There may be better pursuits for a man and a duke than otter-hunting, and crawling like a huge caterpillar for hours across bogs and rocks after a royal stag; but there may be worse; and it is no small public good to keep up the relish for and the exercise of courage, perseverance, readiness of mind and resource, hardihood,-it is an antidote against the softness and the luxury of a dainty world.

But he was not only a great hunter, and an organiser and vitaliser of hunting, he was a great breeder. He lived at home, was himself a farmer, and knew all his farmers and all their men; had lain out at night on the Badenoch heights with them, and sat in their bothies and smoked with them the familiar pipe. But he also was, as we have said, a thorough breeder, especially of Ayrshire cattle. was quite touching to see this fierce, restless, intense. man-impiger, acer, iracundus—at the great Battersea show doating upon and doing everything for his meek-eyed, fine-limbed, sweet-breathed kine.

the same with other stock, though the Ayrshires were his pets to the end.

Then he revived and kept up the games of the country, the throwing the hammer, and casting the mighty caber;1 the wild, almost naked, hillrace; the Ghillie-Callum (sword dance) and the study of the eldritch, melancholy pipes, to which, we think, distance 1 A huge tree, requiring great strength and knack to pitch it.

adds not a little enchantment; all the natural fruits of human industry-the dyes, the webs, the hoseof the district. There might be much for Adam Smith and the Times to laugh at in all this, but it had and did its own good; and it made him a living centre, —a king. And who that ever was there does not remember the wonderful ball that closed the Athole Gathering, when delicate London girls were endued with miraculous spunk, when reel succeeded reel like the waves of the sea,—all innocent, and all happy, and all light of heel,-and when the jocund morn, far up in heaven, saw them 'doun by the Tummel and banks o' the Garry,' or across into Lochaber by the grim Ben Aulder and utmost Dalnaspidal.

Let no man speak evil of those cordial and oncea-year jovialities. They did no harm to those who brought no harm with them, and they left the memory of honest mirth—of health and youth—rejoicing after its last Reel of Tulloch or Houlachan, to immerse itself in the loveliness of that nature which is the art of God, and go home to its bath, its breakfast, and its bed.

Then the Duke was a great organiser of men,—he was martial to the core; and had his body-guard dressed and drilled to perfection,-all mighty men of valour, after whom at the Princess's marriage the lively and minute Cockneys gazed in an awful wonder.

Of all the men about him he was as much the friend as the master; and this is saying much, as those who knew his peremptory nature can well confirm. This power over men, not from mere birth,-though he knew he was 'to the manner born,'-not by high intellect or what is called knowledge,—for, though he had a stout and keen understanding, it was not high or cultured,—not because he was rich, which he never was, but simply because he was immediate, honest, and alive,-up to anything, and always with them. This power gave him a hold over all about him, which, had it not been something deeper and better, would have been almost ludicrous. His Athole guard (many of whom, with Struan at their head, were his peers in birth) would have died for him, not in word, but in deed; and a young, capable shepherd, who might have pushed his fortune anywhere and to any length, was more than rewarded for living a solitary deer-keeper at the far-end of Glen Tilt, or up some to us nameless wild, where for months he saw no living thing but his dog and the deer, the eagles and the hill fox, the raven and the curlew, by his £18 a year, his £3 for milk, his six bolls and a half of oatmeal, with his annual coat of grey tweed, his kilt and his hose, so that he had the chance of a kind word or nod from the Duke, or, more blessed still, a friendly pipe with him in his hut, with a confidential chat on the interests of the 'Forest.'

He was habitually and curiously good to all below him, unrelenting in his requisition of service, but far more generous than just. He knew them every one, and all their interests and wants, and took his own odd but genuine ways of reaching their hearts and doing them good.

Every one knows the interest our Queen had in him, in his Duchess and in Blair,-where she first saw and loved the Highlands, when she and her husband were in their first young joys, and where she went when her friend and her friend's husband, and her husband's friend, lay dying by inches of that terrible malady against which he bore himself so patiently, we may now say so sweetly, submitting that fierce restless spirit to the Awful Will, setting his house in order, seeing and comforting his friends, remembering his people, not even forgetting his Ayrshires,-why should he?-waiting steadfastly and like a man for the end. We all know-it is our possession-that meeting of the quick, honest, chivalrous, devoted chieftain with his sorrow-laden but sympathising Queen,-their mutual regards, their brief, measured words from the heart. The dying man rising from his final room and accompanying his Royal Mistress to the train,-kissing her hand, and bidding her, not without dignity, farewell; and when his amazed and loving people stood, silent and awed, almost scared, by something greater than

Majesty, the presence of that Shade who is waiting for us all, and who 'the likeness of a kingly crown has on,'-as the Duke with his dying lips raised the parting cheer. Such a thing does a nation-does every one of us-good; it is that touch of nature which makes us we all know what, and which we are in this fast world of ours all too little and too seldom.

There must have been no ordinary worth in the man whom the Queen so regarded and honoured. Much of this honour he, in his simple-heartedness and his frank speech, would have returned to her, the admirable wife who now mourns him,-who had nursed him day and night for months as few women could even if they would,-to whom he was glad at all times to say he owed everything; and his marriage to whom he, in his blunt and strong way, said, at a dinner to him at Dunkeld some years ago, when the Duchess's health was drunk, was the wisest thing he ever did.

The Duke was by blood, inheritance, and education as pure a Tory as he allowed himself to be educated; but he had none of the meannesses, the tortuosities, of your partisan Tory. He was a cordial Palmerstonian, as his presence and his speech at his Lordship's dinner testified. He knew who could drive the coach, and he booked himself accordingly. Next to his deer, his Freemasonry and his belief in the Ayrshire breed, was his love for what he called