ROBERT BUCHANAN.

an edition of Henry W. Longfellow's poems; and is a frequent and favourite contributor to many of the leading magazines. Mr. Buchanan also published anonymously two widely-cir

and Red," both of which he has recently acknowledged, and each of which has gone through many editions. An edition of his acknowledged poetical and prose writings is being published in London in five handsome volumes. In 1870 he received from Mr. Gladstone a pension of £100 per annum, in consideration of his literary merit as a poet.

ROBERT BUCHANAN, the son of a well-known | the American naturalist, written by his widow; Socialist missionary, long resident in Glasgow, was born at Caverswall, Staffordshire, Aug. 18, 1841, and was educated at the High-school and University of Glasgow. At an early age he began the career of a man of letters, and inculated poems, "St. Abe," and "White Rose 1860 issued his first volume of poems with the title of Undertones. While it occasionally reflected the manner of Browning and Tennyson, the volume clearly showed that it was the offspring of a genuine poet. His second work, Idyls and Legends of Inverburn, while inferior to Tennyson's idyls as ornate compositions, are for unstudied pathos and humour greatly superior to the laureate's. In this volume Mr. Buchanan's foot is on his native heath, which he bestrides with as much pride as affection. London Poems, his third publication, containing the most representative and original of his creations, was followed by a beautifully illustrated volume entitled Ballad Stories of the Affections, translated from the Scandinavian. His other publications are North Coast and other Poems, The Book of Orm, The Drama of Kings, and The Land of Lorne. The latter volume contains a very full and sympathetic account of the Burns of the Highlands-Duncan Ban Macintyre, to whose memory a monument was recently erected at Glenorchy. Mr. Buchanan is also the author of "A Madcap Prince," a play produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London, 1874, but written in youth; "Napoleon Fallen," a lyrical drama; and the tragedy of "The Witchfinder," brought out at the Sadler's Wells Theatre, London. He has edited several works, including a memoir of John James Audubon,

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The American critic Stedman, himself a poet, thus concludes an appreciative notice of Buchanan and his writings: "His merits lie in his originality, earnestness, and admirable understanding of nature, in freedom of style and strength of general effect. His best poetry grows upon the reader. He is still young, scarcely having begun the mature creative period, and if he will study the graces of restraint, and cling to some department of art in which he is easily foremost, he should not fail of a new and still more successful career." still higher authority, Mr. R. H. Hutton of the Spectator, writes, reviewing Mr. Buchanan's collected works:-"To our mind, after long knowledge of his poems, they seem to us nearly perfect of their kind, realistic and idealistic alike in the highest sense. Nor has the voice of dumb wistful yearning in Man towards something higher-of yearning such as the brute creation seemed to show in the Greek period towards the human-found as yet any interpreter equal to Buchanan."

And knew by heart the mountains round our And ran full merry to the door and rang,

home;

But when I went to Edinglass, to learn
At college there, I look'd about the place,
And heard the murmur of the busy streets
Around me, in a dream;-and only saw
The clouds that snow around the mountain-tops,
The mists that chase the phantom of the moon
In lonely mountain tarns,-- and heard the while,
Not footsteps sounding hollow to and fro,
But wild winds, wailing thro' the woods of pine.
Time pass'd; and day by day those sights and
sounds

Grew fainter, till they troubled me no more.

O Willie, Willie, are you sleeping sound?-
And can you feel the stone that I have placed
Yonder above you? Are you dead, my doo?
Or did you see the shining Hand that parts
The clouds above, and becks the bonnie birds,
Until they wing away, and human eyes,
That watch them while they vanish up the blue,
Droop and grow tearful? Ay, I ken, I ken,
I'm talking folly, but I loved the child!
He was the bravest scholar in the school!
He came to teach the very dominie
Me, with my lyart locks and sleepy heart!

Oh, well I mind the day his mother brought
Her tiny trembling tot with yellow hair,
Her tiny poor-clad tot six summers old,
And left him seated lonely on a form
Before my desk. He neither wept nor gloom'd;
But waited silently, with shoeless feet
Swinging above the floor; in wonder eyed
The maps upon the walls, the big black-board,
The slates and books and copies, and my own
Gray hose and clumpy boots; last, fixing gaze
Upon a monster spider's web that fill'd

One corner of the whitewash'd ceiling, watch'd
The speckled traitor jump and jink about,
Till he forgot my unfamiliar eyes,
Weary and strange and old. "Come here, my

bairn!"

And rang, and rang, while lights of music lit
His pallid cheek, till, shouting, panting hard,
In ran the big rough laddies from their play.

Then, rapping sharply on the desk, I drove
The scholars to their seats, and beckon'd up
The stranger; smiling, bade him seat himself,
And hearken to the rest. Two weary hours,
Buzz-buzz, boom-boom, went on the noise of
school,

While Willie sat and listen'd open-mouth'd;
Till school was over, and the big and small
Flew home in flocks. But Willie stay'd behind.
I beckon'd to the mannock with a smile,
Took him upon my knee, and crack'd and talk'd.

First, he was timid; next, grew bashful; next,
He warm'd, and told me stories of his home,
His father, mother, sisters, brothers, all;
And how, when strong and big, he meant to buy
A gig to drive his father to the kirk;
And how he long'd to be a dominie!
Such simple prattle as I plainly see

Your wisdom smiles at. . . . Weel! the laddie
still

Was seated on my knee, when at the door
We heard a sound of scraping: Willie prick'd
! His ears and listen'd, then he clapt his hands-
Hey! Donald, Donald, Donald!" [See! the

rogue

Looks up and blinks his eyes-he knows his name!]
"Hey, Donald, Donald!" Willie cried. At that
I saw beneath me, at the door, a dog-
The very collie dozing at your feet,
His nose between his paws, his eyes half closed.
At sight of Willie, with a joyful bark
He leapt and gamboll'd, eying me the while
In queer suspicion; and the mannock peep'd
Into my face, while patting Donald's back-
It's Donald! he has come to take me home!"

An old man's tale, a tale for men gray-hair'd, Who wear, thro' second childhood, to the grave! I'll hasten on. Thenceforward Willie came Willie," coo'd the Daily to school, and daily to the door

And timid as a lamb he seedled up. "What do they call ye?"

wean,

66

Up-peeping slyly, scraping with his feet.
I put my hand upon his yellow hair,
And cheer'd him kindly. Then I bade him lift
The small black bell that stands behind the door,
And ring the shouting laddies from their play.

Run, Willie!" And he ran, and eyed the bell,
Stoop'd o'er it, seem'd afraid that it would bite,
Then grasp'd it firm, and as it jingled gave
A timid cry-next laugh'd to hear the sound—

nounced the most faithful poet of Nature among the new men. He is her familiar, and in this respect it would seem as if the mantle of Wordsworth had fallen to him from some fine sunset or misty height.-Stedman's Victorian Poets, Boston, 1876.

Came Donald trotting; and they homeward went
Together Willie walking slow but sure,
And Donald trotting sagely by his side.
[Ay, Donald, he is dead! be still, old man!]

What link existed, human or divine,
Between the tiny tot six summers old,
And yonder life of mine upon the hills
Among the mists and storms? 'Tis strange, 'tis
strange!

But when I look'd on Willie's face, it seem'd
That I had known it in some beauteous life
That I had left behind me in the North!
This fancy grew and grew, till oft I sat-
The buzzing school around me and would seem
To be among the mists, the tracks of rain,