Mr. R. McKinlay Power, of New Rochelle, N. Y., has, during the last few months, entertained the readers of THE CALEDONIAN by his remarkably interesting sketches of the life and work of Sir Walter Scott, and has done much in arousing new interest in the writings of the great novelist. Mr. Power, as the following sketch of his career will show, is a man of education and ability in his chosen profession, the law, and these articles were the result of a period of enforced rest. "When Blackstone, Kent and the code were forbidden, and only the novel and poetry were allowed, he read Scott from cover to cover." Those who have followed his articles in THE CALEDONIAN will certainly agree that his impressions of the great novelist are vivid and impartial, and his graphic description of the city of Edinburgh, which appears on another page of this issue, is a fitting conclusion to the valuable series.

The "History of the Bench and Bar of New York" has this to say of Mr. Power: "He received his preparatory education at the Glasgow Academy-a famous classical school-and under the instruction of private tutors in Latin and Greek. He then entered the University of Glasgow, from which he was graduated in 1876 with the degree of Master of Arts." He was born on October 1, 1855, and he has been practicing law in New Rochelle since 1888. He has been counsel for the Department of Health of New Rochelle, and has made a special study of the law of public health and safety, with which he professes to have

R. McKinlay Power.

a rare acquaintance; and, being an M. D., he has had considerable practice in matters involving a knowledge of medical jurisprudence. He studied both law and medicine in the city of Glasgow, besides this country, and at the University of Glasgow he took high honors in medical jurisprudence. The "Bench and Bar" has also this to say of him: "Mr. Power is a ripe classical and French. scholar, an ardent student, and a graceful writer and speaker. He has made a translation of some of the celebrated classics, especially the Odes of Horace. He is a frequent contributor to the magazines and periodicals, and is often seen on the lecture platform. He is the au

thor of several monologues on topics connected with military law, in which he is regarded as an expert." In 1895

he was elected to membership in the American Authors' League, now known as the Guild of American Authors.

It was in Edinburgh that Sir Walter Scott was born and lived and essentially had his being. A second Bonivard, he worshiped its very stones, and to-day it is hallowed by his memory. In that ancient city, as Cicero said of Athens, every stone you tread on has its history, and the visitor to "mine own romantic town," as Scott endearingly calls the Scottish capital, is everywhere confronted with buildings and with scenes which history has made memorable and which the novelist's pen has rendered immortal. Residence in Edinburgh is an education in itself. To speak of Scott and not to mention Edinburgh is to play "Hamlet" without the Dane. Cross the ocean, and with fancy's eye view with me the panorama that passes before us in that magnificent city! The Gothic Cathedral of St. Giles, where John Knox preached, where the greenwife, Jenny Geddes, thwarted the first and last attempt to introduce the Scottish Liturgy by throwing her hassock at the archbishop's head, and in which Albany and Douglas erected a chapel to atone for the murder of the starved Rothesay; the precipitous Castle, overlooking one of the fairest streets of any city, at once the palace and the prison of Scottish kings, where James VI. was born; where, in

the Crown Room, the Scottish regalia may be seen; whence, in the garb of a cobbler, Hamish, i. e., James Macgregor, son of the famous "Highland rogue," Rob Roy, made his escape, and where, too, at 1 P. M. each day the dreadful thunder of that gigantic piece of ordnance, the Mons Meg, still shakes the compact city; pinnacled on its summit. stand the Castle Rock and St. Margaret's Chapel, sacred to the memory of Malcolm's queen, who died in 1093; the house in lower High street (the same High street which, twice "Sixty Years Since," the learned Baron of Bradwardine pronounced to be, "beyond shadow of dubitation, finer than any street whether in London or Paris") where lived and died the reformer, John Knox, he who, the Regent Morton declared, "never feared the face of man"; the churchyard of Greyfriars, with its flat tombstone whereon the Solemn League and Covenant was signed, its vault, haunted by the specter of the Bloody Mackenzie, and with whose sacred dust lie mingled the dust of the Regent Morton, accused of the murder of Lord Darnley and beheaded in 1581, George Bushanan, Allan Ramsay and the father of Sir Walter Scott; the Parliament House (now the Court of Ses

