the different sections of the Liberal party. But are these materials harmoniously blended, or are they merely thrown carelessly together to serve the purpose of the movement? We have no doubt that the leading statesmen who have been concerned in the construction of this Government are actuated by a sincere desire to reconcile differences, and to guide their policy with an honest reference to what Mr. Bright has called the average sense of the Liberal party. On the momentous question of Continental affairs, all are agreed that peace must, if possible, be maintained. But it must not be concealed that the adherence of England to the policy of neutrality is becoming every day more difficult. The uninterrupted triumphs of the French and Sardinian arms will probably soon carry them beyond the boundaries originally prescribed to the war. In that event, the German Powers must of necessity be involved in the conflict; and can Russia then remain inactive? If four of the five great Powers are in arms, how long will it be possible for the fifth to remain neutral? These too probable contingencies have, doubtless, been already foreseen and discussed by the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston. The avowed sympathies of its leading members with the cause of Italian independence, must impart a more vigorous and decided tone to the diplomacy of Downing-street, than has hitherto appeared in the 'notes' addressed to the different Courts of Europe by their immediate predecessors. The best mode of preventing the conflagration from spreading over the Continent, is for this country to take an early_opportunity of interfering by a firm and decided exposition of its views on the Italian question. And we take it that these views should specifically contemplate the independence of Lombardy, and the modification of those treaties between Austria and the smaller Itálian Powers by which the latter are placed under the military protection of the great German Power. It seems to us idle to imagine that we guard against war by observing an irresolute and reticent policy in the great question which now agi

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tates Europe. It is quite certain that, if the fortune of war were to take a turn in favour of Austria, which is not unlikely if Prussia assumes an offensive position on the Rhine, the people of England would never consent to abandon Italy to its fate. On the other hand, it I would not be tolerated that the French Empire should realize the dream of the old monarchy, by the annexation of the Milanese. And in our opinion, the sooner the two Emperors were authentically informed of the sense of this country on the subject, the better would it be, both for them and for ourselves.

The difficulties attending the settlement of the troublesome question of Parliamentary Reform have been removed by recent events. Whatever professions decency required them to make in public, the great question among practical reformers was the amount of the minimum of concession which would satisfy their pledges and appease clamour out of doors. The Derby Administration and the dissolution have in this respect done good service. The depth and direction of public opinion have been ascertained, and the result is to be a very moderate measure. No schedule A; emasculation of some of the smaller boroughs; the representation of a few of the larger constituencies proportionably increased; the Exo qualification, consisting partly in land, partly in buildings, for the county voter; a £6 occupa tion, to be reduced in committee or in the Lords to a £6 rating for boroughs; together with a sprinkling of the fancy franchises. These, it is pretty plain, are to be the leading features of the new Bill, which will be carried with a certain amount of hypocritical protest from the earnest' reformers, who dread the extreme measures which they find it convenient to advocate; and with sincere objurgation on the part of Mr. Bright and his friends, whose policy it does not suit to have this question settled.

The duration and ultimate fate of the new Government are questions upon which it is not so easy to hazard an opinion. But Parliamentary Reform being disposed of, we

foresee no question which is likely to resolve the various materials of which it is composed into their elements, and to shorten the natural life of a Cabinet, which in these latter days we like to be about three years. Should its existence be brought to a premature close by internal rupture or by outward accident, the Tories will probably return to power. But we are inclined to think that the new Government will last its time, and that its euthanasia will be a new fusion, not of converted Tories, Whigs, Radicals, and Manchester statesmen, but of the moderate men of the two great parties which have up to the present time for the most part divided political power between them.

