O lady, judge, if judge ye may,
How stern and ample was the sway
Of themes like these when darkness fell,
And gray-haired sires the tales would tell!
When doors were barred, and eldern dame
Plied at her task beside the flame,
That through the smoke and gloom alone
On dim and umbered faces shone-
The bleat of mountain-goat on high,
That from the cliff came quavering by;
The echoing rock, the rushing flood,
The cataract's swell, the moaning wood;
The undefined and mingled hum—
Voice of the desert never dumb!
All these have left within this heart
A feeling tongue can ne'er impart ;
A wildered and unearthly flame,
A something that 's without a name.

Sir Walter's first Counsels.
The land was charmed to list his lays;
It knew the harp of ancient days.
The Border chiefs, that long had been
In sepulchres unhearsed and green,
Passed from their mouldy vaults away
In armour red and stern array,
And by their moonlit halls were seen
In visor, helm, and habergeon.
Even fairies sought our land again,
So powerful was the magic strain.
Blest be his generous heart for aye!
He told me where the relic lay;
Pointed my way with ready will,
Afar on Ettrick's wildest hill;
Watched my first notes with curious eye,
And wondered at my minstrelsy:
He little weened a parent's tongue
Such strains had o'er my cradle sung.
But when, to native feelings true,
I struck upon a chord was new;
When by myself I 'gan to play,
He tried to wile my harp away.
Just when her notes began with skill
To sound beneath the southern hill,
And twine around my bosom's core,
How could we part for evermore?
'Twas kindness all-I cannot blame-
For bootless is the minstrel flame;
But sure a bard might well have known
Another's feelings by his own!
Bonny Kilmeny.

yellowhammer

Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen;
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hung frae the hazel-tree;
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the greenwood shaw;
Lang the laird of Duneira blame,

raspberry

mother

When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,
When the beadsman had prayed and the dead-bell rung,
Late, late in a gloamin, when all was still,
When the fringe was red on the westlin' hill,
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane,
The reek o' the cot hung over the plain
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;
When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme,
Late, late in the gloamin Kilmeny came hame!
'Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?
Lang hae we sought baith holt and dean;
By linn, by ford, and greenwood tree,

Yet you are halesome and fair to see.

alone

fire blazedweird gleam

waterfall

head-band

Where gat ye that joup o' the lily sheen? jupe, skirt-bright
That bonny snood of the birk sae green?
And these roses, the fairest that ever were seen?
Kilmeny, Kilmeny, where have you been?'

Kilmeny looked up with a lovely grace,
But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face;
As still was her look, and as still was her ee,
As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea,
Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea.
For Kilmeny had been she knew not where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare ;
Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
Where the rain never fell and the wind never blew,
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been. . . .

covered

comrade

...

Her bosom happed wi' the flowrets gay;
But the air was soft and the silence deep,
And bonny Kilmeny fell sound asleep;
She kend nae mair, nor opened her ee,
Till waked by the hymns of a far countrye,
She wakened on a couch of the silk sae slim,
All striped wi' the bars of the rainbow's rim;
And lovely beings round were rife,
Who erst had travelled mortal life. . . .
They clasped her waist and her hands sae fair,
They kissed her cheek, and they kamed her hair, combed
And round came many a blooming fere,
Saying, 'Bonny Kilmeny, ye 're welcome here!'
They lifted Kilmeny, they led her away,
And she walked in the light of a sunless day;
The sky was a dome of crystal bright,
The fountain of vision, and fountain of light;
The emerald fields were of dazzling glow,
And the flowers of everlasting blow.
Then deep in the stream her body they laid,
That her youth and beauty never might fade;
And they smiled on heaven when they saw her lie
In the stream of life that wandered by ;
And she heard a song, she heard it sung,
She kend not where, but sae sweetly it rung,
It fell on her ear like a dream of the morn.
'Oh, blest be the day Kilmeny was born!
Now shall the land of the spirits see,
Now shall it ken what a woman may be !
The sun that shines on the world sae bright,

knew

A borrowed gleid frae the fountain of light;
And the moon that sleeks the sky sae dun,
Like a gowden bow or a beamless sun,
Shall wear away and be seen nae mair,

And the angels shall miss them travelling the air.

But lang, lang after baith night and day,
When the sun and the world have elyed away;
When the sinner has gane to his waesome doom,
Kilmeny shall smile in eternal bloom!'. . .

