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 whoın 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 shewn.

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

lish. Though the name of MacLachlan and Stewart appears upon the title page, the work was entirely pub-, lished at the risk of the Author. It was well received

the sale covered the cost of publication, and left a small

balance to the bard.

During the next two years he wrote several new pieces both in Gaelic and English, and in 1838, the Messrs. Blackie, of Glasgow, published the Gaelic work now known as "Clarsach Nam Beann." containing all the Gaelic productions of the bard till that date. Simultaneously with the "Clarsach" the same firm brought out the first exclusively English edition of the Mountain Minstrel, the first edition of which, we have seen, was partly Gaelic and partly English. A second edition of this Mountain Minstrel was published in 1847, and another in 1849; but neither of these produced any great financial result to the author.

On the appearance of his two volumes in 1838, MacColl was hailed as a rare acquisition to Gaelic literature, and his right to stand in the front rank of modern Celtic bards was at once established and acknowledged. Of his Mountain Minstrel or "Poems and Songs in English," some of the best contemporary authorities in Britain. wrote in the very highest praise.

The late Dr. Norman MacLeod, reviewing it in an Edinburgh paper, writes:-" Evan MacColl's poetry is the product of a mind impressed with the beauty and the grandeur of the lovely scenes in which his infancy has been nursed. We have no hesitation in saying that this work

is that of a man possessed of much poetic genius. Wild, indeed, and sometimes rough are his rhymes and epithets; yet there are thoughts so new and striking, images and comparisons so beautiful and original, feelings so warm and fresh, that stamp this Highland peasant as no ordinary man." Hugh Miller, says, in the Inverness Courier: "There is more of fancy than of imagination in the poetry of MacColl, and more of thought and imagery than of feeling. In point, glitter, polish, he is the Moore of Highland song. Comparison and ideality are the leading features of his mind. Some of the pieces in this volume are sparkling tissues of comparison from beginning to end. The images pass before us in quick and tantalizing succession, reminding us of the figures of a magic lantern, hurriedly drawn athwart the wall, or the patterns of a webb of tapestry, seen and then lost, as they sweep over the frame. Even when compelled to form a high estimate of the wealth of the bard from the very rapidity with which he flings it before us, we cannot avoid wishing at the same time that he had learned to enjoy it a little more at his leisure. This, if a fault, however, and we doubt it after all, is a fault of genius," Dr. Browne, author of "The History of the Highland Clans," noticing the work in the Caledonian Mercury, wrote:-" Genius wherever it displays itself, constitutes nature's title of nobility, with heaven's patent right visibly stamped upon it, and thus levels all other distinctions. Here, for instance, we have it breaking out amidst every disadvantage in the person of a Western Celt,-one, who, obedient

to the voice within, sought to embody in song those feelings and emotions which external nature had kindled up in his bosom; and who, with none of the means and appliances furnished by the schools, has thrown together in his Mountain Minstrel, more gems of purest ray serene' than could be found in a decade of lustra amongst the measured dulness of the choristers and songsters in the cities of the south."

This is surely high praise, but we must yet quote Bailey, the celebrated author of "Festus" and of the

Angel World." "There is a freshness, a keenness, a heartiness in many of these productions of the Mountain Minstrel, which seem to breathe naturally of the hungry air, the dark, bleak, rugged bluffs among which they were composed, alternating occasionally with a clear, bewitching, and spiritual quiet, as of the gloaming deepening over the glens and woods. Several of the melodies towards the close of this volume, are full of simple and tender feeling, and not unworthy to take their place by the side of those of Lowland minstrels of universal fame."

Our minstrel having thus established for himself a name which his countrymen "will not willingly let die' the time to leave his beloved Lochfyne-side, not for Canada, but England, at last drew near. For, having been in the spring of 1839, through the influence of Mr. Campbell, of Islay, then M.P. for Argyleshire, appointed to a clerkship in the Liverpool Custom House, he, in that year, bade his native home an affectionate farewell, and exchanged the Highland hills and heather, which had so

often occupied his poetic mind, for a sphere of life which, with its necessary duties and surroundings, had little attraction for one of his temperament, tastes and feelings.

In 1850, the health of our bard having become somewhat impaired, he obtained six months' leave of absence to enable him to visit his friends in Canada, and at the same time recruit his overworked constitution. Shortly after his arrival there he happened to come in contact with an old friend of his father's family, the Hon. Malcolm Cameron, then a member of the Canadian Government, and was by this distinguished countryman invited to transfer his clerkship in the Liverpool Customs for a somewhat better position at the time in the Provincial Customs of Upper Canada. Unfortunately for him, we think, he fell in with this friendly suggestion, and was shortly after, appointed to a situation at Kingston, a position in which he remained until 1880, when he was superannuated.

Promotion in the public service in Canada, being a matter almost entirely dependent on political influence,—and the Liberal party, that to which MacColl owed his appointment, having, unfortunately for him, been left in the cold shades of opposition, with but a very short interval during the whole of his official life in that country, his portion at the "public crib" was never much to boast of. We suspect that a further barrier to his advancement lay in a suspicion that not a few of the political lyrics anonymously contributed from time to time to the Reform press, were from his It is certain that the bard never pro

pen.