with him, and then you will have the Satisfaction of seeing him dash'd to Pieces, and lye at the Bottom with his four Shoes uppermost. I pass'd twice this Hill after this, but the Weather was good, and the Way diy, which made it safe ; but one of our Com- pany was so frighted with it, that in a Kind of an Extasy, when he got to the Bottom, he look'd back, and swore heartily that he would never come that Way again.' 356 Hor<^ Subsecivce. We now escaped by a secret path which we defy the uninitiated to discover — we had a mountain nymph to guide us — out of this strange, deep place, which, if it were any longer, would weigh the traveller down with its solemnity and seclusion — into Dalveen, down which flows the Carron, and the road from Edinburgh to Dumfries, by Biggar and Thornhill. It is an exquisite scene — great steep green hills opening and shutting the winding valley. It is well known as one of the finest and most romantic passes in the south of Scotland — it must have been something worth one's while to descend it on the box seat in the old four-horse-coach days. It is six miles from Leadhills to Lower Dalveen, and nine from that to Elvanfoot, where you must catch the train due at 4.20 — most provokingly early. Any one fearing lest the twenty-one miles may be too much for his legs or his time, may shorten the walk two or more miles by going to Elvanfoot and walk- ing up the Elvan, instead of the Glengonar Bum. If he has our sky and our willingness to be happy, he will mark the Enterkin day with a white stone. We have said that the miners at Leadhills are a reading, a hard-reading people ; and to any one looking into the catalogue of their ' Reading Society,' selected by the men themselves for their own uses and tastes, this will be manifest. We have no small The Enter kin. 357 gratification in holding their diploma of honorary membership — signed by the preses and clerk, and having the official seal, significant of the craft of the place — of this, we venture to say, one of the oldest and best village-libraries in the kingdom, having been founded in 1741, when the worthy miners of that day, headed by James Wells and clerked by William Wright, did, on the 23d November, ' con- descend upon certain articles and laws ' — as grave and thorough as if they were the constitution of a commonwealth, and as sturdily independent as if no Earl was their superior and master. ' It is hereby declared that no right is hereby given, nor shall at any time be given to the said Earl of Hopetoun, or his aforesaids, or to any person or persons whatever, of disposing of any books or other effects whatever belonging to the Society, nor of taking any concern with the Society's affairs,' etc. As an indication of the wild region and the distances travelled, one of the rules is, ' that every member not residing in Lead- hills shall be provided with a bag sufficient to keep out the rain.' Here is the stiff, covenanting dignity cropping out — ' Every member shall (at the annual meeting) deliver what he hath to say to the preses ; and if two or more members attempt to speak at a time, the preses shall determine who shall speak first ;' and * members guilty of indecency, or unruly, obstinate behaviour,' are to be punished 'by fine. 358 Horce Subsecivce, suspension, or exclusion, according to the nature of the transgression.' The Westminster Divines could not have made a tighter job. If Charles Lamb had, by any strange chance — such as dropping from a balloon, hailing from Hamp- stead — strayed into this reading and hawking village, and put up at Mr. Noble's for a day or two, with his pipe (of peace and more, for he used to say with a sad smile between the earnest puffs, ' Other men smoke for pleasure ; I (puff) smoke (puff) for my (puff) sal- (puff) va-va-vation,' '^) well-provisioned, and a modicum of old Madeira and Hollands, and had he been driven into his inn by stress of weather and fear of the mountains (we all reraemember how, when visiting Southey at Keswick, he ran away from Skiddaw and the rest of the big fellows, back to ' the sweet security of streets,') — how he would have enjoyed this homely working-man's library with its 2 200 volumes! Fancy him and 'Papaverius' (De Quincey) and 'The Bookhunter' storm- stayed, all three here, and discussing over their toddy, and through their fragrant reek, its multifarious books, ' ' When Dr. Parr, — who took only the finest tobacco, used to half fill his pipe with salt, and smoked with a philosophic calmness, — saw Lamb smoking the strongest preparation of the weed, puffing out smoke like some furious enchanter, he gently- laid down his pipe and asked how he had acquijred his power of smoking at such a rate? Lamb replied, " I toiled after it. Sir, as some men toil after virtue. " ' — Talfourd's Li/e of Lamb. The Enterkin. 