The English of which is "I love the half of you, baby, from the top of your head to the sole of your foot; but I regret the other half of you is not burning in a blazing fire of brown oak."* This verse having been recited to the mother, she ordered the nurse not only out of the house, but out of Strathglass. She was transported to the plains of Morayshire, where the Chisholm sent men with wood to build a house for her reception. When the old crone entered the new residence in Ler penal settlement of Morayshire, she surveyed its internal construction with an anxious eye. Gazing at its couple-trees, her heart gladdened at finding herself surrounded with Strathglass timber, and she addressed her new abode thus:

'S tocha leam do mhaidean croma,
Na da-thrian na'm bheil am Moireamh,
Airson gun d' fhas iad an coille Chomar,
Frith na'n damh dearg 'us donna.

Meaning "I prefer thy crooked couple-trees to two-thirds of all in Morayshire, because they have grown in the wood of Comar, the haunt of the red and the dun stags." Before parting with the builders of her new house she made them bearers of a mark of gratitude to her patron, the Chisholm. This is how she began her message of thanks to him :—

'S truagh nach robh Loch-mhaol-ardich,

Far an orduichinn i 'm Moiramh,
A fad 's a leud, sa lom, sa larach,

Aig mo ghradh fo eorna soillear.

"I regret that Lochmulardich is not where I would order it, in Moray, its length, breadth, site, and area,† growing bright barley for my love, the Chisholm."

(To be Continued.)

Mr

THE HON. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, Ex-Premier of Canada, and Mrs Mackenzie, passed through Inverness on Monday last, on their way to Caithness. and Mrs Mackenzie have been travelling here and on the Continent of Europe for the last two months, and we were very pleased to learn from himself that he has been greatly benefitted by his trip, and his appearance unmistakably indicates the fact. By the time this shall have appeared in print, he is to be back in Inverness for a few days, and we hope that he will thoroughly enjoy the surroundings of the Highland Capital.

THE GAELIC CENSUS.-Though we have given this month eight pages more than usual, to enable us to present the reader with a report of the Annual Assembly of the Gaelic Society, we are obliged to hold over a valuable communication by Mr Fraser-Mackintosh, M.P., on the Gaelic Census; as also the Rev. Alex. Macgregor's next chapter on 'Flora Macdonald." We are glad to find that Mr Fraser-Mackintosh has been successful in getting an address agreed to, in the House of Commons on Monday last, for a tabulated return of all the Gaelic-speaking people of Scotland, by counties, parishes, and districts, under the Census of 1881.

* The oak is supposed to burn hotter than any other wood

+ The area of Lochmulardich is about four miles.

Literature.

-0

A LIFE PURSUIT. By WILLIAM ALLAN, Author of " Rose and Thistle," &c.

Sunderland: Hills & Co.

THE reading of Mr Allan's new work has afforded us unalloyed pleasure. The history of a life, however uneventful to outward seeming it may appear to be, cannot fail to be instructive; how much more so the history of an eventful life faithfully told. But Mr Allan's book is more than a history in verse of a life of mere adventure; it is the history of a life of purposeful toil, of honest long continued striving-often in spite of discouragement and apparent defeat-after fortune; a term which, with the author, means infinitely more than mere wealth. It is, too, the history of a successful life, success achieved in a manner which leaves no regrets behind, a history, moreover, written by the man whose life it is, for there is little if any attempt in the book to disguise the fact that "Mor the Scot," whose life is narrated, is Mr Allan himself.

The plan of the work is natural and simple. After a description of Mor's father and mother, written with the reverential hand of a son, in whose loving memory the one has become a hero and the other a saint, we have an account of Mor's birth, baptism, boyhood, and education-of his apprenticeship, and of his first campaign as a toiler, ending in apparent defeat. Then follow several cantos, describing a vision which had the immediate effect of reviving the hero's dead courage, and to which he ascribes the inculcation of the principles of Honesty, Justice, and Truth, which were his guides ever afterwards. Mor rises from the chair in which he had received his ghostly visitors with new hope, and once more seeking employment, is successful.

