across the moor in a straight line, though tossed about in the dead calm, in many a wave and flourish; and further, I could ascertain, that what I had deemed a persistent screaming was in reality a continuous singing, carried on at the pitch of a powerful though somewhat cracked voice. In a moment after, one of the servantgirls of the mansion-house came rushing out half-dressed to the door of an outer-building in which the workmen and the farm-servants lay, and summoned them immediately to rise. Mad Bell had again broken out, she said, and would set them on fire a second time.

The men rose, and as they appeared at the door, I joined them; but on striking out a few yards into the moor, we found the maniac already in the custody of two men, who had seized and were dragging her towards the cottage, a miserable hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke to us, but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued tone of voice than before, a Gaelic song. We reached her hut, and, making use of her own light, we entered. A chain of considerable length, attached by a stopple in one of the Highland couples of the erection, showed that her neighbours had been compelled on former occasions to abridge her liberty; and one of the men, in now making use of it, so wound it round her person as to bind her down, instead of giving her the scope of the apartment, to the damp uneven floor. A very damp and uneven floor it was. There were crevices in the roof above, which gave free access to the elements; and the turf walls, perilously bulged by the leakage in several places, were green with mould. One of the masons and I simultaneously interfered. It would never do, we said, to pin down a human creature in that way to the damp earth. Why not give her what the length of the chain permitted -the full range of the room? If we did that, replied the man, she would be sure to set herself free before morning, and we would just have to rise and bind her again. But we resolved, we rejoined, whatever might happen, that she should not be tied down in that way to the filthy floor; and ultimately we succeeded in carrying our point. The song ceased for a moment: the maniac turned round, presenting full to the light the stronglymarked, energetic features of a woman of about fifty-five; and surveying us with a keen, scrutinising glance, altogether unlike that of the idiot, she emphatically repeated the sacred text, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." She then began singing, in a low, mournful tone, an old Scotch

ballad; and, as we left the cottage, we could hear her voice gradually heightening as we retired, until it had at length attained to its former pitch and wildness of tone.

(From My Schools and Schoolmasters.)

THE MEASURE OF INTELLECT

PARTLY through my friend, but in part also from the circumstance that I retained a measure of intimacy with such of my schoolfellows as had subsequently prosecuted their education at college, I was acquainted, during the later years in which I wrought as a mason, with a good many university-taught lads; and I sometimes could not avoid comparing them in my mind with working men of, as nearly as I could guess, the same original calibre. I did not always find that general superiority on the side of the scholar which the scholar himself usually took for granted. What he had specially studied he knew, save in rare and exceptional cases, better than the working man; but while the student had been mastering his Greek and Latin, and expatiating in Natural Philosophy and the Mathematics, the working man, if of an enquiring mind, had been doing something else; and it is at least a fact, that all the great readers of my acquaintance at this time—the men most extensively acquainted with English literature -were not the men who had received the classical education. On the other hand, in framing an argument, the advantage lay with the scholars. In that common sense, however, which reasons but does not argue, and which enables men to pick their stepping prudently through the journey of life, I found that the classical education gave no superiority whatever; nor did it appear to form so fitting an introduction to the realities of business as that course of dealing with things tangible and actual in which the working man has to exercise his faculties, and from which he derives his experience. One cause of the over-low estimate which the classical scholar so often forms of the intelligence of that class of the people to which our skilled mechanics belong, arises very much from the forwardness of a set of blockheads who are always sure to obtrude themselves upon his notice, and who come to be regarded by him as average specimens of their order. I never yet knew a truly intelligent mechanic obtrusive. Men of the

stamp of my two uncles, and of my friend William Ross, never press themselves on the notice of the classes above them. A minister newly settled in a charge, for instance, often finds that it is the dolts of his flock that first force themselves upon his acquaintance. I have heard the late Mr. Stewart of Cromarty remark that the humbler dunderheads of the parish had all introduced themselves to his acquaintance long ere he found out its clever fellows. And hence often sad mistakes on the part of a clergyman in dealing with the people. It seems never to strike him that there may be among them men of his own calibre, and, in certain practical departments, even better taught than he, and that this superior class is always sure to lead the others. And in preaching down to the level of the men of the humbler capacity, he fails often to preach to men of any capacity at all, and is of no use. Some of the clerical contemporaries of Mr. Stewart used to allege that, in exercising his admirable faculties in the theological field, he sometimes forgot to lower himself to his people, and so preached over their heads. And at times, when they themselves came to occupy his pulpit, as occasionally happened, they addressed to the congregation sermons quite simple enough for even children to comprehend. I taught at the time a class of boys in the Cromarty Sabbath School, and invariably found on these occasions that while the memories of my pupils were charged to the full with the striking thoughts and graphic illustrations of the very elaborate discourses deemed too high for them, they remembered of the very simple ones, specially lowered to suit narrow capacities, not a single word or note. All the attempts at originating a cheap literature that have failed, have been attempts pitched too low the higher-toned efforts have usually succeeded. : If the writer of these chapters has been in any degree successful in addressing himself as a journalist to the Presbyterian people of Scotland, it has always been, not by writing down to them, but by doing his best on all occasions to write up to them. He has ever thought of them as represented by his friend William, his uncles and his cousin George-by shrewd old John Fraser, and his reckless though very intelligent acquaintance Cha; and by addressing to them on every occasion as good sense and as solid information as he could possibly muster, he has at times succeeded in catching their ear, and perhaps, in some degree, in influencing their judgment. (From the Same.)