359 from Cudworth's ' Intellectual System ' and Grotius ' on Christianity,' to Spurgeon's ' Gems ' and Wylie's ' Seventh Vial.' Fancy Carloagnulus beseeching The Bookhunter to enlighten him upon the Marrow- Controversy, and the Old and New Lights, and the Burghers and Antiburghers, the . Glassites, Sande- manians, Cameronians, and U.P.'s ; and 'Papaverius ' entering curiously and delectably upon King's ' Origin of Evil,' Thomas k Kempis, or 'Aspasio Vindicated.' To hear 'Elia'^ inquiring mildly and stammeringly at The Bookhunter, as he turned over Erskine's ' Principles of the Law of Scotland,' whether ' multiple- poinding ' was a phrase which his friend Pierce ]Egan — historian of the prize-ring — might not advantage- ously adopt ; and during the mixing of another tumbler, asking his opinion as to the two Histories of the Concilium Tridentiiium, in order to edge in a small joke of Burton-upon-Trent. Then think of the three discussing, with a single dip and a blazing fire, 'Humphrey Clinker,' 'The Adven- tures of a Guinea,' and 'The Bravo of Bohemia.' Fancy their awe when they found upwards of 140 voliimes of seririons, graduating from Butler, Sterne, Horsley, and Robert Hall, down to Drs. Dodd and Gumming. How Charles would expatiate upon ' Queen Street, a poem ' — what ' on earth ' it might mean and what it might not;— how curious he would * See note, p. 360. 360 HorcB Subseciva. be upon Clark's ' Hundred Wonders ' and ' Extracts of C. L., Esq.' — were these his Essays taken down in his sleep — all unbeknown to himself? Who wrote 'Juniper Jack?' and 'The Land of Sinim?' and who ever allowed 'Count Fathom' to slip into such decent company? But seriously, we have been greatly struck with the range of subjects and of authors in this homely catalogue ; and it is impossible to think with anything but respect of the stout-hearted, strong-brained men who, after being in the bowels of the earth all day, sat down to wrestle with John Owen or Richard Baxter, or dream of heaven and holiness with Scougall and Leighton, or refresh them- selves with Don Quixote, the Antiquary, the Fool of Quality, and Daubuisson on ' The Basalts of Saxony ' —besides eviscerating, with the help of Jonathan Edwards and Andrew Fuller, their own gloomy and masculine theology as mercilessly as they did the stubborn galena and quartz. Note by ' The Bookhunter ' on Papaverius. Papaverius would have scunnered at the decent •good book' appearance of Fisher's 'Marrow,' or Gib's 'Display of the Secession Testimony.' To bring him round about to the manner by a learned-like congenial path, I would have put into his hands, to bring The Enterkin. 36: him up to the seventeenth century, the ' Tremulantes sive Quakeri,' and the Independentes, by means of ^Speculum Abominattonum,' and then have shipped him in the ' Histoire des Sectes Religieuses ' of Bishop Gr^goire, where he would have found ' Methodistes, Seceders, Burghers, Reliefs, Bereans, Glassites, Bal- christes, Hutchensonians, Tankers, Shakers, Skevi- kares, Buchanistes, Brugglerians, Mamillaires, Ven- choristes,' with others equally familiar and unfamiliar, all discussed in fluent French. Since our Leadhills ploy, four of us met one September morning at Abington to breakfast, and took our way up Camps Water and down Glen Breck into Tweed. It was a grey, demure day, gentle and serious, — ' caught at the point where it stops short of sadness ;' the clouds well up and curdled — lying becalmed ' O'er the bioad fields of heaven's bright wildemesse ; ' what of sunshine there was lay on the distant hills, moving slowly, and every now and then making darker the depths of some far-off Hope. There is something marvellous in the silence of these upland solitudes ; the burns slip away without noise ; there are no trees, few birds ; and it so happened that day 362 HoreB SubsecivcB. that the sheep were nibbling elsewhere, and the shepherds all unseen. There was only 'the weird sound of its own stillness,' as we walked up the glen. It was refreshing and reassuring, after the din of the town, this out-of-the-world, unchangeable place. We got upon the Moffat road two or three miles above Tweedsmuir Kirk ; and one of us who had not been there for three-and-thirty years — when, — taking his time, — he walked from Edinburgh to Kendal and back again,— could not but be moved at the deserted look of that old mail road — hardly a trace of wheels, like the bed of a stream that has ceased to flow, — ' the sound of a voice that is still.' Nature winning it back to herself. Fancy the glory of coming there upon the well-appointed Royal Mail with the music of its