Meantime the Administration has been favourably received by the country. It is not probable that any of the new Ministers will fail to be re-elected, unless indeed there is to be, as we are told, but can hardly believe, one distinguished exception. Mr. Gladstone's claim on the University of Oxford are, it seems, being disputed by the Marquis of Chandos. The comity of modern political warfare has almost renounced the practice of contesting a seat on a vacancy occasioned by appointment to office. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the most distinguished son of our Alma Mater, is to be disinherited in favour of a younger brother of respectable character and fair attainments, no doubt, but who stands on no terms of comparison with the

individual whom he is put forward to oppose. We will not stop to comment on the discretion and good taste of the parties who have set this movement on foot; neither are we concerned to defend the public career of Mr. Gladstone. But whatever errors this eminent person may have committed, they are errors to be attributed to the peculiar conformation of his intellect. His silent vote against Lord Hartington's motion of want of confidence in Lord Derby's Government one day, and his acceptance of office from Lord Derby's rival and opponent a few days after-an apparent contradiction to ordinary minds-was a proceeding which Mr. Gladstone no doubt reconciled by some metaphysical refinement unintelligible to a merely practical understanding; but nobody ventures to suggest that such an inconsistency, if it be an inconsistency, was dictated by any unworthy motive. The removal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer from the House of Commons, or even the delay of his return for a single week beyond the time fixed for the meeting of Parliament, would, at this advanced season of the year, and in the disordered state of the finances, be productive of extreme inconvenience and detriment to the public service. We trust, for the sake of the distinguished constituency, whose character is at stake, as well as for the public service, that this pitiful effort of bigotry and party spite may not be successful.

Newburgh now stands. Buchan was a Danish battle-field, a field also for Danish colonization. We are too apt to believe that the descents of the wild Northmen were always purely aggressive; and, these being repulsed, that they left no impression behind them upon our soil. Even the perilous intercourse of war could not have proved altogether without fruit; and there is proof, or at least tradition, that more peaceful intercourse was frequent, if not habitual. The Northmen were clever mechanists, hardy shepherds, and skilful fishers; and these, obeying the vagrant instincts which stirred that Arab-like race, followed in the wake of the roving seamen of the Fjords. How much of the dauntless endurance, the stern independence, the resolute enterprise of our character-that dash, in short, of the salt-blood' in our veins, which sends us like sea-mews to the water-is due to the intercourse that was thus established between the opposite shores of the Northern Sea, it would be difficult to estimate. But undoubtedly the cross of Scandinavian blood has in some degree moulded the history of the great and free people whose colonies are sown broad-cast over every continent.

But these events-echoes

Of old unhappy far-off things,
And battles long ago-

Scarce come within the era of authentic history. The misty figures of earth-burrowing Picts, and steel-clad Romans, and Druids bowed before strange circles in mysterious supplication, and gigantic Norsemen wading through the white surf to the shore, pass before us indeed; but vast and confused as in the twilight. Sindry of thair bones,' says Bellenden, war sene be us, schort time afore the making of this buke, mair like giandis than common stature of men; throw quhilk, apperis, that men in auld times hes bene of mair stature and quantite, than ony men ar presently in our days.' And so until the commencement of the thirteenth century, when Sir William Comyn of Tindale married the heiress Marjory, all that had been preserved of the men of Buchan was that they had grown 'mair like giandis than

common stature of men' to a race that had degenerated and decayed.

But on the southern bank of the Don, even before the Comyns came, a civilized and cultivated society had been established, whose records we may yet plainly read. Under the shelter of the royal oaks of Stocket, and among the rude huts which clustered around their roots, rose the white walls and spires of a Christian church. Catholic Rome, with imperial munificence, scattered its envoys at an early period among these desolate forests. Saint Walok arrived in the fifth century amidst a people, savage and unconverted, say the monkish chroniclers, insomuch that they had no church among them, nor any belief in hell-torments.' Walok lived between the Dee and the Don -the two rivers flowing then much nearer to each other than they do now in a little solitary thatched hut as a hermite.' He was followed by other saints-or if not saints, good and true men at least, who are perhaps on the whole as useful in this world-Nachlan, and Eddran, and Maurice, who in the eighth century travelled much among the Highlanders to reclaim them from the remnants of their pagan idolatries; and Machar, who lived at the mouth of the Don-' where a river falls into the sea in the form of a crozier'; until at length, in 1010, Malcolm II. erected the See of Murthlack to commemorate some famous forgotten victory; and Saint David, a century later, translated the bishop to Aberdon, where that reverend ecclesiastic contrived to secure a share of most of the good things going; as the right of common pasturage, the use of the king's forest, the best salmon caught in the Dee, and a tenth of the 'can' of vessels trading with the port. The monastic buildings were built on an eminence above the river-valley, where the monks might watch, through the branches of the trees, and across the gorsy bents, the blue shining sea-line, and the white sails of the passing ships. The Bishop's Palace occupied one side of the churchyard; the canons' houses were built around, and the whole formed a simple quadrangle. The old parish church-Sanct Mary of the Snow'-made way for

