vitality to survive the variations of popular taste, and whether it will hereafter have that charm for the many which it undoubtedly has now for the few. If Molière was not wrong in reading his comedies to his housekeeper, and drawing good omens of their success from her unsophisticated laughter, possibly some of our modern poets might do well to test their chances of what we call immortality by some similar appeal to, we will not say illiterate, but less than literary, criticism. Take, for instance, a class of fairly-educated children, say from twelve to fourteen years old: read to them "Edinburgh after Flodden," and you will stir them, almost to tears, as you might with a scene from Shakespeare, a canto of Scott, a ballad of Longfellow or Macaulay, and as assuredly you could not stir them with very much of that modern poetry which is so much admired, and no doubt justly, so far as ingenious fancy and exquisite polish are admirable. These youthful critics will probably be very ill-prepared to discuss the merits of the poet in either case; but they know the ring of the true metal, and the music will haunt them all their lives.

No one is qualified to criticise that noble ballad of which we have just spoken, who does not know it reasonably well by heart; for from the criticism of any upon whom it has taken no such hold, Heaven defend us! One passage there is in it of such remarkable power and pathos that, well known as it must be, we will embroider this page with it, if merely to remark a double beauty, which a careless reader may not have fully appreciated. It is when the provost has heard the terrible news which Randolph Murray, the sole survivor of the city band, has just brought of King James's death and that of the provost's son with him :"Then the provost he uprose,

And his lip was ashen white;

But a flush was on his brow,

And his eye was full of light. "Thou hast spoken, Randolph Murray, Like a soldier stout and true; Thou hast done a deed of daring

Had been perilled but by few. For thou hast not shamed to face us, Nor to speak thy ghastly tale, Standing-thou a knight and captainHere, alive within thy mail! Now, as my God shall judge me, I hold it braver done, Than hadst thou tarried in thy place, And died above my son!'"

The feeling, that the moral courage to tell the tale to an audience of fathers that he had left all their sons dead on the field of battle from which he, their captain, had alone returned" alive and in his mail," was grander than the mere animal desperation which prefers to throw away life rather than risk the taunt-this is obvious enough; but there is an under-current of bitterness which the father cannot suppress; his reason acquits Murray of any shadow of cowardice,-he has brought back the banner with honour if not with glory, and it is more noble to face them all with his ghastly tale than to have thrown himself headlong on the Southrons' spears,-but in his heart the provost would have loved his memory better if he had died where his young son did.

These 'Lays' have variety enough to suit all tastes. The stirring music of "Flodden" and the "Burial-March of Dundee " is not more beautiful than the plaintive monody of "Charles Edward at Versailles," or the solemn grandeur of the "Execution of Montrose." The historical incidents in this last, affecting and picturesque as they are in themselves, are treated by the writer with such consummate taste and power, that possibly this may be pronounced the most perfect composition of the whole. As an instance of the admirable skill and taste with which, as in some of his translations, Aytoun has adopted another's thought, and clothed it with a new beauty of his own, see the use which he has made of

Montrose's own lines, beautiful in thought if somewhat quaint in execution, which he is said to have written with a diamond on the window of his prison on the night before he suffered ::

"Let them bestow on every airth a limb, Then open all my veins, that I may swim To Thee, my Maker! on a crimson lake; Then place my parboiled head upon a stake

Scatter my ashes-strew them in the air; Lord! since Thou knowest where all these atoms are,

I'm hopeful Thou'lt recover once my dust, And confident Thou'lt raise me with the just."

Which Aytoun introduces thus, not
tricked out with any ornament, or
diluted into modern phrase, but
rather reduced to its simplest ele-
ments, concentrating its beauty and
pathos into two short lines :-
"For truth and right, 'gainst treason's
might,

This hand hath always striven,
And ye raise it up for a witness still
In the eye of earth and heaven.
Then nail my head on yonder tower-
Give every town a limb-
And God who made shall gather them:
I go from you to Him!