LORD BEACONSFIELD

[Benjamin Disraeli, son of Isaac Disraeli (vol. iv. p. 605), was born in London in 1804, and was privately educated. His first novel, Vivian Grey, appeared in 1826. After a few years spent in travelling, he returned to literature, and published The Young Duke in 1831, Contarini Fleming in 1832, and The Wondrous Tale of Alroy in 1833. In 1837, after several previous failures, he obtained a seat in Parliament, and in the same year were published Venetia and Henrietta Temple. In 1844 he published Coningsby; in 1845, Sybil; and in 1847, Tancred. In 1848 he became leader of the Conservative party, and in 1852 he published Lord George Bentinck: a Political Biography. In 1852, in 1858, and in 1866 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer ; became Prime Minister for the first time in 1867, and was again Prime Minister from 1874 to 1880. He died on the 19th of April 1881.]

THERE are some men whose prominence in other spheres has unduly enhanced their literary reputation. There are others— and of these Lord Beaconsfield was one- -whose literary fame has been somewhat obscured by their greatness in action. The anger and jealousy of partisanship which his career aroused extended to the criticism of his books. To men of smaller mould his versatility might well seem unnatural; and some of the distinctive peculiarities of his work undoubtedly ran counter to the instincts of our national taste. But Disraeli's genius has emerged from the mists which partisanship would fain raise around it. Time has certainly not, so far, diminished his fame as a statesman, or banished him from the special niche which he occupies in the national regard. In spite of the adverse verdict of what claimed, with whatever modicum of authority, to be the serious criticism of the day, which in this case had the benefit, such as it was, of the alliance of political partisanship, the works of Disraeli first captured an astonished and entranced audience by the exuberant boldness of their fancy and the luxuriance of their descriptions, and then were discovered to carry a deeper meaning, and to bear a weightier portent under their fantastic dress. As his personality recedes

It

into the distance, the astonishing brilliancy of his career will probably appear all the more luminous; and assuredly the respect now accorded to his literary gifts shows no signs of waning. is noteworthy that the most recent and perhaps the most important estimate of his work-that of Professor Froude is also the most appreciative.

It is easy to detect faults, which stand out on the very surface of his work, and are, indeed, an essential part of the methods by which he produced his effect. The imagination is often fantastic, the ornament is unduly lavish, the gilding is sometimes tawdry and overdone, the sentiment often inflated. Mediocrity will satisfy itself by calling this vulgarity and pretentiousness. But in truth it was only the natural result of an imagination singularly luxuriant, combined with a far-reaching sarcasm, and an undercurrent of deep thought and brooding melancholy. That his characters should often live in a world of faerie, surrounded by a luxury that was idealised out of all reality; that he should paint an aristocracy living in palaces, and endowed with almost impossible gifts of mind and body; that their adventures should be clothed with a sort of glamour, and their actions and utterances have all the artistic pose of actors on a distinguished stage—this was only one method by which he produced his effect. He puzzles and dazzles his readers, but never himself. The subtle humour, the brooding melancholy, the grasp of human aims, the absolute clearness of mental vision-these are never absent. could ever convey a sarcasm more surely under a veil of rich description, and what might at first sight seem exaggerated admiration. The most marked feature of the generation in which he lived was the close alliance between the pedantic doctrinaire and the political economist. He had no sympathy with either. His keenness of vision pierced through the mist of their theories. The seeming satisfaction of popular Whiggism-admirably adapted for the half-educated complacency of a prosperous bourgeoisie— was to him a sham and a pretence, and all the more so because it was inclined to denounce as sham all that it did not understand, and to classify as exaggeration all that was beyond the range of its own vision. To his party Disraeli gave the benefit of something higher than the maxims of a clique; and in his literary work he proved that, in the most prosaic of generations, lavish wealth of imagination and audacious boldness of fancy might be united with keen sarcasm and profound thought. His place in

No man