sion, in which the Lords of Council and Session, as its judges were called, take causes "to avizandum"), where sat the Scottish Legislature prior to the Union of Crowns in 1707; the superb building of Victoria, or Assembly Hall (fronting the Lawnmarket), with its spire towering toward the sky, wherein annually meets the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland; the Royal Palace of Holyrood (familiar to the readers of "Sixty Years Since"), which King David founded as an abbey in 1128, in which to-day stand, exactly as she left them, the sleeping room of the hapless Mary Stuart, and the ante-chamber of the queen's apartments, where David Rizzio, with more than twice the number of Cæsar's wounds, was ruthlessly slain, where for a time Oliver Cromwell had his residence, and where James II. was born, crowned, married and buried; the "Heart of Midlothian" cut in stone on the sidewalk near the Church of St. Giles, in the upper High street; the Cannongate (whose chronicles Scott has written), upon whose public buildings is inscribed the ancient armorial motto: "This is the path to heaven"; the Cowgate, in times gone by, like the Cannongate, the abode of the gentry; the Old Wynd, and the West Bow, scene of more than one historic riot, and the place where, for fancied sins of witchcraft and astrology, old women and gentle ladies have perished at the stake; the Grassmarket (destitute of even a blade!), at one time the place of public execution, which saw many a sorry sight after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and whose name is forever associated with that of the unlucky captain of the Town Guard, John Porteous, whose fate "The Heart of Midlothian" too sadly and too well depicts. 'Tis true the Old College Wynd, where Scott was edu

cated and where Oliver Goldsmith lived while a medical student, is gone; stones formed to the shape of a St. Andrew's cross now mark the spot in the Grassmarket where once the "gallows tree" stood; the "Kirk of Field," in which Mary's second weak and absent-minded husband, the Earl of Darnley, slept his last sleep, was blown up with gun powder on a February morning over three hundred years ago, and Darnley himself, as the Iago-like Sir Richard Varney in "Kenilworth" exclaims, was "fired off into the air like a rocket on a rejoicing day"; the Flodden Wall of Auld Reekie has crumbled to ruin and decay; in vain the reader of "Marmion" looks for "Dunedin's Cross-a pillar'd stone," and sighs when told that its removal as a street encumbrance in 1756 drew from Scott the "minstrel's malison"; the echoing shouts of "Bonnie Dundee" have died away from the West Port, and the martyr's, or traitor's, head is no longer exhibited at the West Port Gate; the old Tolbooth, which Scott dignifies as the "Heart of Midlothian," has long since met the fate which all debtors' prisonsNew York's Ludlow Street Jail included -in these enlightened times deserve; but the Queen's Bath-a street, not a lavatory-although, like the kidney-pie stand in Dickens' sketch of the "Streets of London by Night," its glory has quite departed, is still traversed; a barber-O tempora, O mores!-now plies his tonsorial art where John Knox wrote and prayed, and the White Horse Tavern"a base hovel" is Scott's opinion of it

where Boswell entertained Samuel Johnson with something stronger than his much loved tea, is one of the best preserved relics of the past! And one of the first objects which attracts the visitor's eye as he alights at the Waverley station is the beautiful monument of

Sir Walter Scott, which an enthusiastic admirer, the late Dr. W. W. Cumming, never passed without raising his hat, and insisting on those who accompanied him paying the same homage, and beside which that in New York's Central Park is a pigmy to a Colossus. Truly is Edinburgh a city with a history made up of more than mere tradition, and Scott loved this same Edinburgh as Charles Lamb or Charles Dickens loved London, and so faithfully and reverently withal has he touched her historic spots with the magic of his pen that on his monument, in the Princes' Street Gardens, might well be engraven the inscription on the tomb of the great architect, Sir Christopher Wren: Si monumentum quaeris, circumspice!

It is now almost three quarters of a century since Sir Walter Scott departed this life, but the wand of the great magician, like the mantle of Elijah, is potent still, and his works are read and re

read, recited and admired wheresoever, throughout the whole world, the English tongue is spoken. Like those of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott has been called the Shakespeare of Scotlandthey are "not for an age, but for all time," and they will continue to delight and instruct, to dazzle and inspire, so long as nature can charm the heart of man, so long as the deeds of our fathers shall interest their children, and so long as the language in which they are written shall be read and spoken, for with the English language alone can they perish. A monument more enduring than brass, ever on shall they grow fresh in the praise of ages, and, if I were called upon to decide in which of the great literatures of the world the Anglo-Saxon youth should be early instructed, my answer would come prompt and emphatic-in the literature of SIR WALTER SCOTT.

A few months ago our readers enjoyed a sketch of Robert Burns, written by Wesley A. Stewart, of Sturgis, S. D., and we are glad to give the following sketch of his prosperous career. Mr. Stewart is proud of his Scotch descent, and is an active member of Clan Stewart, of Lead City.

His early education was only that obtained from the public school, but he had a higher aim in view, and for a time followed a trade. At the age of seventeen years he put on a blacksmith's apron and for seven years ironed carriages, saving his money for a legal education. Always an omniverous reader and student, he spent most of his time in the evenings studying, after working all day at his trade. In June 1887 he was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of Iowa and has been in actual practice to the present time. In 1890 he came to the Black Hills and has resided in Sturgis since that time. He is said to be an aggressive and skillful trial lawyer and has been very successful in his practice. He has twice been city attorney of Sturgis; was for two years vice-president of the Bar Association of the eighth circuit, embracing Lawrence, Butte and Meade counties; and for eight years has been local attorney for the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Co., and represents many important commercial agencies.