team, the guard on his little seat, with its black hairy skin, his horn and his tremendous blunderbuss. What compactness ! what a unity, power, and purpose about the whole organism ! what stories we used to hear of what the driver could do, and what the guard had done.i How Willie Lawson snuffed a candle, and not out, with his whip at Penicuik Inn, on a 'lown' night before starting. How the guard, having in vain sounded his horn at Harestanes toll, 1 ' An Edinburgh clergyman, of a rare and quaint genius, was one day seen gazing at the Carlisle Mail as it came thunder- ing down The Bridges. ' What are you thinking of?' said a .reverend brother. ' I 'm thinkin' that, next to preachin' the everlastin' gospel, I would like to drive the Mail. ' The Enter kin. 363 when some disorderly coal-carts were stopping the royal way, their carters drinking heedless inside — blew out the brains of the first horse, and got the gate cleared forthwith. And what a peremptory, 'dread' horn it was, bringing somehow Fontarabia into the schoolboy head. One guard 1 remember well — M'George. He had been in the army, and was a gentleman — stern and not given to speak ; even with his companion the driver he would let a whole day pass in silence — a handsome, firm, keen face. I remember well, too, when I had gone day after day to meet the Mail, to be taken into Edinburgh to school after my vacation among the hills, and to my rapture the Mail was full, and we came back rejoicing at the respite. ' Is she full?' asked again my grave and dear old uncle, six feet and more on his soles. 'Yes,' said M'George, with a gentle grin, and looking me in the face ; ' she's full of emptiness !' whereupon the High School boy was bundled inside, and left to his meditations. Our guard, I must say, came and looked in upon me at each stage, comforting me greatly with some jargonelle pears, the smell and relish of which I can feel now. I fell asleep, of course, and when we stopped at the Black Bull, found myself snug in the potentate's great-coat. All this impressed me the more, when I heard of his death many years after. It was a snow- storm — a night of wild drift — in midwinter : nothing 364 HorcB Subsecivce. like it for years. The Mail from Dumfries was late, and the townspeople of Moffat had gathered at Mrs. Cranstoun's inn waiting for it. Up it came. They crowded round M'George, entreating him not to proceed — 'At Tweedshaws it'll be awful.' But he put them aside. 'They' (meaning the Post-Office authorities) ' blamed me once ; they '11 never blame me again.' And saddling the two strongest horses,' he and the driver mounted and took their way into the night, stumbling dumbly up the street. The driver returned, having at the Beef-Tuh, — a wild hollow in the hills, five miles out of Moffat, — given it up in despair, and in time j M'George plunging' on, and not to be spoken to. The riderless horse came back at midnight. Next morning at daybreak — the wind hushed, the whole country silent and white — a shepherd saw on the heights at Tweedshaws some- thing bright like a flame. He made his way to it — it was the morning sun shining on the brass-plate of the post-bags, hung up on a bit of paling — we have seen the very stake — and out of the snow stretched a hand, as if pointing to the bags : M'George dead, and as the shepherd said, ' wi' a kind o' a pleesure on his face.' ' Stern daughter of the voice of God, ■We know not anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face.' ' • 'Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. The Enter kin. 365 From Tweedsmuir we walked by the Bield, the old inn, where the Moffat carriers baited or slept ; and could not help recalling a story worthy of Humphrey Clinker. Campbell the poet, in his young days, had walked out thus far, and had got snug into bed after his tumbler of toddy, when there was a knock at the door. ' Come in ;' and behold, with a candle in her hand, stood the pretty maiden — who had given him his supper — in her short-gown and petticoat. ' Please, sir, could ye tak' a neebor into yer bed?' 