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a solemn and spacious cathedral. Upon the links beside the sea, remote from the habitations of men and the ministrations of the Church, stood the hospital prepared for those infected by leprosy, that terrible scourge of the Middle Ages. The pretty rural village swarmed with bearded and hooded ecclesiastics-grey and black hoods, white and red hoods-Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, and Templars; and, in their virgin veils, the nuns of Saint Catherine of Sienna.

Between this peaceful society and the thanedom of the ancient earls flowed the deep and sluggish Dona barrier which must have rendered the intercourse in those days unfrequent and interrupted. The half savage herdsman, gazing across the water from the further bank, no doubt contemplated with a rude wonder the growth of solemn aisle and heaven-kissing' spire, and listened in the evening stillness to the dirge-like litany for the dead, or the chanted invocation to the patron of these seafaring men:

Auro dato violari,
Virgines prohibuit;
Far in fame, vas in mare,
Seruit et distribuit.
Qui timebant naufragari,
Nautes opem tribuit.
Sit laus Summe Trinitati,
Virtus et Victoria;
Qui det nobis ut Beati
Nicholai gaudia;
Assequamur laureati,

Post vitam in patria.

And not unfrequently, no doubt, in that rude age, men, with the avengers of blood upon their track, plunged into the river, and swam desperately across the swollen stream, that they might clasp the Girth Cross on the green of the bishop's dovecot,' where the accidental murderer could at length draw breath freely; an institution not to be lightly nor scornfully judged-a beneficent institution, that stretched its whiterobed arm across these stormy ages, to stay the fierce resentments of the savage and secure the deliberation of modern justice. But these, or the occasional passage of a solitary and devoted monk on his way to minister at Gamrie or at Deer,formed almost the only link between the people who dwelt on the northern and the southern banks. What,

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then, was the condition of the wild country across the water?

The people were probably rude, unlettered, and somewhat fierce in their conversation; but it would be wrong to conclude, as we are too much inclined at present to conclude, that they stood in need of the ordinary necessaries of life. On the contrary, the common people of Scotland were more abundantly fed and more warmly clothed (on the whole fared better, as we say now) during the three centuries that preceded the breaking out of the English wars, than they have been at any subsequent period. The arts of agriculture were not perhaps very profoundly studied nor very diligently practised, but the great forests protected the corn-lands and blessed the farmer with easy and abundant harvests. So much grain was grown that Scotland for many years continued to export largely to other nations. Immense herds of cattle and swine, moreover, were pastured among the woodlands, where they found convenient shelter and abundant food. These at length became so excessive that it was found necessary by the Parliament of William the Lion to repress by statute the multitudes of sheep and swine,' the damage which they caused to the growing crops being the reason assigned for the prohibition. As there is no ground to doubt the genuineness or good faith of the preamble on which the legislation proceeded, the necessity for such an act is in itself a remarkable confirmation of the fact that food was at that time very abundant in Scotland, more abundant than it has since been or is now. Savage and dangerous animals had once roamed these forests. The founder of the house of Gordon is reported to have killed with his own hand ‘a fierce boar that much wasted the country near the forest of Huntley.' But this was in the beginning of the eleventh century, two hundred years before the Comyns came to Buchan; and the only memorial of these wild animals that remained was the 'three boars' heads, Or, on a field Azure,' which Malcolm authorized the Gordons to bear in perpetual commemoration of the gallant exploit of their ancestor.

Buchan is now proverbially bare