The death of his wife in 1859, after a lingering illness, shook his kindly nature to the very core. He had no children; and his biographer speaks delicately but pathetically of his not being able to bear the sound "of his own footfall in his great empty house," and of the attached friend who would look in upon him night after night, and find him "sitting with his head leaning upon his hands, cheerless and helpless." But he rallied again: he was not one to give way to the mere luxury of sorrow: he gradually took his old place among his friends, resumed his work as eagerly as ever, married a second time, and happily. His health, however, had for some time begun to fail him; and his illness was of a kind which any anxiety or depression could not fail to aggravate. Few of the many readers who were amused by Meditations on Dyspepsia,' the which appeared in these pages in

66

1861, knew how the writer was drawing from his own bitter experience of one of the most harassing of all diseases, and which, from the strange irony of circumstances, commonly excites much more of satire than of sympathy. But he would jest upon his own sufferings, almost to the last, to his private friends, as good-humouredly as he did to the public. He went to Homburg more than once in search of relief, and received much benefit from the waters, from change of air and scene-or, as he himself sought to impress upon his readers, change of cookery. Now also, for the first time, he entered the literary field in formal guise as a novelist, with his Norman Sinclair.' Perhaps it was too late his fire and fancy were somewhat dimmed, and his lamp was burning lower than he thought. Taken as a novel, it had too little of plot and incident to be successful: as Lord Lytton said of it, there was not enough "backbone." The narrative is not strong enough to bear the mass of episodes and disquisitions which, however good in themselves, are always felt to be more or less impediments even to tales of more stirring interest.

:

Yet in point of originality, tasteful diction, and quiet but genuine humour, very few successful modern novels would bear comparison with it. Such episodes, for instance, as Bailie M'Chappie's visit to Paris, and his experience of the barricades, or Mr Jefferson J. Ewins's story of Haman Walker and Daddy Bungo, are as good in their way as anything which their author ever wrote. What the story wants as a whole is that which novel-readers most demand, and what the author, himself already "wearied with the march of life," could least give it-it wants" go.' The earlier portions have one peculiar value, of which Mr Martin, speaking from intimate knowledge, does well to remind his readers, and which has been already noticed they record many of the scenes

and feelings of Aytoun's own earlier life; disguised, of course, and modified or embellished to suit his purpose, but still reminiscences and confessions which are very characteristic of the man, and possibly not less true than those of some professed autobiographies.

With the exception of the 'Nuptial Ode' on the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and one or two political articles, this was his last work. The end was nearer at hand than he or any of his friends thought. Besides the ordinary mischief of an impaired digestion, there was as his biographer suggests, and as is known to have been the fact-deep-seated organic disease. The scene closed at last rapidly. Within three weeks of his death he had written one of his usual cheerful letters, in which he spoke in sanguine terms of his recovery, and expressed a hope of being "able to take the hill on the 12th of August." On the 4th he died, in his fifty-third year.

"He remained in full possession of his faculties to the last, and, expressing his firm trust in his Saviour, he quietly fell asleep at one in the morning. So rapidly had he sunk after the fatal symp. toms had shown themselves, that his sisters, summoned by telegram from Edinburgh, did not arrive till some hours after his death. "We went straight to his room,' writes one of them, and there he lay like a statue, with a heavenly smile upon his lips, and the colour in his cheek. It did not look like death; and they had laid him out

with bunches of his favourite white roses on his breast.""

Those who knew and loved him best, then, did not regard that emblem of a long-lost cause as having been the mere conventional adoption of the poet. Friends do not seek to perpetuate a sham, however graceful, in the chamber of death.

It may well be feared, although bis biographer gives but faint hint of what so warm a friend would doubtless be loath to believe, that Aytoun worked too hard, and amidst too many distractions, both

But

That

for his health and for his just reputation. Very possibly he did not feel it so himself; for, until his disease began to master him, he had untiring energy and cheerfulness, and from his earliest entrance upon life, as we have seen, had looked upon work as a duty. his practice at the Bar, and his professorial duties, must have been a heavy strain occasionally upon a man who was continually taxing his brain to meet literary demands of the most varied character. he was not always conscious of the pressure, is no proof that its effects upon him were unimportant. Expressions break from him here and there, even in such letters as Mr Martin has preserved, which show that at times he did feel it; as, for instance, when (writing from Kirkwall in 1856) he confesses that he "worked harder and more incessantly last winter and spring than was altogether good for him," or again, at a later date, describes himself, half jestingly indeed, but no doubt with an undercurrent of melancholy earnest, as "awfully distracted with the necessary duty of correcting class exercises and advising processes." For all the higher purposes of life, it has been truly said that "it is better to wear out than to rust out; " but the friends who loved and the public who admired William Aytoun cannot help feeling their own loss as premature, if they have any misgiving that the wear, in his case, was too fierce and rapid.