'With all my heart,' said the imaginative, susceptible poet, starting gaily up. ' Thank ye, sir, for the Moffat carrier's just come in a' wat, and there' 's no a single ither place.' Up came the huge and reeking man ; exit the dainty little woman. There, on the river-side, is where once was Liii- kumdoddie, where Willie Wastle dwelt. There is the Logan Water, which, with superb exaggeration, the poet says, Willie's wife's face 'wad file.' There is Mossfennan 'yett,' where 'lichtit doon' the lovers of the Lass of the Logan-lea. This ballad, which is still remembered as being sung entire, is gone, we fear irrecoverably, all but a few broken stanzas, for which we have to thank Miss Watson, who, in her Bygone Days in our Village, has so well described the old-world life of this pastoral region : — ' Some say that I lo'e young Polmood, An' some say he lo'es na me ; 24 366 Horee Subsecivte. But I think I 'm a match for the best o' his blude, Though I had never a ewe on the Logan-lea. For wooers I 've had braw young men, Booted and spurr'd as ye may see, A' lichtin at Mosfennan yett, Doon by the side o' the Logan-lea. Three cam east, and three cam west, An' three cam out frae the north countrie. The lave cam a' frae Moffat-side, An' lichtit doon at the Logan-lea. John Paterson comes frae Holms-water head. An' he did come to visit me. An' he cam in by the Mere-cleugh head, Wi' his spotted hounds and spaniels three. Graham o' Slipperfield, on his grey mere, Charlie, an' his pistols clear. Young Polmood, wi' his hounds three, Will ne'er heir a ewe on the Logan-lea.' We closed our Minchmoor with The Bush aboon Traquair, — we close The Enterkin with the Cry from Craigellachie, which our companion the author recited with impassioned cadence, as we walked down Tweed to Broughton. After much urgency, we got him to put it in the Scotsman, from which we now take it. May we not enjoy its fervour and beauty, and at the same time rejoice that the cottagers at Kingussie are getting their oatmeal and coals one-half cheaper, since the iron horse took his way down Badenoch ? The Enterkin. 367 A CRY FROM CRAIGELLACHIE. ( Written after travelling for the first time to Inverness by the Highland Railway last August. ) Land of Bens, and Glens, and Corries, Headlong rivers, ocean-floods ! Have we lived to see this outrage On your haughty solitudes ? Yea ! there burst invaders stronger, On the mountain-barrier'd land, Than the Ironsides of Cromwell, Or the bloody Cumberland ! Spanning Tay and curbing Tummel, Hewing with rude mattocks down Killiecrankie's birchen chasm, — What reck they of old renown Cherish'd names ! how disenchanted ! Hark the railway porter roar. Ho ! Blair- Athole ! Dalnaspidal ! Ho ! Dalwhinnie ! Aviemore Garry, cribb'd with mound and rampart, Up his chafing bed we sweep. Scare from his lone lochan-cradle The charmed immemorial sleep. Grisly, storm-resounding Badenoch, With grey boulders scatter'd o'er. And cairns of forgotten battles, Is a wilderness no more. Ha ! we start the ancient silence. Thundering down the long incline Over Spey and Rothiemurchus Forests of primaeval pine. 368 Horn Subsecivcs. Boar of Badenoch ! Sow of Athole ! Hill by hill behind us cast ; Rock, and craig, and moorland reeling — Scarce Craigellachie stands fast.' Dark Glen More and clov'n Glen Feshie, Loud along these desolate tracts, Hear the shriek of whistle louder Than their headlong cataracts. Strange to them the train — but stranger The mixed throng it huddles forth— Strand and Piccadilly emptied On the much-enduring North. Cockneys, Frenchmen, swells, and tourists, Motley-garb'd and garish crew ! Belted pouches, knickerbockers. Silken hose and patent shoe. While from carriage-window gazing, Eye-glass'd damsels, yawning, drawl, ' Strange these names of yours — Braeriach, Ben-Mac-Dhui, Cairntoul. ' What to them are birk-tree fragrance, Pine-wood scents, bog-myrtle balm ! What the burns down corries sounding, Or the solemn mountain calm ! Point not them to Loch-an-Eilan, Lochindorbh's grim island hold ; Tell them not wild tales of Comyn, Or the Badenoch Wolf of old. ^ 'Stand fast Craigellachie,' is the war-cry of the Clan Grant. The Enter kin. 369 O Cairngorum ! O Braeriach ! Roll ye blinding swathes of cloud Down your crags, that these insult not Your majestic foreheads proud. On, still on — let drear CuUoden For clan-slogans hear this scream, — Shake the woods by Beauly river, Startle beauty-haunted Dhruira. Northward still the iron horses, Naught may stay their destined path, Till their snort, by Pentland surges, Stun the cliffs of far Cape Wrath. Must then pass, quite disappearing From their glens, the ancient Gael ? In and in must Saxon struggle ? Southron, Cockney more prevail ? Clans long gone, and pibrochs going. Shall the patriarchal tongue From these mountains fade for ever. With its names and memories hung ? Oil ! you say, it little recketh, — Let the ancient manners go. Heaven will work, through their destroying. Some end greater than you know ! Be it so ! but will Invention, With her smooth mechanic arts. Raise, when gone, the old Highland warriors, Bring again warm Highland hearts ? 