Thy mother's cheek was wet and pale, That low sweet voice through many a year, Lone was thy hame upon the moor, Wee Anne o' Auchineden. Blue curling reek on the breeze afloat, Swept ever o'er Auchineden. Sweet-scented nurslings o' sun and dew But the swallow biggit aneath the eaves, Wee Anne o' Auchineden. And thou wert ta'en frae this world o' tears, The primrose glints on the spring's return, There is surely something very exquisite in the sad fluctuating music of these verses-irregular, like the footsteps of one who cannot see his way for tears. Still more in prose than in verse did Mr. Macdonald at this period direct his energies; and he was happy enough to encounter a subject exactly suited to his powers and mental peculiarities. He was the most uncosmopolitan of mortals. He had the strongest local attachments. In his eyes Scotland was the fairest portion of the planet, Glasgow the fairest portion of Scotland, and Bridgeton-the district of the city in which he was born and in which he dwelt-the fairest portion of Glasgow. have shrieked like a mandrake at uprootal. He never would pass a night away from home. But he was a passionate lover of nature; and the snowdrop called him out of the smoke to Castlemilk, the sleepy lucken-gowan to He would His heart clung to every ruin in the neighbourhood like the shrouding ivy; he was deeply learned in epitaphs, and spent many a sunny hour in village churchyards, extracting sweet and bitter thoughts from the half-obliterated inscriptions. Jaques, Izaak Walton, and Old Mortality rolled into one, he knew Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and Ayrshire by heart. Keenly sensible to natural beauty, and full of antiquarian knowledge, and in possession of a prose style singularly quaint, picturesque, and humorous, he began week by week in the columns of the Citizen the publication of his "Rambles around Glasgow." These sketches were read with avidity, and Caleb1 became in Glasgow a wellknown name. City people were astonished to find the country lying beyond the smoke was far from prosaicthat it had its traditions, its antiquities, its historical associations, and glens and waterfalls worthy of special excursions. These sketches were afterwards collected, and in their separate and more convenient form ran through two editions. No sooner were the "Rambles pleted than Caleb projected a new series of sketches, entitled "Days at the Coast," sketches which also appeared in the columns of a weekly newspaper. Mr. Macdonald's best writing is to be found in this book; several of the descriptive passages are really notable in their way. As we read, the white Firth of Clyde glitters before us, with snowy villages sitting on the green shores; Bute and the twin Cumbraes asleep in sunshine; and, beyond, a stream of lustrous and silvery vapour melting on the grisly Arran peaks. The publication of these sketches raised the reputation of their author; and, like the others, they received the honour of collection and a separate issue. But little more has to be said concerning Mr. Macdonald's literary activity. The early afternoon was already setting in. During the last eighteen months of his life, he was engaged on one of the Glasgow morning journals; and, when in its columns he rambled as of yore, it was with a com com FATHER, you bid me once more weigh Charles does me honour; but 'twere vain And so to doubt the clear-shown truth Faithful, at once, to the heavenly life, Who, in the mysteries of the Church, By two-fold fealty abused. I either should the one forget, Or scantly pay the other's debt; Love vain by adding "for His sake;" Is fill'd with anguish of unrest! You bade me, Father, count the cost. I have and all that must be lost I feel as only women can. Thy mother's cheek was wet and pale, That low sweet voice through many a year, Lone was thy hame upon the moor, Wee Anne o' Auchineden. Blue curling reek on the breeze afloat, Swept ever o'er Auchineden. Sweet-scented nurslings o' sun and dew But the swallow biggit aneath the eaves, Wee Anne o' Auchineden. And thou wert ta'en frae this world o' tears, The primrose glints on the spring's return, There is surely something very exquisite in the sad fluctuating music of these verses-irregular, like the footsteps of one who cannot see his way for tears. Still more in prose than in verse did Mr. Macdonald at this period direct his energies; and he was happy enough to encounter a subject exactly suited to his powers and mental peculiarities. He was the most uncosmopolitan