By and bye comes the American Civil War, and the blockade of the Southern Ports, affording opportunities for the employment of men of nerve and ability which Mor takes advantage of: for we next find him on board a blockade-runner. He runs the blockade at least twice successfully, but is ultimately captured and sent to prison in Washington. When he regains his liberty he returns to Britain, "not richer but far wiser than before." Soon after this a more extended sphere of labour opens to him, to be followed by one still more extended, and then comes victory and its fruits, by which we take it, is meant the enviable position which Mr Allan by his ability and energy has now earned for himself.

We have endeavoured thus to shadow forth the plan of the book, but no mere sketch can give an idea of the merit of the work itself. It is full of word-pictures of the happiest and most graphic kind. As already indicated, the portrait of Mor's father is drawn with a loving and reverential hand. He is a man who is suddenly reduced by innocent misfortune from wealth to comparative penury. But this is not dwelt on-little more than a casual reference being made to the fact. The moral and mental aspect of the man finds a larger place in his son's memory, and we are told that

Detesting cant, no hate to those he showed,
Who sought for heaven by a different road,

a feature of his character which would perhaps not be quite satisfactory to his minister, an old Presbyterian divine, who is in a subsequent canto described as

Wrapt in cold Orthodoxy's vestiture,

He preached flame-terrors as sin's only cure,
And sought by fear-creating tales to shape
For every soul a simple fire-escape-

Bound in his blind belief that God was one
Who cursed all those that worshipped not his son
By Presbyterian version of his creed.

Mor's first teacher was Eppie Tamson, who is thus happily and doubtless truthfully described, although in a very short time the changes in our educational system will perhaps make the description appear grotesquely

In a note Mr Allan says that objections may be urged against the unreality of the cantos describing his dream and its immediate issues, but we are satisfied that no reader would wish them out of the book, for these cantos contain some of Mr Allan's finest lines. It is winter, and Mor, unemployed and despairing, returns to his cold home in that mood when Thoughts of death arise, that tempt the unhinged soul

To spurn the world and gain the restful goal.

And he and his surroundings are thus described :

Mor, workless and purseless, friendless and crushed,
Sat by the dead fire, and the room was hushed,

He heard a death-voice in the wailing tones

Of the night wind's sudden and fitful moans.

He started and thought some spirit had tapped
As the keen hard hail on the window rapped.

Sleep comes and enshrouds the outer senses of the dispirited worker, but the spirit is awake and receives its comfort in the vision which follows, and when the sleeper awakes it is with new strength and courage, and to make new and successful efforts.

The cantos devoted to the blockade-running portion of Mor's life are perhaps the most spirited in the book. The arrival of the blockaderunner at Porto Rico leads up to a splendidly written canto on the cruelties of the Spaniards in Mexico, where

Beneath the ruthless Spaniards' blighting breath,
An Empire vanished in a storm of death,

and in Peru, where-

O'er the peaceful country swiftly rolled
A wave of murder and a cry of gold;

deeds followed slowly but surely by the inevitable retribution

Where now thy glory, miserable Spain?

Where now thy Empire o'er the Western Main?
For ever gone! yet still remembered are

Thy deeds of rapine, lust, and cruel war.

The chase of the blockade runner, her escape from under the muzzles of her would-be captors' guns, her entry into Charleston, and subsequent run through the blockading squadron outwards, are all told in lines which compel the sustained interest of the reader to the end.

At times it would appear that Mr Allan forgot he was himself the hero of his poem; but this is well on in the book, when he had written so much about "Mor the Scot," that he may well be excused for occasionally investing him with a separate personality and heroic attributes. The lines where this peculiarity crops out would never have been spoken or written by Mr Allan of himself, although they are well deserved; but of this separate person, "Mor the Scot," he has no such delicacy. Speaking of Mor, he says:

Each foul attack with lofty scorn he foiled.

