often no mickle nutriment in it; then there's the corn lying in the ear, which is the Evangel frae Eden tae Revelation, and that is the bread o' the soul. But the corn maun be threshed first and the cauf (chaff) cleaned aff. It's a bonnie sicht tae see the pure grain fallin' like a rinnin' burn on the corn-room floor, and a glint o' the sun through the window turning it intae gold. But the stour (dust) o' the cauf room is mair than onybody can abide, and the cauf's worth naethin' when the corn's awa."

"Ye mean," said the minister, "that my study is the threshin' mill, and that some of the chaff has got into the pulpit."

"Yir no offended," and Marget's voice trembled.

Then the minister lifted his head and laughed aloud with joy, while a swift flash of humor lit up Marget's face.

"You've been the voice of God to me this day, Mrs. Howe, but if I give up my course,' the people will misunderstand, for I know everything I gave was true, and I would give it all again if it were expedient."

"Nae fear, Maister Carmichael, naebody misunderstands luves, and the fouk all luve ye, and the man that hauds ye dearest is Lachlan Campbell. I saw the look in his een that canna be mista'en."

"I'll go to him this very day," and the minister leaped to his feet.

"Ye 'ill no regret it," said Marget, "for God will give ye peace."

Lachlan did not see the minister coming, for he was busy with a lamb that had lost its way and hurt itself. Carmichael marked with a growing tenderness at his heart how gently the old man washed and bound up the wounded leg, all the time crooning to the frightened creature in the sweet Gaelic speech, and also how he must needs give the lamb a drink of warm milk before he set it free.

ter.

When he rose from his work of mercy, he faced the minis

For an instant Lachlan hesitated, and then at the look on Carmichael's face he held out both his hands.

"This iss a goot day for me, and I bid you ten thousand welcomes."

But the minister took the first word.

"You and I, Lachlan, have not seen eye to eye

about some

things lately, and I am not here to argue which is nearer the truth, because perhaps we may always differ on some lesser matters. But once I spoke rudely to you, and often I have spoken unwisely in my sermons. You are an old man and I

am a young, and I ask you to forgive me and to pray that both of us may be kept near the heart of our Lord, whom we love, and who loves us."

No man can be so courteous as a Celt, and Lachlan was of the pure Highland breed, kindest of friends, fiercest of foes.

"You hef done a beautiful deed this day, Maister Carmichael; and the grace of God must hef been exceeding abundant in your heart. It iss this man that asks your forgiveness, for I wass full of pride, and did not speak to you as an old man should; but God iss my witness that I would hef plucked out my right eye for your sake. You will say every word God gives you, and I will take as much as God gives me, and there will be a covenant between us as long as we live.”

They knelt together on the earthen floor of that Highland cottage, the old school and the new, before one Lord, and the only difference in their prayers was that the young man prayed they might keep the faith once delivered unto the saints, while the burden of the old man's prayer was that they might be led into all truth.

Lachlan's portion that evening ought to have been the slaying of Sisera from the Book of Judges, but instead he read, to Flora's amazement—it was the night before she left her home -the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, and twice he repeated to himself, "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face."

7571

JOHN BACH MACMASTER.

MACMASTER, JOHN BACH, a prominent American historian; born at Brooklyn, N. Y., June 29, 1852. He was graduated at the College of the City of New York in 1872, taught there for several years; was appointed Professor of Civil Engineering at Princeton in 1873, and in 1883 Professor of American History in the University of Pennsylvania. In 1873 he began writing his "History of the People of the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War." Of this work, four volumes have appeared, bringing the "History" down to the Missouri Compromise (1821). He has also written many magazine articles, and the "Life of Benjamin Franklin" in the "Men of Letters" series (1887).

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, the most widely read of English essayists and historians, was born near London on the 25th of October, 1800. His early education was received at private schools; but in 1818 he went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduated with honor, and was elected a fellow in 1824. Out of deference to the wishes of his father he thought for a while of becoming an attorney, read law, and was called to the bar in 1826. But the labors of the profession were little to his liking; no business of consequence came to him, and he was soon deep in literature and politics, for the pursuit of which his tastes, his habits, and his parts preeminently fitted him.

