OLIPHANT, MARGARET (WILSON), a Scottish novelist and biographer, born at Wallyford, Midlothian, in 1828; died in London, June 25, 1897. She was of Scottish parentage, married into a Scottish family, and most of her earlier novels were Scottish in their scene and character. Her first novel, Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland of Sunnyside, appeared in 1849; this was followed for more than forty years by many others, among which are Adam Græme of Mossgray (1852); Lilliesleaf (1855); Chronicles of Carlingford (1866); The Minister's Wife (1869); Squire Arden (1871); A Rose in June (1874); Young Musgrave (1877); He that Will Not When He May (1880); A Little Pilgrim (1882); The Ladies Lindores (1883); Oliver's Bride (1886); in conjunction with T. B. Aldrich, The Second Son (1888); Joyce (1888); Neighbors on the Green and A Poor Gentleman (1889). Among her works in biography and general literature are Life of Edward Irving (1862); Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II., originally published in Blackwood's Magazine (1869); St. Francis of Assisi (1870); Memoir of Count Montalembert (1872); The Makers of Florence (1876); The Literary History of England during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1886); Foreign Classics for English Readers (1887); The Makers of Venice (1887), and a Biography of Laurence Oliphant (1889).

The life of this remarkable woman seems to have been almost entirely devoted to her literary labors. Herself and her work were inseparable, inasmuch as even her intimates seldom found her when she was not writing a novel, finishing one, or arranging a plot. Her industry was phenomenal. It is doubtful if there ever lived a British writer who produced more novels than she. None of them was distinguished for its strength or intricacy of plot, or its power of expression, or of analysis, but they all had the virtue of containing as their heroes and heroines living, breathing human beings.

Her love of Scotland and her delineation of its people, her delicacy of appreciation of all their traits, endeared her books to the Queen, and Mrs. Oliphant had the dignity of being Victoria's favorite author, and the pleasure of being a life-long and close personal friend.

Throughout her long career as a writer she held consistently to one principle in the character of her work. She believed that fiction was lowered when the writer dealt with subjects or with characters that "would not be admitted into any family in the Empire." The result was that she never wrote anything about the criminal classes, avoided immorality as a subject as she would have avoided a contagion, and she came well into that classification of British authors who wrote for young men and women as their fathers or mothers might have done.

"She is in portraiture and observation an excellent humorist," says The Academy," a master of

human character, and an adept in certain forms of human experience." "Her stories," says The Saturday Review, "take us into a world of their own, where we are in a common English countrytown, among common people, and all is probable and consistent, and yet all is new. Her stories are rich in scenes on which the eye gladly lingers, and are like the people they portray, subtle in reasoning, shrewd and cunning in opinions, eloquent in feeling, very tender in natural and unstrained pathos."

AN ENGLISH RECTOR AND RECTORY.

"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things. Let the child alone-she will never be young again if she should live a hundred years."

These words were spoken in the garden of Dinglefield Rectory on a very fine summer day a few years ago. The speaker was Mr. Damerel, the rector, a middleaged man, with very fine, somewhat worn features, a soft, benignant smile, and, as everybody said who knew him, the most charming manner in the world. He was a man of very elegant mind, as well as manners. He did not preach often, but when he did preach all the educated persons of his congregation felt that they had very choice fare indeed set before them. I am afraid the poor people liked the curate best; but then the curate liked them best, and it mattered very little to any man or woman of refinement what sentiment existed between the cottage and the curate. Mr. Damerel was perfectly kind and courteous to everybody, gentle and simple, who came in his way, but he was not fond of poor people in the abstract. He disliked everything that was unlovely; and, alas! there are a great many unlovely things in poverty.

The rectory garden at Dinglefield is a delightful place. The house is on the summit of a little hill, or rather table-land, for in the front, toward the green, all is level

and soft, as becomes an English village; but on the other side the descent begins toward the lower country, and from the drawing-room windows and the lawn the view extended over a great plain, lighted up with links of river, and fading into unspeakable hazes of distance such as were the despair of every artist and the delight of the fortunate people who lived there, and were entertained day by day with the sight of all the sunsets, the mid-day splendors, the flying shadows, the soft, prolonged twilights. Mr. Damerel was fond of saying that no place he knew so lent itself to idleness as this. "Idleness! I speak as the foolish ones speak," he was wont to say; "for what occupation could be more ennobling than to watch those gleams and shadows-all Nature spread out before you, and demanding attention, though so softly that only those who have ears hear. I allow, my gentle Nature here does not shout at you, and compel your regard, like her who dwells among the Alps, for instance. My dear, you are always so practical; but so long as you leave me my landscape I want little more.'

Thus the rector would discourse. It was only a very little more he wanted-only to have his garden and lawn in perfect order, swept and trimmed every morning, like a lady's boudoir, and refreshed with every variety of flower; to have his table not heavily loaded with vulgar English joints, but daintily covered, and oh! so delicately served; the linen always fresh, the crystal always fine; the ladies dressed as ladies should be; to have his wine-of which he took very little-always fine, of choice vintage, and with a bouquet which rejoiced the heart; to have plenty of new books; to have quiet, undisturbed by the noise of the children, or any other troublesome noise which broke the harmony of Nature; and especially undisturbed by bills and cares, such as, he declared, at once shorten life and take all pleasure out of it. This was all he required, and surely never man had tastes more moderate, more innocent, more virtuous and refined.

The little scene to which I have thus abruptly introduced the reader took place in the most delicious part of the garden. The deep stillness of noon was over the sunshiny world; part of the lawn was brilliant in light;

the very insects were subdued out of the buzz of activity by the spell of the sunshine; but here, under the limetree, there was a grateful shade, where everything took breath. Mr. Damerel was seated in a chair which had been made expressly for him, and which combined the comfort of soft cushions with such a rustic appearance as became its habitation out-of-doors; under his feet was a soft Persian rug, in colors blended with all the harmony which belongs to the Eastern loom; at his side a pretty carved table, with a raised rim, with books upon it, and a thin Venice glass containing a rose.

Another rose-the Rose of my story-was half-sitting, half-reclining on the grass at his feet-a pretty, light figure in a soft muslin dress, almost white, with bits of soft rose-colored ribbons here and there. She was the eldest child of the house. Her features I do not think were at all remarkable, but she had a bloom so soft, so delicate, so sweet, that her father's fond title for her, "a Rose in June," was everywhere acknowledged as appropriate. A rose of the very season of roses was this Rose. Her very smiles, which went and came like breath, never away for two minutes together, yet never lasting beyond the time you took to look at her, were flowery, too-I can scarcely tell why. For my own part, she always reminded me not so much of a garden-rose in its glory as of a bunch of wild roses, all blooming and smiling from the bough-here pink, here white, here with a dozen ineffable tints. In all her life she had never had occasion to ask herself was she happy. Of course she was happy! Did she not live, and was not that enough?-A Rose in June.

EDWARD IRVING.

Chalmers and Irving were, with the exception of Robert Hall, the two greatest preachers of their day. Irving had passed a year or two as Chalmers's assistant at Glasgow before he went to London, in 1822, and where the world found him out, and in his obscure chapel he became almost the most noted of all the notabilities of town. Even now, when his story is well known, and his own journals and letters have proved the