37° Horce Subsecivce. Nay ! whate'er of good they herald, Whereso comes that hideous roar, The old charm is disenchanted, The old Highlands are no more ! Yet, I know, there lie, all lonely, Still to feed thought's loftiest mood, Countless glens undesecrated. Many an awful solitude ! Many a burn, in unknown corries, Down dark linns the white foam flings Fringed with ruddy berried rowans, Fed from everlasting springs. Still there sleep unnumber'd lochans, Craig-begirt 'mid deserts dumb. Where no human road yet travels, Never tourist's foot hath come ! Many a Scuir, like bald sea-eagle, Hoary-scalp'd with boulder piles. Stands against the sunset, eyeing Ocean and the outmost Isles. If e'en these should fail, I '11 get me To some rock roar'd round by seas, There to drink calm nature's freedom. Till they bridge the Hebrides ! Shliabhair. (Anglici Mountaineer.) THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. THE DUKE OF ATHOLE. SOME men have character, — more or less, — others have none, — and some few are charac- ters ; it is of their essence and what they are made of. Such was the late Duke of Athole ; he was a character, inscribed and graven by the cunning, inimitable, and unrepeating hand of Nature, — as original and as unmistakeable as his own Ben-y-Gloe. He was a living, a strenuous protest, in perpetual kilt, against the civilisation, the faming, the softening of mankind. He was essentially wild. His virtues were those of human nature in the rough and unreclaimed, open and unsubdued as the Moor of Rannoch. He was a true autochthon, terrigena, — a son of the soil, — as rich in local colour, as rough in the legs, and as hot at the heart, as prompt and hardy, as heathery as a gorcock.^ Courage, endur- ance, staunchness, fidelity and warmth of heart, simplicity, and downrightness were his staples ; and with them he attained to a power in his own region and among his own people quite singular. The * The cock grouse. 374 Horce Subsecivce. secret of this was his truth and his pluck, his kindli- ness and his constancy. Other noblemen put on the kilt at the season, and do their best to embrown their smooth knees for six weeks, returning them to trousers and to town ; he lived in his kilt all the year long, and often slept soundly in it and his plaid among the brackens ; and nbt sparing himself, he spared none of his men or friends, — it was the rigour of the game, — it was Devil take the hindmost. Up at all hours, out all day and all night, often without food, — with nothing but the unfailing pipe, — there he was, stalking the deer in Glen Tilt or across the Gaick moors, or rousing before d.aybreak the un- daunted otter among the alders of the Earn, the Isla, or the Almond ; and if in his pursuit, which was fell as any hound's, he got his hand into the otter's grip, and had its keen teeth meeting in his palm, he let it have its will till the pack came up, — no flinching, almost as if without the sense of pain. It was this gameness and thoroughness in whatever he was about that charmed his people, — charmed his very dogs ; and so it should. ^ ^ Many years ago, when Lord Glenlyon, he was riding in a hurdle race on the North Inch, when somehow his spectacles (he was very shortsighted) fell off, and in taking the first leap he and his horse fell heavily. Up he was and on again and away, winning in spite of his lost time, and taking his hurdles 'like a lord.' His right arm was observed to hang useless, and so it might, for he had broken his collar-bone. The Duke of Athole. 375 There may be better pursuits for a man and a duke than otter-hunting, and crawling like a huge caterpillar for hours across bogs and rocks after a royal stag; but there may be worse; and it is no small public good to keep up the relish for and the exercise of courage, perseverance, readiness of mind and resource, hardihood, — it is an antidote against the softness and the luxury of a dainty world. But he was not only a great hunter, and an organiser and vitaliser of hunting, he was a great breeder. He lived at home, was himself a farmer, and knew all his farmers and all their men ; had lain out at night on the Badenoch heights with them, and sat in their bothies and smoked with them the familiar pipe. But he also was, as we have said, a thorough breeder, especially of Ayrshire cattle. It was quite touching to see this fierce, restless, intense man — impiger, acer, iracundus — at the great Battersea show doating upon and doing everything for his meek-eyed, fine-limbed, sweet-breathed kine. It was the same with other stock, though the Ayrshires were his pets to the end. Then he revived and kept up the games of the country, — the throwing the hammer, and casting the mighty caber i"^ the wild, almost naked, hillrace; the Ghillie-Callum (sword dance) and the study of the eldritch, melancholy pipes, to which, we think, distance ^ A huge tree, requiring great strength and knack to pitch it. "^^d Hor