His nephew and biographer has gathered a mass of anecdotes and reminiscences, which go far to show that while still a lad Macaulay displayed in a high degree many of the mental characteristics which later in life made him famous. The eagerness with which he devoured books of every sort; the marvellous memory which enabled him to recall for years whole pages and poems, read but once; the quickness of perception by the aid of which he could at a glance extract the contents of a

printed page; his love of novels and poetry; his volubility, his positiveness of assertion, and the astonishing amount of information he could pour out on matters of even trivial importance, - were as characteristic of the boy as of the man.

As might have been expected from one so gifted, Macaulay began to write while a mere child; but his first printed piece was an anonymous letter defending novel-reading and lauding Fielding and Smollett. It was written at the age of sixteen; was addressed to his father, then editor of the "Christian Observer," was inserted in utter ignorance of the author, and brought down on the periodical the wrath of a host of subscribers. One declared that he had given the obnoxious number to the flames, and should never again read the magazine. At twenty-three Macaulay began to write for "Knight's Quarterly Magazine," and contributed to it articles some of which -as "The Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching the Great Civil War;" his criticism of Dante and Petrarch; that on Athenian Orators; and the "Fragments of a Roman Tale" are still given a place in his collected writings. In themselves these pieces are of small value; but they served to draw attention to the author just at the time when Jeffrey, the editor of the great Whig "Edinburgh Review," was eagerly and anxiously searching for "some clever young man " to write for it. Macaulay was such a clever young man. Overtures were therefore made to him; and in 1825, in the August number of the "Review," appeared his essay on John Milton. The effect was immediate. Like Byron, he awoke one morning to find himself famous; was praised and complimented on every hand, and day after day saw his table covered with cards of invitation to dinner from

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every part of London. And well he might be praised; for no English magazine had ever before published so readable, so eloquent, so entertaining an essay. Its very faults are pleasing. Its merits are of a high order; but the passage which will best bear selection as a specimen of the writing of Macaulay at twenty-five is the description of the Puritan.

Macaulay had now found his true vocation, and entered on it eagerly and with delight. In March, 1827, came the essay on Machiavelli; and during 1828 those on John Dryden, on History, and on Hallam's "Constitutional History." During 1829 he wrote and published reviews of James Mill's "Essay on Government" (which involved him in an unseemly wrangle

with the "Westminster Review," and called forth two more essays on the Utilitarian Theory of Government), Southey's "Colloquies on Society," Sadler's "Law of Population," and the reviews of Robert Montgomery's Poems. The reviews of Moore's "Life of Byron" and of Southey's edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared during 1830. In that same year Macaulay entered Parliament, and for a time the essays came forth less frequently. A reply to a pamphlet by Mr. Sadler written in reply to Macaulay's review, the famous article in which Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson was pilloried, and the essay on John Hampden, were all he wrote in 1831. In 1832 came Burleigh and his Times, and Mirabeau; in 1833 the War of the Succession in Spain, and Horace Walpole; in 1834 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; in 1835 Sir James Mackintosh; in 1837 Lord Bacon, the finest yet produced; in 1838 Sir William Temple; in 1839 Gladstone on Church and State; and in 1840 the greatest of all his essays, those on Von Ranke's "History of the Popes" and on Lord Clive. The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration, Warren Hastings, and a short sketch of Lord Holland, were written in 1841; Frederic the Great in 1842; Madame D'Arblay and Addison in 1843; Barère and the Earl of Chatham in 1844: and with these the long list closes.

Never before in any period of twenty years had the British reading public been instructed and amused by so splendid a series of essays. Taken as a whole the series falls naturally into three classes: the critical, the biographical, and the historical. Each has merits and peculiarities of its own; but all have certain characteristics in common which enable us to treat them in a group.

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Whoever will take the pains to read the six-and-thirty essays we have mentioned and he will be richly repaid for his pains cannot fail to perceive that sympathy with the past is Macaulay's ruling passion. Concerning the present he knew little and cared less. The range of topics covered by him was enormous; art, science, theology, history, literature, poetry, the drama, philosophy-all were passed in review. Yet he has never once failed to treat his subject historically. We look in vain for the faintest approach to a philosophical or analytical treatment. He reviewed Mill's essay on Government, and Hallam's "Constitutional History;" but he made no observations on government in the abstract, nor expressed any