of mortals. He had the strongest local attachments. In his eyes Scotland was the fairest portion of the planet, Glasgow the fairest portion of Scotland, and Bridgeton-the district of the city in which he was born and in which he dwelt-the fairest portion of Glasgow. He would have shrieked like a mandrake at uprootal. He never would pass a night away from home. But he was a passionate lover of nature; and the snowdrop called him out of the smoke to Castlemilk, the sleepy lucken-gowan to His heart clung to every ruin in the neighbourhood like the shrouding ivy; he was deeply learned in epitaphs, and spent many a sunny hour in village churchyards, extracting sweet and bitter thoughts from the half-obliterated inscriptions. Jaques, Izaak Walton, and Old Mortality rolled into one, he knew Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and Ayrshire by heart. Keenly sensible to natural beauty, and full of antiquarian knowledge, and in possession of a prose style singularly quaint, picturesque, and humorous, he began week by week in the columns of the Citizen the publication of his "Rambles around Glasgow." These sketches were read with avidity, and Caleb1 became in Glasgow a wellknown name. City people were astonished to find the country lying beyond the smoke was far from prosaicthat it had its traditions, its antiquities, its historical associations, and glens and waterfalls worthy of special excursions. These sketches were afterwards collected, and in their separate and more convenient form ran through two editions. No sooner were the "Rambles" completed than Caleb projected a new series of sketches, entitled "Days at the Coast," sketches which also appeared in the columns of a weekly newspaper. Mr. Macdonald's best writing is to be found in this book; several of the descriptive passages are really notable in their way. As we read, the white Firth of Clyde glitters before us, with snowy villages sitting on the green shores; Bute and the twin Cumbraes asleep in sunshine; and, beyond, a stream of lustrous and silvery vapour melting on the grisly Arran peaks. The publication of these sketches raised the reputation of their author; and, like the others, they received the honour of collection and a separate issue. But little more has to be said concerning Mr. Macdonald's literary activity. The early afternoon was already setting in. During the last eighteen months of his life, he was engaged on one of the Glasgow morning journals; and, when in its columns he rambled as of yore, it was with a com paratively infirm step, and with an eye that had lost its interest and its lustre. "Nature never did betray the heart that "loved her;" and when the spring-time came, Macdonald, remembering all her former sweetness, journeyed for the last time to Castlemilk to see the snowdrops, for there of all their haunts in the west they come earliest and linger latest. It was a dying visit, an eternal farewell. They were gathered to their graves to gether. He was neither a great man nor a great poet in the ordinary senses of these terms; but since his removal there are perhaps some half-dozen persons in the world who feel that the "strange superfluous glory of the sum mer air" lacks something, and that, because an ear and an eye are gone, the colour of the flower is duller, the song of the bird less sweet, than it was in a time they can remember. THE VICTORIES OF LOVE. BY COVENTRY PATMORE. V.-MARY CHURCHILL TO THE DEAN. FATHER, you bid me once more weigh Charles does me honour; but 'twere vain And so to doubt the clear-shown truth Faithful, at once, to the heavenly life, Who, in the mysteries of the Church, By two-fold fealty abused. I either should the one forget, Or scantly pay the other's debt; Love vain by adding "for His sake;" Is fill'd with anguish of unrest! You bade me, Father, count the cost. I have and all that must be lost I feel as only women can. And through the untender world to move Wrapt safe in his superior love, How sweet! And children, too: ah, there And the wife's happy, daily round Her charities, not marr'd like mine With every year, meantime, some grace To humbling ills; the very charms Of youth being counted henceforth harms; Nor know I whether I should herd My pray'rs will sudden pleasures move, Or worse vacuity, afflicts The soul that much itself addicts To sanctity in solitude, Or serving the ingratitude Of Christ's complete disguise, His Poor. Of old, with incapacity To chime with even its harmless glee, Which sounds, from fields beyond my range, |