The variety of subjects on which he employed his pen must also be considered as having been prejudicial to the excellence which it was in his power to have attained, if he had more strictly confined himself to one branch of literature. For him, perhaps, such limitation would have been almost impossible. The poet's heart, which has a life and a world of its own, beat in him too strongly not to demand expression; a keen sense of humour was a part of his very nature; he took

a warm interest in politics; and literary criticism seemed to flow almost necessarily from a Professor of Belles Lettres. Still, we cannot but feel that his mere name as an author might have stood higher with the public, if circumstances had led him to concentrate his powers upon some one definite line of work. We agree with Mr Martin's criticism, that "his powers as a humorist were perhaps greater than as a poet." If he had applied these to the production of some two or three carefully-considered tales of Scottish life and character, we believe that he might have reached as high a position amongst writers of fiction as even he himself could have desired.

As it is, much of his best work lies scattered-the disjecta membra of a reputation which the men of this careless generation will hardly stop to piece together. He was one-and one of the best-of those many able writers for whom the active literary demand of an age which reads with avidity, if not always with judgment, finds constant and honourable employment; who influence from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, public taste and opinion; who instruct, amuse, and charm us,

and in the consciousness of such powers honestly exercised must be content to look for a large portion of their reward.

Of the higher qualities of his character little needs here to be said. Mr Martin has said it well, and warmly, as a friend should. An earnest love of nature, a cultivated poetical taste, a keen enjoyment of field sports, a boyish love of fun,-where these are found existing together, they bespeak almost surely a character pure from the vices and the selfishness which have too often stained the brightness of genius. Southey has written in one his letters, "Oh! what a blessing it is to have a boy's heart! it is as great a blessing in carrying one through this world, as to have a child's spirit will be in fitting us for the next!" Aytoun had very much of both; and it was quite consonant with his hearty enjoyment of life that he should have received the intimation of its hasty close, as we are told he did, "quite calmly." He had no need to take up the melancholy refrain which an earlier Scottish poet, one of his own favourites, makes the burden of the song of his old age

*

"Timor mortis conturbat me."

"BEWARE of quack remedies with respect to Ireland," was the warning a Cabinet Minister lately held out to his hearers at Bristol; but however it may have impressed those who heard him, it would not appear to have deterred the quacks themselves, who have come forward in shoals since the speech was pronounced, each with his infallible nostrum, each with the one thing that, taken as directed, must cure all the ills of that unhappy country.

It is to no purpose that Ireland declares she is not in the miserable condition they would pretend her to be. It is of no avail that she protests that her symptoms are those of an old chronic affection which the oldest inhabitant never remembers her free from. To little good is it to say that she has lost much of her confidence in doctors, and would rather try some rest and quietness, with, if permitted, a more nourishing diet. The quacks are bent on making her an advertisement for their drugs and puffing themselves into notoriety. Not that in reality they have anything very new or original to recommend. There is not a suggestion of Messrs Bright, Lord Russell, or Stuart Mill, that has not been made by some one, out of office, any year for the last thirty. The schemes of divesting the landlord of his rights as a proprietor, and confiscating the property of the Church, may have many merits, but they are not those of originality. They have, however, other merits, which in these days are not to be overlooked- they are what are called sweeping measures -they have a look of "thorough" about them, and they go the "whole way."

So long, however, as the prin

ciple of selection is used in the franchise, so long as a certain status and a certain amount of property are made the conditions on which a man is enabled to vote for a representative in Parliament -so long, in fact, as Universal Suffrage is not the law of the land -the possessors of the property of a country, though numerically inferior, must be regarded as of some more account than the unendowed masses. That is, you are not, in legislating for a country, to be swayed merely by the numbers to whom a particular policy would be either profitable or satisfactory.

Now, Ireland is in the anomalous condition of having the property on one side and the people on the other; and though it would be very far from the truth to assert that the measures which would favour one must inevitably injure the other, certain interested persons have long traded politically on this assumption, and made it the means of widening the breach between them, thus creating a state of things to which their own quack remedies seemed admirably adapted-the very best, if not the only palliatives the case admitted of.

One of the strongholds of quackery is to divert the patient's mind from the pressure of his malady by creating a new disturbance in some other part of the system which the charlatan at his own time is in a position to allay. In this way not only is the original disease masked, but the sense of relief caused by the cure of the adventitious attack invariably impresses the sufferer with a high opinion of the doctor, who had foretold every stage of his suffering from the beginning.

To deal with that vague unde