And his lambs are lying still; Yet he downa gang to bed, 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, When the kye comes hame? The Skylark. Bird of the wilderness, Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea! 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 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 rainbow's rim, Then, when the gloaming comes, Low in the heather blooms, Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be. 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 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 Brachill 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, the weaver, a pious zealot in that time, got up and protested, and said: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.' And I thought I would have a hard and sore time of it with such an oustrapolous [obstreperous] people. Mr Given, that was then the minister of Lugton, was a jocose man, and would have his joke even at a solemnity. When the laying of the hands upon me was a-doing he could not get near enough to put on his, but he stretched out his staff and touched my head, and said, to the great diversion of the rest: This will do well enough-timber to timber;' but it was an unfriendly saying of Mr Given, considering the time and the place, and the temper of my people. 6 After the ceremony we then got out at the window, and it was a heavy day to me; but we went to the manse, and there we had an excellent dinner, which Mrs Watts of the new inn of Irville prepared at my request, and sent her chaise-driver to serve, for he was likewise her waiter, she having then but one chaise, and that not often called for. But although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was resolved to cultivate civility among them; and therefore the very next morning I began a round of visitations; but oh! it was a steep brae that I had to climb, and it needed a stout heart, for I found the doors in some places barred against me; in others, the bairns, when they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers: Here's the feckless MessJohn;' and then, when I went in into the houses, their parents would not ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way said: 'Honest man, what's your pleasure here?' Nevertheless, I walked about from door to door, like a dejected beggar, till I got the almous deed of a civil reception, and-who would have thought it !—from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter against me in the kirk on the foregoing day. Thomas was standing at the door with his green daffle apron and his red Kilmarnock night-cap-I mind him as well as if it was but yesterday-and he had seen me going from house to house, and in what manner I was rejected, and his bowels were moved, and he said to me in a kind manner: 'Come in, sir, and ease yoursel'; this will never do the clergy are God's corbies, and for their Master's sake it behoves us to respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish mair against you than mysel', but this early visitation is a symptom of grace that I couldna have expectit from a bird out of the nest of patronage.' I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some solid conversation together; and I told him that it was not so much the pastor's duty to feed the flock as to herd them well; and that, although there might be some abler with the head than me, there wasna a he within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair sound observe for some time, and that if I held to that doctrine in the poopit, it wouldna be lang till I would work a change. 'I was mindit,' quoth he, never to set my foot within the kirk door while you were there; but to testify, and no to condemn without a trial, I'll be there next Lord's Day, and egg my neighbours to be likewise, so ye 'll no have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird's family.' 6 (From The Annals of the Parish.) An Execution. The attainment of honours and dignities is not enjoyed without a portion of trouble and care, which, like a shadow, follows all temporalities. On the very evening of the same day that I was first chosen to be a bailie, a sore affair came to light, in the discovery that Jean Gaisling had murdered her bastard bairn. She was the daughter of a donsie mother that could gie no name to her gets, of which she had two laddies, besides Jean. The one of them had gone off with the soldiers some time before; the other, a douce well-behaved callan, was in my lord's servitude, as a stable-boy at the castle. Jeanie herself was the bonniest lassie in the whole town, but light-headed, and fonder of outgait and blether in the causey than was discreet of one of her uncertain parentage. She was, at the time when she met with her misfortune, in the service of Mrs Dalrymple, a colonel's widow, that came out of the army and settled among us on her jointure. This Mrs Dalrymple, having been long used to the loose morals of camps and regiments, did not keep that strict hand over poor Jeanie and her other serving-lass that she ought to have done, and so the poor guideless creature fell into the snare of some of the ne'er-do-weel gentlemen that used to play cards at night with Mrs Dalrymple. The truths of the story were never well known, nor who was the father, for the tragical issue barred all inquiry; but it came out that poor Jeanie was left to herself, and, being instigated by the Enemy after she had been delivered, did, while the midwife's back was turned, strangle the baby with a napkin. She was discovered in the very fact, with the bairn black in the face in the bed beside her. The heinousness of the crime can by no possibility be lessened; but the beauty of the mother, her tender years, and her light-headedness had won many favourers; and there was a great leaning in the hearts of all the town to compassionate her, especially when they thought of the ill example that had been set to her in the walk and conversation of her mother. It was not, however, within the power of the magistrates to overlook the accusation; so we were obligated to cause a precognition to be taken, and the search left no doubt of the wilfulness of the murder. Jeanie was in consequence removed to the tolbooth, where she lay till the lords were coming to Ayr, when she was sent thither to stand her trial before them; but from the hour she did the deed she never spoke. Her trial was a short procedure, and she was cast to be hanged-and not only to be hanged, but ordered to be executed in our town, and her body given to the doctors to make an atomy. The execution of Jeanie was what all expected would happen; but when the news reached the town of the other parts of the sentence, the wail was as the sough of a pestilence, and fain would the council have got it dispensed with. But the Lord Advocate was just wud at the crime, both because there had been no previous concealment, so as to have been an extenuation for the shame of the