Then Kilmeny begged again to see
The friends she had left in her own countrye,
To tell of the place where she had been,

And the glories that lay in the land unseen. . . .
With distant music, soft and deep,
They lulled Kilmeny sound asleep;
And when she awakened she lay her lane,

All happed with flowers in the greenwood wene.
When seven lang years had come and fled,
When grief was calm and hope was dead,
When scarce was remembered Kilmeny's name,
Late, late in a gloamin Kilmeny came hame!
And oh, her beauty was fair to see,

But still and steadfast was her ee;

Such beauty bard may never declare,

For there was no pride nor passion there;

And the soft desire of maiden's een

gleam

vanished

at dusk

But she loved to raike the lanely glen,
And keeped afar frae the haunts of men,
Her holy hymns unheard to sing,
To suck the flowers and drink the spring,
But wherever her peaceful form appeared,
The wild beasts of the hill were cheered;
The wolf played blithely round the field,
The lordly bison lowed and kneeled,
The dun deer wooed with manner bland,
And cowered aneath her lily hand.
And when at eve the woodlands rung,
When hymns of other worlds she sung,
In ecstasy of sweet devotion,

Oh, then the glen was all in motion;

The wild beasts of the forest came,

wander through

To the Comet of 1811. How lovely is this wildered scene,

As twilight from her vaults so blue Steals soft o'er Yarrow's mountains green, To sleep embalmed in midnight dew! All hail, ye hills, whose towering height, Like shadows, scoops the yielding sky! And thou, mysterious guest of night, Dread traveller of immensity?

Stranger of heaven! I bid thee hail!
Shred from the pall of glory riven,
That flashest in celestial gale,

Broad pennon of the King of Heaven!

Art thou the flag of woe and death,

From angel's ensign-staff unfurled? Art thou the standard of His wrath Waved o'er a sordid, sinful world? No; from that pure pellucid beam, That erst o'er plains of Bethlehem shone, No latent evil we can deem,

Bright herald of the eternal throne !

Whate'er portends thy front of fire,

Thy streaming locks so lovely paleOr peace to man, or judgments dire,

Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail !

Where hast thou roamed these thousand years?
Why sought these polar paths again,
From wilderness of glowing spheres,
To fling thy vesture o'er the wain?
And when thou scal'st the Milky-way,
And vanishest from human view,
A thousand worlds shall hail thy ray
Through wilds of yon empyreal blue !
Oh, on thy rapid prow to glide!

To sail the boundless skies with thee,
And plough the twinkling stars aside,
Like foam-bells on a tranquil sea!
To brush the embers from the sun,
The icicles from off the pole;
Then far to other systems run,

Where other moons and planets roll!
Stranger of heaven! oh, let thine eye
Smile on a rapt enthusiast's dream;
Eccentric as thy course on high,
And airy as thine ambient beam!
And long, long may thy silver ray
Our northern arch at eve adorn;
Then, wheeling to the east away,
Light the gray portals of the morn!

When the Kye comes Hame.

Come all ye jolly shepherds

That whistle through the glen,

I'll tell ye of a secret

That courtiers dinna ken;

What is the greatest bliss

That the tongue o' man can name?

'Tis to woo a bonny lassie

When the kye comes hame.

COWS

For his heart is in a flame

To meet his bonny lassie

When the kye comes hame. When the little wee bit heart Rises high in the breast, And the little wee bit starn

Rises red in the east,

Oh, there's a joy sae dear,

That the heart can hardly frame,

Wi' a bonny, bonny lassie,

When the kye comes hame.

Then since all nature joins

In this love without alloy, Oh, wha wad prove a traitor

To nature's dearest joy?
Or wha wad choose a crown,
Wi' its perils and its fame,
And miss his bonny lassie

When the kye comes hame?
When the kye comes hame,
When the kye comes hame,
'Tween the gloamin and the mirk,
When the kye comes hame.

The Skylark.

Bird of the wilderness,
Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

shrewd

ewes

may not

star

Wild is thy lay and loud,

Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth;
Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,
Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,

Low in the heather blooms,

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be.
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

O to abide in the desert with thee!

See Hogg's own Autobiography; the Memoir prefixed by Professor Wilson to an 1850 edition of Hogg's Works; the Memoir by T. Thomson prefixed to the 1865 ed.; Hogg's daughter Mrs Garden's Memorials of James Hogg (1885); James Hogg, by Sir George Douglas in the 'Famous Scots' series (1899). There are side-lights in Lockhart's Scott and Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, in Mrs Gordon's Christopher North, in Smiles's Life of John Murray, in Dr William Chambers's Memoir of his brother Robert, in Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents, and in Mrs Oliphant's House of Blackwood.