He moved alone to golden poison proof,
And from the selfish wisely kept aloof.

Uncheered, unaided, self-reliant, strong,
He braved each tempest as he dashed along,
E'en stricken by a sudden blast of death,
Unscathed he rose with still triumphant breath.

So Mor, with throbbing heart and frenzied eye,
Indomitably inarched to victory.

Nobody who knows the author will think any of these lines undeserved as applied to him, yet nobody who knows him will for a moment think he meant to apply them to himself. They occur near the end of the work, when Mor, who at first was William Allan, rises above that modest individual and becomes a god of labour whom the humble mortal seeks, and successfully, to imitate. These lines are perhaps blemishes in the work, viewing it as autobiographical, but they are not such as to call for more than a passing remark. The same may be said of one other curious inconsistency in the narrative. In the canto devoted to the description of Mor's visionary visitor, we are told that he wore upon his "warrior head" a helmet, and that

Around its up-drawn visor gleaming bright,
Shone golden letters with untarnished light,
Which seemed his faith-device, or battle-cry,
The unused, world-scorned motto, "Honesty."

In his right hand he had a sword, whose scabbard bore the word "Justice,"
"in diamond letters sparkling bright;" while on his left arm hung a
shield, upon which was emblazoned the word “
"Truth
"Heaven's pass-
word unto men." The next canto but one is headed, "Buckling on the
Armour," and of Mor's visitor we are told that "the shining helmet from
his head he took," and

With tender grasp, on Mor's uncovered head,
He placed the dented dome, and calmly said,

and so on.

Then the stranger takes his sword and shield and arms Mor with them, and during the process gives him abundance of advice, warning him especially against dishonesty, untruth, and injustice. At the end of this exhortation we are told that

Thus armed, o'er Mor a new sensation stole,

Deeds! living deeds! cried out his longing soul;
And e'er the stranger's solemn words had ceased,
His burning wish for battle had increased.
With war-dilated eye and lips compressed,
Tumultuous throbbings raged within his breast,
His limbs seemed iron and his grasp seemed steel,
His blood afire rushed wild from head to heel,
He heard Dare's deep-toned summons sounding ever,
"On! on! to battle! onward, now or never!"
With fearless heart, by fiercest passion swayed,
He grasped the jewelled sheath and drew the blade,
Then cried with frenzied voice, wild ringing high,
"Come world! come toil! come death or victory!"

This is a splendid burst, and after reading it one is not surprised to learn that honesty, truth, and justice became from that time forth the guiding principle of Mor's life. Some seventy pages further on, however, we come upon lines which seem to indicate that even when a declaration of principles is made in high-sounding verse, emergencies may arise when these principles have to be laid aside for the moment, and much abused expediency made the rule of action. Such, at least, would seem to have been Mor's experience.

He finds himself in prison in Washington. Each day he appeals to the British Ambassador, but without effect, for his letters elicit no response. How he at last gained his liberty is told in two lines.—

Till tact beguiled a sentry's soldier pride,

Then CUNNING gained what HONESTY denied.

And as this gain was liberty, it would be hard to say that cunning or beguiling tact sparingly used, and only on emergencies, is not sometimes a valuable addition to make to one's acquirements, or to the great guiding principles of honesty, truth, and justice.

Beyond the slight blemishes we have narrated, there is little to find fault with. A few bad rhymes, such as "evil" with "devil," and "slow" with "prow," and a few traces of hasty composition, are defects which a careful revisal will remove. For aught we know, Mr Allan's nationality may so extend his poetic license as to entitle him to pronounce "devil" "deevil," in which case the lines will probably be left as they are.

The work has throughout the ring of genuine poetry, and we offer Mr Allan our hearty congratulations on the appearance of this, the best book yet produced by his pen.

The get-up of the volume is as creditable to the publishers as its contents are to the author. It is beautifully printed on hand-made paper and strongly bound in vellum, and we are by no means surprised to learn that it is already out of print.