birth, and because Jeanie would neither divulge the name of the father nor make answer to all the interrogatories that were put to her-standing at the bar like a dumbie, and looking round her, and at the judges, like a demented creature, and beautiful as a Flanders baby. It was thought by many that her advocate might have made great use of her visible consternation, and pled that she was by herself; for in He was, truth she had every appearance of being so. however, a dure man, no doubt well enough versed in the particulars and punctualities of the law for an ordinary plea, but no of the right sort of knowledge and talent to take up the case of a forlorn lassie, misled by ill example and a winsome nature, and clothed in the allurement of loveliness, as the judge himself said to the jury. On the night before the day of execution she was brought over in a chaise from Ayr between two townofficers, and placed again in our hands, and still she never spoke. Nothing could exceed the compassion that every one had for poor Jeanie, so she wasna committed to a common cell, but laid in the council-room, where the ladies of the town made up a comfortable bed for her, and some of them sat up all night and prayed for her; but her thoughts were gone, and she sat silent. In the morning, by break of day, her wanton mother, that had been trolloping in Glasgow, came to the tolbooth door, and made a dreadful wally-waeing, and the ladies were obligated, for the sake of peace, to bid her be let in. But Jeanie noticed her not, still sitting with her eyes cast down, waiting the coming on of the hour of her doom. The wicked mother first tried to rouse her by weeping and distraction, and then she took to upbraiding; but Jeanie seemed to heed her not, save only once, and then she but looked at the misleart tinkler, and shook her head. I happened to come into the room at this time, and seeing all the charitable ladies weeping around, and the randy mother talking to the poor lassie as loudly and vehement as if she had been both deaf and sullen, I commanded the officers, with a voice of authority, to remove the mother, by which we had for a season peace, till the hour came. There had not been an execution in the town in the memory of the oldest person then living; the last that suffered was one of the martyrs in the time of the persecution, so that we were not skilled in the business, and had besides no hangman, but were necessitated to borrow the Ayr one. Indeed, I being the youngest bailie, was in terror that the obligation might have fallen on me. A scaffold was erected at the Tron, just under the tolbooth windows, by Thomas Gimblet, the master-ofwork, who had a good penny of profit by the job, for he contracted with the town-council, and had the boards after the business was done to the bargain; but Thomas was then deacon of the wrights, and himself a member of our body. At the hour appointed, Jeanie, dressed in white, was led out by the town-officers, and in the midst of the magistrates from among the ladies, with her hands tied behind her with a black riband. At the first sight of her at the tolbooth stairhead a universal sob rose from all the multitude, and the sternest e'e couldna refrain from shedding a tear. We marched slowly down the stair, and on to the foot of the scaffold, where her younger brother, Willy, that was stable-boy at my lord's, was standing by himself, in an open ring made round him in the crowd; every one compassionating the dejected laddie, for he was a fine youth, and of an orderly spirit. As his sister came towards the foot of the ladder he ran towards her, and embraced her with a wail of sorrow that melted every heart, and made us all stop in the middle of our solemnity. Jeanie looked at him (for her hands were tied), and a silent tear was seen to drop from her cheek. But in the course of little more than a minute all was quiet, and we proceeded to ascend the scaffold. Willy, who had by this time dried his eyes, went up with us, and when Mr Pittle had said the prayer and sung the psalm, in which the whole multitude joined, as it were with the contrition of sorrow, the hangman stepped forward to put on the fatal cap, but Willy took it out of his hand, and placed it on his sister himself, and then kneeling down, with his back towards her, closing his eyes and shutting his ears with his hands, he saw not nor heard when she was launched into eternity. When the awful act was over, and the stir was for the magistrates to return and the body to be cut down, poor Willy rose, and, without looking round, went down the steps of the scaffold; the multitude made a lane for him to pass, and he went on through them hiding his face, and gaed straight out of the town. As for the mother, we were obligated, in the course of the same year, to drum her out of the town for stealing thirteen choppin bottles from William Gallon's, the vintner's, and selling them for whisky to Maggy Picken, that was tried at the same time for the reset. (From The Provest.) See Galt's Autobiography (1833); Carlyle's Reminiscences (1881); the Memoir of Galt prefixed to D. S. Meldrum's edition of his works (8 vols. 1895-99), with introductions by S. R. Crockett; Sir G. Douglas, The Blackwood Group (1897); Mrs Oliphant, The House of Blackwood (1897). Susan Edmondstone Ferrier (1782-1854) is known as the authoress of Marriage (1818), The Inheritance (1824), and Destiny, or the Chief's Daughter (1831). She was the youngest of the ten children of an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet, who was factor or agent for the Duke of Argyll's estates at Inveraray and Rosneath. Miss Ferrier, who spent most of her life in her native city, often stayed at Inveraray Castle; and it was in conjunction with Miss Clavering, a niece of the duke's, that before 1810 she undertook her first novel. The History of Mrs Douglas' (Chap. XIII.) was Miss Clavering's sole contribution, but she read the MS., and wrote letters of counsel and encouragement, from which it appears that many of the characters were drawn from the Inveraray circle. Marriage, like its successors, was published anonymously; and Miss Ferrier got for them £150, £1000, and 1700. Scott was a friend of her father's, and she visited Ashestiel in 1811, Abbotsford in 1829 and 1831. At the conclusion of the Tales of My Landlord the great novelist alludes to his sister shadow,' the author of 'the very lively work entitled Marriage,' as one of the labourers capable of gathering in the large harvest of Scottish character and fiction. In his diary he mentioned Miss Ferrier as 'a gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least exigeante of any author, female at least, whom he had ever seen among the long list he had encountered with; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready of repartee; and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking.' This is high praise, but the readers of Miss Ferrier's novels will at once |