John Galt, author of The Annals of the Parish, was born 2nd May 1779 at Irvine in Ayrshire, where his father commanded a West India vessel; and when the boy was in his eleventh year his people went to live at Greenock. He got a berth in the custom-house of the port, and continued at the desk, contributing verses to local papers and writing a good deal, till about the year 1804, when, without any appointment or definite prospects, he went to London to 'push his fortune.' He had written what he called an 'epic poem' on the Battle of Largs, and this he committed to the press; but he did not prefix his name, and almost immediately suppressed the production. An unlucky commercial connection embarrassed him for three years, and next he became a student of Lincoln's Inn. On a visit to Oxford he conceived, while standing in the quadrangle of Christ Church, the design of writing a Life of Cardinal Wolsey. He set about the task with ardour; but his health failing, he went abroad with a commission to see if and how British goods might be exported to the Continent in spite of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees. At Gibraltar he met Byron and Hobhouse, then on their way to Greece, and the three sailed in the same packet. Galt stayed some time in Sicily, then from Malta went to Greece, where he again met Byron, and interviewed Ali Pasha. After rambling for some time in Greece he reached Constantinople, Nicomedia, and the Black Sea. Quarantined for a time during these eccentric wanderings, Galt wrote or sketched six dramas, which were, according to Sir Walter Scott, 'the worst tragedies ever seen.' On his return he published his Voyages and Travels and Letters from the Levant,

which contain much interesting and debatable matter, and his Life of Wolsey, a poor book both in matter and style. Galt next settled at Gibraltar, apparently to superintend the smuggling of goods. into Spain, but the design was defeated by Wellington's success in the Peninsula. Back again in England, he contributed dramatic pieces to the 'New British Theatre,' designed mainly for the stage, but not produced. One of his plays, The Appeal, was brought out at the Edinburgh theatre in 1818, and performed four nights, Sir Walter Scott having written an epilogue and some other friend (perhaps Wilson or Lockhart) a prologue. Among Galt's innumerable compositions may be mentioned a Life of Benjamin West, Historical Pictures, The Wandering Jew, and The Earthquake, a novel in three volumes. For Blackwood's Magazine in 1820 he wrote The Ayrshire Legatees, a series of letters containing an entertaining and typical Scottish narrative, which was his first marked success. The Annals of the Parish (1821), which instantly became popular, had been written twelve years earlier, before the appearance of Waverley and Guy Mannering, but was rejected by the publishers of those same works, with the assurance that a novel or work of fiction entirely Scottish would not take with the public. Mackenzie and Scott both praised The Annals, and it was thence that Bentham adopted the word utilitarian, of Galt's coining. Galt had now found where his strength lay, and Sir Andrew Wylie, The Entail, The Steam-boat, and The Provost were successively published-the first two with decided success. These were followed by Ringan Gilhaize, a story of the Scottish Covenanters ; by The Spaewife, a tale of the times of James I. of Scotland; and Rothelan, a historical novel on the reign of Edward. Galt's fertility was enormous, but his faculty intermittent, and he does not seem to have been able to discriminate between the good and the bad in his own work. His strength unquestionably lay in depicting the humours of Scottish provincial life. The Provost and The Annals are his masterpieces; The Entail and Sir Andrew Wylie being the best of the others.

We next find Galt engaged in the formation and establishment of the Canada Company, which involved him in a labyrinth of troubles. After a brief visit to Canada in this connection, Galt wrote the little imaginative tale, The Omen (anonymously, 1825), reviewed by Scott with hearty commendation in Blackwood, and The Last of the Lairds, a novel descriptive of Scottish life. He returned to America in 1826, a million of capital having been entrusted to his management. On the 23rd of April (St George's Day) 1827 Galt founded the town of Guelph, in Upper Canada, with much ceremony, taking himself the first stroke in the felling of a large maple-tree; 'the silence of the woods that echoed to the sound was as the sigh of the solemn genius of the wilderness departing for ever.' The city prospered, houses rising as

fast as building materials could be prepared; but before the end of the year the founder was embroiled in difficulties. He was accused of lowering the Company's stock, and his expenditure was complained of; and the Company sent out an accountant to act as cashier. Feeling himself superseded, Galt returned to England disappointed and depressed, but resolved to battle with his fate; and he set himself down in England to build a new scheme of life. In six months he had six volumes ready. His first work was another novel in three volumes, Lawrie Todd, in which he utilised his Canadian experiences. Southennan illustrates the manners of Scotland in the reign of Queen Mary. For a short time in the same

year (1830) Galt conducted the Courier newspaper, but he gladly left the daily drudgery to complete a Life of Byron. The brevity of this memoir (one small volume), Galt's name, and the interesting subject soon sold three or four editions; but it was indifferently executed, and was sharply assailed by critics. He produced next a series of Lives of the Players, an amusing compilation; and Bogle Corbet, another novel, the object of which was, he said, to give a view of society generally, and of the genteel persons sometimes found among emigrants. Ill-health sapped the robust frame of the novelist; but he wrote on, and in 1832-33 four other works of fiction issued from his penStanley Buxton, The Member, The Radical, and Eben Erskine, besides two volumes of Stories of the Study and a volume of Poems. In 1832 a paralytic ailment prostrated him, but next year he was again at the press with a tale, The

Lost Child. He also composed a Memoir of his own life in two volumes-a curious but illdigested melange. In 1834 he published Literary Life and Miscellanies, in three volumes, dedicated to King William IV., who sent him £200. He returned to Scotland a wreck, but continued to write for the periodicals and edited other people's books. After much suffering he died at Greenock on the 11th of April 1839.

