tained till his own personal hurt made him forget the pained world. In his later days, however, he was willing to let the world wag, certified that the needful thing for him was to take regard to his own private footsteps. He had now fairly embarked on the poetic tide. His name, appended to copies of verses, frequently appeared in the local prints, and gained for him no small amount of local notice. And at intervals some song-bird of his brain, of stronger pinion or gayer plumage than usual, would flit from newspaper to newspaper across the country; nay, one or two actually appeared beyond the Atlantic, and, not unnoticed by admiring eyes, perching on a broadsheet here and there as it made its way from the great cities towards the western clearings. All this time, too, he was an enthusiastic botanist in book and field, a lover of the open country and the blowing wind, a scorner of fatigue, ready any Saturday afternoon when work was over for a walk of twenty miles, if so be he might flower or an ivied ruin. And the girl And the girl over in Rutherglen was growing up to womanhood, each charm of mind and face celebrated for many a year in glowing verse; and her he, poet-like, married-the household plenishing of the pair being abundance of hope and a simple disregard of the inconveniences arising from straitened means. The happiest man in the world—but a widower before the year was out! With his wife died many things, all buried in one grave. Republican dreamings and schemes for the regeneration of the world faded after that. Here is a short poem, full of the rain-cloud and the yellow leaf, which has reference to his feelings at the time. look on a rare Gorgeous are thy woods, October! Clad in glowing mantles sere; Brightest tints of beauty blending, Like the west when day's descending,' Thou'rt the sunset of the year. Fading flowers are thine, October!! Droopeth sad the sweet blue-bell: Gone the blossoms April cherished Violet, lily, rose, all perished Fragrance fled from field and dell. Songless are thy woods, October! Save when red breast's mournful lay Saddest sounds are thine, October! I do love thee, drear October, More than budding, blooming spring. Hers is hope, delusive, smiling, Trusting hearts to grief beguiling; Memory loves thy dusky wing. 'Twas in thee, thou sad October! Death laid low my bosom flower. Gleameth brightly since that hour. Hearts would fain be with their treasure; His own October day did come; too early, unseasonably, when the fields were but whitening to the harvest. All Mr. Macdonald's friends have heard of his interview with Professor Wilson, at Edinburgh, in 1846. This celebrated event flourished perennially in his writings and conversation. It stood out in his history like the Battle of Trafalgar in the History of England. For him nothing could stale its infinite delightfulness. He had come up from Paisley to "Scotia's darling seat," as he chooses to call it, for a day or two, and, while there, wandered down the Canongate to visit Ferguson's grave, and to look on Holyrood with romantic remembrances of Mary, and the profoundest belief in the authenticity of Rizzio's blood-stains; spent an autumn day roaming about Roslin and Hawthornden; and in the afternoon, seated in the inn at Lasswade, he indited an epistle to Wilson, expressing the great pleasure he had derived from his "Noctes" and other writings, inclosing at the same time a copy of his poem, "The Birds of Scot land"-to him of fairer plumage and mellower note than those of any other land-and finally requesting the favour of an interview. "I would fain shake "hands with you, and thank you for "the many hours of pleasure," &c. &c. Wilson, with characteristic frankness, acceded to the request, and fixed day and hour. A manuscript book now before me, full of verses and scraps of letters, and with withered wild flowers, gathered years ago at Castlemilk and Kenmure Wood, inserted between the leaves, contains a copious account of the meeting and the conversation. After describing the half-terrified pause at the street-door, his alarming palpitation on ascending the stair, the manuscript book goes on: "Wilson was in his workshop 66 among his books, which were scattered "about in all directions, their bindings "for the most part 'scuffed,' and bearing "marks of having 'seen service.' He "sat in his easy chair, with a good stout "cudgel in his hand. Although the yel"low hair, now silvered and thinned by "time, hung carelessly over his neck, "his manly features and high dome"like head would have pointed out at 66 once the mighty Christopher. He is "becoming somewhat corpulent; and "when he threw himself back in his "chair, with one leg resting on the "other, he brought Shakespeare's worthy "Sir John forcibly to my mind." Wilson read over the poem, making comments as he went; that done, the conversation became strictly ornithological -the mottled breast of the thrush, the beauty of the water ouzel, as it jerks and twitters on the lichened stones beneath the waterfall, the song of the redbreast on grey autumn mornings, when the woods are shedding their yellow leaves, were discussed, and are reported at very considerable length. Then the talk diverged to Wordsworth. Wilson quoted the strain to Lucy She dwelt among untrodden ways. Macdonald, zealous for the honour of Scottish minstrelsy, conceived that the idea had been even more sweetly ren dered by Tannahill, and repeated the verses Yon mossy rosebud doon the browe The Professor agreed that it was beautifully expressed, and at least equal to Wordsworth's. "It will be sung, whereas the other will not," writes Macdonald sturdily. So for an hour and a half the talk flowed on of beast, and bird, and poet; and then the stranger retired, "with a heart running 66 over with gratitude, pride, and love to "the greatest mind I have ever met, or "in all likelihood ever will meet in this "world." Never was one man so utterly bound to another's chariot-wheels; and the whole matter is creditable alike to captive and enslaver. Mr. Macdonald married a second time; and in the companionship of the excellent woman who now survives him, and with boys and girls growing up around his fireside, he enjoyed much domestic happiness. During these years his pen was busy with song and ballad. The greater proportion of these pieces saw the light in the columns of the Glasgow Citizen, then, as now, conducted by Mr. James Hedderwick, an accomplished journalist and poet of no mean order. The casual connexion of contributor and editor ripened into friendship, and in 1849 Mr. Macdonald was permanently engaged as Mr. Hedderwick's sub-editor. He was now occupied in congenial tasks, and a perfect gush of song followed this accession of leisure and opportunity. Sunshine and the scent of flowers seemed to have stolen into the weekly columns. You "smelt the meadow" in casual paragraph and editorial leader. His best verses were written at this time; and the subjoined extract from one, "Wee Anne o' Auchineden," with the earthy scent of mortality piercing through its sunshine, will exhibit of what tender stuff the man was made. 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 Kenmure, the crawflower to Gleniffer. 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 com1 The signature appended to the "Rambles." FATHER, you bid me once more weigh Charles does me honour; but 'twere vain And so to doubt the clear-shown truth Who, in the mysteries of the Church, By two-fold fealty abused. I either should the one forget, You bade me, Father, count the cost. I have! and all that must be lost I feel as only women can. To live the Idol of some man, And through the untender world to move How sweet! And children, too: ah, there Her charities, not marr'd like mine With every year, meantime, some grace 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. To chime with even its harmless glee, Which sounds, from fields beyond my range, Like fairies' music, thin and strange. |