in a letter recently received from him, gives the following interesting account:

My earliest schoolboy days were spent in a most miserable apology for a school, existing quite close to where I lived, and conducted by a dominie of whose scholastic acquirements you may judge from the fact that he was content to be paid for his services at the rate of £10 per annum, besides board and lodging—the last being secured to him at the expense of a constant round of house to house billeting, one day at a time for each child attending school. Here, in a building little better than a hovel, and where the discipline was such as I even now shudder to think of, I first learned to master the A B C the ab abs, and so forth. This important preliminary being once through, I, in common with all little ones of similar standing, were made to grope our way through the Shorter Catechism-the English version, mind youfor to be taught at that stage of our progress to read a word of Gaelic was a thing never dreamt of. So much for our First Book of Lessons! Our next was the Book of Proverbs, then the New Testament, and afterwards the Old-all in English, of course, and the same as Greek to most of us. These were followed by some English Collection, or it might be Goldsmith's History of Rome, in the case of children whose parents could afford to buy such books; and where that could not be done, I have known an odd volume of Dean Swift's writings doing duty instead! Last of all came in the Gaelic Psalmbook for such of us as might wish to attain to a know

ledge of reading our native tongue. When it is considered how very little English any of us knew, I think it must be allowed that a total reversal of all this would have been the infinitely-more sensible procedure. In those days, and in such schools, a boy caught speaking a word of Gaelic was pretty sure to be made to mount the back of some one of his sturdier schoolmates, and then, moving in a circuit around the master, tawse in hand, get his hips soundly thrashed. You may well guess what a terror was inspired by such a mode of punishment in the case of little urchins wearing the kilt, as most, if not all of us then did. Another barbarous mode of forcing us to make English our sole vehicle of speech at school was, to make any trespasser on that rule carry on his breast, suspended by a gad made to go round the neck, the skull of some dead horse! and which he was by no means to get rid of until some other luckless fellow might be overheard whispering a word in the prohibited tongue. How Highland parents, with the least common sense, could approve of all this is to me now inexplicable. Little wonder if, under such circumstances, we could often devoutly wish that the Saxon and his tongue had never existed! It is to be hoped that no such foul, shortsighted means of killing off my good mother-tongue are still allowed to exist in any part of the Highlands. If it must die-though I see no good reason why it should— let it have at least a little fair play in the fight for its life.

"The nearest parish school being separated from my father's house by a considerable extent of rough moorland, which made his children's attendance there a thing scarcely to be thought of, it was lucky for me that, after picking up all the little knowledge possible at the school just described, my father, while on a visit to some relations in Appin, there fell in with and engaged as a teacher in our family, a young man to whom I am indebted for almost all the education worthy of the name, ever received by me during my school-boy days. My worthy tutor had been for several years a teacher under the Society for the propagation of Christian Knowledge in the Highlands, but was, at the time of making this engagement with my father, waiting for a promised situation as bookkeeper in one of Mr. Malcolm of Poltalloch's estates in Jamaica, to which island, after a year spent with us, he went, and where, within a period of two short years, he died. Poor Alexander Mackenzie MacLeod-for that was his name was a man of rare, ripe Celtic scholarship-a man who well merited being held by me in most loving remembrance."

MacColl's mind is of a peculiarly delicate and sensitive texture, and the strongest impression of his early childhood still remaining, he informs us, is his recollection of his extreme sensitiveness to pain inflicted on any creature, even among the lower animals. This characteristic peculiarity of his nature made the day set apart for killing the "Mullag-gheamhraidh," or any other occasional victim necessary to furnish the household with animal food,

to him a day of special horror and anguish. On all such occasions it became necessary to send him out of the way until the necessary proceedings were over. It led him also, often at the expense of much rough treatment from boy companions older than himself, to become a regular little knight-errant in the defence of his favorite wild-birds and their brood from the harrying propensities so common to most boys; and a lapwing could not more successfully wile away from her nest the searcher after it than he often did from their mark the would-be-despoilers of some poor robin's cuach, as yet undiscovered by them. With a boy so constituted we may well believe him when he writes in his poem on Creag-a-gharaidh," given to the public a few years ago, that

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These were the days a planet new
Would joy its finder less than there I
To find some blackbird's nest, known to
Myself alone in Creag-a-gharrie.

Like most Highland boys brought up in rural life, MacColl was early trained to all the various duties and labours incidental to that sphere of life-the spade, the plough, and the sickle, being for many years implements far more familiar to him than the pen. The herring fishing season in Lochfyne was also to him for several years of his early manhood a period of more than ordinary activity-himself and his wherry, "Mairi Chreagh-a-ghàraidh,” the praises of which have been already sounded in excellent Gaelic verse in these pages, being generally foremost in opening the fishing campaign, and seldom missing a fair share of

its spoils. And, further, his father, in addition to the labour demanded by the cultivation of his small holding at Kenmore, was seldom without a road contract of some kind or another on hand, generally the making or repairing of roads within the policies of the Duke of Argyll at Inveraray. During the last ten years of the father's residence in Scotland, before emigrating to Canada, in 1831. he held a contract for keeping a considerable stretch of the county roads in repair, to which he confined himself exclusively in that particular department. These repairs were usually carried on during the winter, and the bard and his brothers had to work along with the other labourers employed, thus making the whole year to them one unceasing round of hard and active labour. The bard was thus employed for several years-years however during which many of his best Gaelic lyrics were composed.

When his father, accompanied by all the other unmarried members of his family, emigrated to Canada, Evan could not make up his mind to leave his native land, even to accompany those whom he loved above all others in the world—he having already secretly resolved that before following them, he would try to leave his countrymen at home something to be remembered by,—a poetic volume, in short, the materials for which were daily growing on his hands. How well he succeeded in his purpose remains now to be shown.

His first publication in volume form appeared in 1836, under the title of The Mountain Minstrel, containing Gaelic songs and poems, and his earliest attempts in Eng