Of the long list of Galt's works, the greater part are already forgotten. Several of his novels, however, have taken a permanent place in literature. In virtue of The Annals of the Parish Galt has been ranked as the father of 'the kailyard school' though in some degree he was anticipated by Mrs Hamilton with her Cottagers of Glenburnie. The Annals is the simple record of a country minister during the fifty years of his incumbency, and gives, with many amusing and touching incidents, a picture of the rise and progress of a Scottish rural village, and its transition to a manufacturing town, as witnessed by a pious, simpleminded man, imbued with old-fashioned national feelings and prejudices. This Presbyterian Parson Adams, the Rev. Micah Balwhidder, in spite of his improbable name, is a fine representative of the Scottish pastor; diligent, blameless, loyal, and exemplary in his life, but without the fiery zeal and 'kirk-filling eloquence' of the supporters of the Covenant. He is easy, garrulous, fond of a quiet joke, and perfectly ignorant of the world, and chronicles among memorable events the arrival of a dancing-master, the planting of a pear-tree, the getting a new bell for the kirk, and the first appearance of Punch's Opera in the country-side -incidents he mixes up indiscriminately with the breaking out of the American war, the establishment of manufactures, and the spread of French revolutionary principles. An altogether admirable piece of narrative gives the story of a widow's son from his first setting off to sea till his death as a midshipman in an engagement with the French. The book is admirable for its truth to nature, its quiet humour and pathos, its faithfulness as a record of Scottish feeling and manners, and its rich felicity of homely Scottish phrase and expression.

The Ayrshire Legatees, a story of the same cast as The Annals, describes (chiefly by means of correspondence on the plan of Humphrey Clinker) the adventures of another country minister and his family on a journey to London to obtain a rich legacy left him by a cousin in India. The Provost illustrates the jealousies, contentions, local improvements, and 'jobbery' of a small Scottish burgh in the olden time. Sir Andrew Wylie and The Entail are more ambitious performances, thrice the length of the others. The 'pawkie' Ayrshire laird is humorous, hardly natural, and often merely vulgar; but the character of Leddy Grippy in The Entail was a prodigious favourite with Byron. Both Scott and Byron were said to have read this novel three times. In Lawrie Todd,

or the Settlers, there is no little vraisemblance, knowledge of human nature, and fertility of invention. The history of a real person named Grant Thorburn supplied the author with part of his incidents, as the story of Alexander Selkirk did Defoe; but Galt's own experience is stamped on almost every page. In his earlier stories Galt

drew from his recollections of the Scotland of his youth; the mingled worth, simplicity, shrewdness, and enthusiasm he had seen or heard of about Irvine or Greenock: in Lawrie Todd his observations in the New World present a different phase of Scottish character as displayed in the history of a nailmaker who emigrates with his brother to America, and from small beginnings becomes a prosperous settler, speculator, and landholder.

Galt's poems are of no importance-unless, indeed, he prove to be the author of a famous 'Canadian Boat-Song' imbued with the 'Celtic spirit' which was printed in the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ' in Blackwood for 1829 as 'received from a friend in Canada.' As the Messrs Blackwood have recently (1902) suggested, Galt was at that time writing to them from Canada. But this particular poem (long absurdly attributed to Hugh, twelfth Earl of Eglinton, 1739-1819) is so unlike Galt's other verse that direct evidence would be required to prove it his. The poem has often been quoted, almost always inaccurately, and was rewritten (not for the better) by Sir John Skelton in Blackwood in 1889. The original first verse ran :

From the lone sheiling on the distant island
Mountains divide us and the waste of seas;
Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

The Settlement of an Unpopular Minister. It was a great affair; for I was put in by the patron, and the people knew nothing whatsoever of me, and their hearts were stirred into strife on the occasion, and they did all that lay within the compass of their power to keep me out, insomuch that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery; and it was a thing that made my heart grieve when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all, and held out the finger of scorn at me; but I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness. Poor old Mr Kilfuddy of the Braehill got such a clash of glaur [mire] on the side of his face that his eye was almost extinguished.

When we got to the kirk door it was found to be nailed up, so as by no possibility to be opened. The sergeant of the soldiers wanted to break it, but I was afraid that the heritors would grudge and complain of the expense of a new door, and I supplicated him to let it be as it was; we were therefore obligated to go in by a window, and the crowd followed us in the most unreverent manner, making the Lord's house like an inn on a fair-day with their grievous yelly-hooing. During the time of the psalm and the sermon they behaved themselves better, but when the induction came on their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl,