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TH

JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

REV. NORMAN MACLEOD, D. D.

beltown, Argyleshire, June 3, 1812. He studied at Edinburgh and Glasgow, and for some time acted as a private tutor. He was ordained pastor of the parish of Loudoun, Ayrshire, in 1838. He removed to Dalkeith in 1843, and to the Barony parish, Glasgow, in 1851. There he worked earnestly and unweariedly for the elevation of the people of his parish, taking a deep interest in both home and foreign missions. In 1854 he preached before the queen at Crathie. In 1860, at the request of Mr. Alexander Strahan, the well-known publisher, he undertook the editorship of Good Words, and some of his most popular works appeared in its pages. In 1867 he visited India as a deputation from the Church of Scotland, ostensibly to give a new impetus to mission work in India. On his return he delivered his memorable address on missions. before the General Assembly. He died at his residence in Glasgow on Sunday, June 16, 1872, universally regretted by all classes of the community.

HIS versatile writer was born in Cork,HIS noted clergyman was born at CampIreland, in the month of November, 1830. After receiving an ordinary education there he went to Liverpool, where in 1853 he became connected with a newspaper. Later, repairing to London, he established himself as reporter of the House of Commons on the staff of the Morning Star. Appointed foreign editor of that paper in 1861, he so commended himself to the management that he was promoted to be editor-in-chief in 1864. He resigned this position in 1868 to travel in the United States. He remained in this country about three years, and visited thirty-five of the thirty-seven States of the Union. Besides Besides many contributions of great freshness and value to the principal reviews and magazines, he wrote several novels, which are clever, but not remarkable. Among these are A Fair Saxon, Lady Judith, Dear Lady Disdain and Miss Misanthrope. He published a volume of essays entitled Con Amore, and one on Prohibitory Legislation in the United States, displaying the practical workings of workings of the "liquor laws" in Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Iowa and other States. a radical, but at the same time a man of justice and judgment. Refusing at first to enter Parliament, he has since done so, and strengthened his party by his voice and vote. By far his greatest benefaction to his age is his History of Our Own Time, in which he records events not yet gathered for history, important to be known, but difficult to find. This work has had a very large circulation in England and America. For young people he has made an abridgment of it.

He is

H

CHA

ROBERT COCHRANE.

CHARLES DIBDIN.

HARLES DIBDIN was born at Southampton in 1745. His mother was in her fiftieth year, and he was her eighteenth child. He was educated at Winchester and intended for the Church, but his love of poetry and music was so marked that after studying a short time under the well-known Kent, organist of Winchester Cathedral, he was sent to London, and at sixteen produced at Covent Garden Theatre called The Shepherd's Artifice. In 1778 he became musical

an opera

manager at Covent Garden, and in 1782 built the Surrey theatre. In 1789 he commenced those entertainments called "The Whim of the Moment," in which he introduced and performed his compositions. "Poor Jack" was one, and immediately established its author as a popular favorite. The charming ballad "Poor Tom Bowling" was written on the death of an elder brother, who was captain of an East Indiaman.

In 1796, Dibdin erected a theatre called the "Sans-Souci" in Leicester Square, but disposed of it in 1805 and withdrew into private life. He was never a provident man, and consequently had made little or no provision for declining years. His embarrassed circumstances being represented to the government, a pension of two hundred pounds per annum was granted. In 1813 he was attacked by paralysis, and finally sunk to rest in July, 1814.

As a ballad-writer and as a composer of sea-songs Dibdin has made himself a name which will last as long as English poetry is read; his fluency in composition was so great that he has left us nearly nine hundred. No man better knew how to please the popular

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an Oriel fellowship and received prizes for both a Latin and an English essay. He received deacon's orders in 1815, and was advanced to the priesthood the next year. He remained at Oxford, first as public examiner, and then as a tutor, from 1818 to 1823. During all these years, and until 1827, he had been composing, little by little, the beautiful poems which in the latter year were published in two small volumes entitled The Christian Year, containing a set of verses, in different metres, for every Sunday and holy day of the Church's calendar. The work, which supplied a real want in the most charming manner, became at once extremely popular. Poetical, harmonious, mystical and devout, it inculcates reverence, trust in God, home virtues and unsordid friendship. It finds its best illustrations in the experience of all, and leads devotion like simple household prayers. "Morning" and " Evening have no rivals in the expression of sweet and simple piety. The success of The Christian Year caused his election, in 1831, to the professorship of poetry at Oxford, in which he succeeded Dean Milman, and which he held for ten years. The great Tractarian, or Anglo-Catholic, movement, which many high churchmen had been excogitating in secret, is said to have had its first manifestation in the university sermon of Keble on national apostasy delivered on the 14th of July, 1833. Of the Tracts for the Times, which stirred Protestant England to its depths, Keble wrote but four; they came to a violent end with "No. 90," written by John Henry Newman, who not long after went over to the Catholic Church.

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In 1836, Keble became vicar of Hursley, where he remained during his life. His principal later works-very much less known than his Christian Year-are Pralectiones Academicæ (1844), Lyra InnoLyra Innocentum (1847), some volumes of simple Parish Sermons, and a Life of Bishop Wilson (1863). He died at Bournemouth on the 29th of March, 1866.

Keble College, at Oxford, inaugurated in 1870, is a living memorial of the pious poet founded and endowed by his friends and admirers; the memoir of his life was written in 1869 by his friend and fellowscholar at Corpus Christi, Sir John T. Coleridge.

A

THE PRODIGAL SON.

FROM THE GREEK OF ST. LUKE.

I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight. I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired. servants. servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: I am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry. Now, his elder son was in the field, and as he came and drew CERTAIN man had two sons, and the nigh to the house he heard music and danyounger of them said to his father, cing. And he called to him one of the serFather, give me the portion of thy sub- vants, and inquired what these things might stance that falleth to me. And he divided be. And he said unto him, Thy brother is unto them his living. And not many days come, and thy father hath killed the fatted after the younger son gathered all together calf because he hath received him safe and and took his journey into a far country, and sound. But he was angry, and would not there he wasted his substance with riotous go in; and his father came out and entreatliving. And when he had spent all, there ed him. But he answered and said to his arose a mighty famine in that country; father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, and he began to be in want. And he and I never transgressed a commandment of went and joined himself to one of the cit- thine, and yet thou never gavest me a kid izens of that country, and he sent him into that I might make merry with my friends; his fields to feed swine. And he would fain but when this thy son came, which hath dehave been filled with the husks that the voured thy living with harlots, thou killedst swine did eat, and no man gave unto him. for him the fatted calf. And he said unto But when he came to himself he said, How him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that many hired servants of my father's have is mine is thine. But it was meet to make bread enough and to spare, and I perish merry and be glad, for this thy brother was here with hunger! I will arise and go to dead and is alive again, and was lost and is my father, and will say unto him, Father, found.

REVISED TRANSLATION.

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THE CONVERT.

N Corbet's picture, of which we give an engraving, is presented a new illustration of death-bed repentance always so difficult to trust and to establish. But yesterday and the vulpine in stinct was his only religion, and a tender lamb the acceptable sacrifice to the cunning of his genius. Who could get the better of old Reynard? In all periods and in all languages, from Æsop to La Fontaine, his name was the synonym for astuteness and wily achievement; and even when, once, he lost his tail, he persuaded his fellow-quadrupeds that to wear a caudal appendage was vulgar. Perhaps the reader will recur to the true and typical stories of Uncle Remus, and wonder that in these latter days" Brer" Rabbit has changed places with "Brer" Fox in the domain of cunning and tricks him to his heart's content. This is but a stratagem of wit, of the nature of a burlesque, and in accordance with the law of reprisals. There

rest, with Horace's "murrain on the hindmost," do not observe how his airy gallop has declined into a dragging trot as he labors across the brook on the fallen tree; but he hears in increasing volume of sound, nearer and nearer, the blare of the horns and the yelping of the hounds who are "running him to earth." He feels his rapidly-failing strength; he even sees the carrion-crow hovering over him and anticipating the banquet of his flesh. Do his sins crowd upon his memory, as the artist would wish us to believe? Does he declare to himself that if a miracle should compass his salvation he would never eat a lamb or rob a henroost as long as he should live-that he would found a monastery for foxes and repent in sackcloth and ashes?

The moral at least remains for men, and has been cleverly rendered in a distich :

"When the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be; When the Devil got well, the devil a monk was he."

THE CAPTIVE.

is a piquancy in making the silly and timid DISGUISE thyself as thou wilt, still, Sla

hare exchange characters with the incarnation of animal cunning.

In the picture poor Reynard may well be pitied by his worst enemy. The sheep, who see him coming, take no note, indeed, of his lolling tongue, his shrunken flanks, his drooping tail. The guardian mother and her lamb, who have been left in rear by the

very, still thou art a bitter draught, and, though thousands in all ages have been made. to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. It is thou, Liberty-thrice sweet and gracious goddess, whom all in public or in private worship-whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so till Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can

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