the aid of his rescuers' lights, however, he soon recovered his locality, and grasping the bell-handle gave two pulls, which was the signal to lower the rope further. Down came the men and they were helped to the bottom pavement by the assistant's free hand. So soon as they reached this spot the hammer fell on the bell for the third time, and the machinery came to an immediate stand-still. Robin and his companion were speedily disentangled from their loop of rope and were at the side of their companion.

"Are you hurt, sir?" asked Robin. "I don't think I'm much hurt, Robin; but, man, that was a terrible business. What went wrong?"

But We

"Oh, I don't know, Master John. we needn't talk now about that. must get you out of this, anyway. You can't go up in that rope I doubt, sir."

"Right well enough, Robin. You came down in it, and I can go up in it all right."

"Ah, sir, but you're looking ill, and we'll not risk it. It takes a good tight hand to hold on there, I tell you. Will, can you go up and get on the cage and come down with it?"

"I can, and will, Robin; but I doubt the cage will do, for as we were coming down I noticed two or three slides knocked out of their places. I'll get the big sinking-barrel and bring that down."

"All right, Will. Go on, lad, and comè down with all speed, and take the lad out of this."

"But, Robin," asked the assistantmanager, "is there any one hurt? What is the meaning of all this? I fear I am getting bewildered again." "Cheer up, Master John. We'll be out of here soon now. Will's ready to go up for the barrel."

"Tell me first, Robin; is there any one hurt?"

"There is, I fear, sir; I think I noticed them looking after somebody when I was on the pit-head; but I was over hurried to see about you to take much notice of anything else."

Meanwhile all was bustle at the pithead getting the big barrel ready.

"Out with the barrel, boys," and in the shortest space of time a large ironbound barrel, weighing over half a ton, was brought from under the enginehouse and hooked on to the end of the winding rope. "Stop you here, Will. You have had enough excitement and done nobly. I'll go down; who will volunteer to help?" cried the manager. A perfect chorus of voices answered. "Only one man can go. Come you here, Burns. You're brave and strong, and not likely to lose your head with too much sentiment." This was spoken to a sullen, stolid-looking man who had method in every movement. "Come on, Burns. I am a little out of sorts and your coolness will help to steady me." In another instant the barrel with the two men in it descended from view, while the crowd sat quietly down to wait events. On reaching the bottom Mr. Watt rushed to his young assistant with his eyes full of tears; and these two staid and stolid Scotchmen blubbered in each other's arms like two affectionate children. Robin, honest fellow, blew his nose manfully; but all to no purpose. "It's coming on me, friends," he gasped; and he fell to with the others. He was the first, however, to recover himself with the shrewd remark: "If we don't get out of here, we'll have more and worse of it before long." This roused the others, and a few minutes brought the barrel and its human freight to the surface. Master John was assisted out by a score of hands, while the rest crowded round with streaming eyes to congratulate him on his providential and miraculous escape, as one old Cameronian dame piously expressed it.

After some slight refreshment and a change of dry garments for his soaking wet ones, Master John was able to walk home. It was with pain he then learned the sad cause of the accident and its terrible result. It seems that one man at the handle of the crane, who looked the picture of strength and health, had, during the strain of lowering the heavy pipe, given way suddenly; the rest were overpowered; the revolving handle hit one man on the

head killing him instantly, and scattering the others in all directions. The chain paid out to the end, snapping the last link; and flying over the wheel got entangled in the framework, dragging everything before it, until the pipe, reaching the bottom of the pit, relieved the strain, and it hung suspended the whole length of the shaft. If the chain had not been thus caught, every soul below must have been killed. A fresh relay of men from the other pits were brought in, and the accident was repaired and the pumps put to rights within the next twelve hours.

From Blackwood's Magazine. THE NOVELS OF JOHN GALT.1

Mr. Crockett was very happily inspired when he suggested a reissue of the best of Galt's novels to the publishers, and they on their part have done full justice to the suggestion in an edition which is at once beautiful in form and moderate in price. To the readers of "Maga" especially, the appearance of this new edition ought to be of interest. Three generations now have been winnowing the sixty volumes-the plays and tales and essays innumerable-which were Galt's literary output, until there are left only the six novels reissued here, and perhaps "Lawrie Todd;" and most of these appeared in the pages of the "Magazine," or at any rate had its friendly send-off. And that is not all. At a distance of eighty years it may be allowable for us to recall that it was the editor of "Maga" who discovered for the hither-and-thither writer his true province, and confirmed him in it. "It is due to Mr. Blackwood," Galt wrote, "to ascribe to him the peculiarities of that production [The Annals]; for although unacquainted with "The Annals of the Parish,' his recep

1 Works of Joan Galt. Edited by D. S. Meldrum. With Introductions by S. R. Crockett; and with a Portrait, and Illustrations by John Wallace. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons. 1895-96.

tion of my first contribution to his 'Magazine' of "The Ayrshire Legatees' encouraged me to proceed with the manner in which it is composed, and thus, if there is any originality in my Scottish class of composition, he is entitled to be the first person who discovered it." In this reissue, therefore, and in the interest it has aroused, there is something in the nature of a compliment to an old friend, at once pleasing to our knowledge of his worth and gratifying to our judgment in the early recognition of it.

It is not to those who feel thus, however, they did not need the revival, but to the present generation, which assuredly knew not its Galt, that this edition has given so great a delight. A great delight and a great surprise! To the generation of to-day, unacquainted with the literature its fathers read, the discovery by the inimitable

art of Mr. Barrie of the humor and pathos of life in Lowland Scotland seemed a new discovery, for prose at any rate. And thus to some the existence of Galt's earlier picture of the same life has come as a surprise, disconcerting them, as if a personal loyalty to the modern Scottish novelist

were at stake in this claim of the earlier; and the "Annals" and the "Provost" have become a kind of a challenge, inciting some to lower their estimate of the modern work, and others to pitch it still higher, all apparently agreeing to seek in old and new a similarity, where in truth there is no similarity, but only a want of it. From that endeavor no knowledge of Galt at least can come. The uses of this comparison, which the fashion of the moment forces upon us now, if it has any uses at all, lie in its leading us to discriminate between his range and their range, between his attitude and method and theirs, the better to appreciate how wide is the difference between them.

It is in their range, first and chiefly, that we must look for the difference. This edition of Galt, fixing, as we may hold, the verdict of eighty years,

determines his place among our great novelists. It is an inadequate estimate of Galt, however, which considers him as a novelist merely, or as performing merely the ordinary functions of a novelist. Galt was far more, did far more. He was more than the chronicler of the various humors, civil and parochial, of the Scots Renaissance in the second half of the eighteenth century. He was its historian also.

If we are to understand all that is contained in this claim for Galt, the Renaissance itself must be understood. Its nature and extent have been strangely overlooked. With the Union, England brought to the Scots ideas and opportunities necessary for their further progress and development. These ideas, of course, afforded no new motive power to England, to whom they had long been familiar. And thus it was for Scotland alone (when she accepted them) that they were fresh and vivifying influences. Their effect, in bringing her into line with England, was to render their own workings of merely local interest, to be passed over by the historian whose business was a United Kingdom now. But the historian of Scotland cannot pass them over so. For here in Scotland, long before the general quickening of thought by the French Revolution, was a great national development; not a great spiritual Renaissance like that other, indeed, but one of far more importance to the people immediately concerned.

were given the outlet now for which they had been waiting, by the mechanical inventions of a Compton, a Hargreaves, an Arkwright. Estates, grown wildernesses, passed out of the hands of decrepit families into those of new men with money and energy to work them. And the change was not material only-or, at least, the material change made a way for the aspirations which poverty had so long held back. The education which Scotland had enjoyed for generations found opportunity of action now; now was laid the democratic basis of Scottish literature which allowed the material development, so to speak, of a Hogg, a Leyden, a Carlyle. The people, conscious of a new independence, flung their arms wide to face the world; so that Burns, though he was not made by his environment, at least consorted with it, and is not to be considered, as most will have it, as a remarkable appearance in his generation, but rather as its fullest expression, a man who in the new relief rose with a great bound, his own spontaneity itself the reflection of the national wonder at the lifting of the horizon. Scotland was revivified. In it, years before the French Revolution, the true battle-cry of that Revolution, as many think, was sounded La carrière ouverte aux talents! As Mr. Balwhidder says, "A new genius, as it were, had descended on the earth, and there was an erect and outlooking spirit abroad that was not to be satisfied with the taciturn regularity of ancient affairs."

"As Mr. Balwhidder says,"-therein is the claim for Galt. For Micah Balwhidder and Provost Pawkie are the true chroniclers of all these changes and transmutations. Of the great Renaissance, the pulses of which we hear beating in Scotland still, Galt is the only, and a very adequate, historian.

Observation, a very genius of obser

the root-quality of his work, as a historian no less than as a novelist. Apart from this gift of observation, however, there were conditions in his life which fitted him to be the historian

He was at once of it and outside of it. He was born in 1779 and died in 1839. and these dates may be taken generally as the limits of the Renaissance period. And he was a true product of his country, typical of his times. The new energy that was throbbing in his country was throbbing in him. His life, as we know it, was an unceasing endeavor. Rhyming, music, mechanism, antiquarian research, volunteering, the bar, commerce, literature, colonization, there was no region of knowledge or accomplishment that he did not enter upon, master to some extent, write about voluminously. There is a passage in the "Autobiography" which illustrates this singular energy of mind:

I was a sort of a fisher [he writes

of his youth], but never distinguished. The scene of my reveries was a considerable stream in the moors behind the mountains above the town. It has since been brought round the shoulder of the hill, and being dammed up, it now by a canal gives to the town a valuable waterpower. Among my fishing dreams, this very improvement, in a different manner, was one of the earliest. I brought forth to myself a notable plan-no other than to tunnel the mountain by the drain and lead it into the Shaws Water-for exactly the same purpose as the canal has since

been executed. .

In the Firth, opposite to Greenock, there is a large sandbank often dry at low water. When it was proposed to enlarge this harbor it occurred to me that this bank might be converted into land, and I have still a very cheap and feasible plan for gradually doing it, but unfortu

all degrees, watching in their established order those great forces which in his own country were intermittent still, and uncontrolled. And thus he came to look upon Scotland from without also, with an eye trained to note change and the causes of change.

The Scotland of the Scottish writers of to-day is a Scotland nearer to us than Galt's; nevertheless, it is one far removed. And far removed in spirit rather than in time. It would be true in a sense to say of Mr. Barrie that he is of the Auld Lichts himself, learned in their ways and beliefs; but the world of Thrums is not to him what Gudetown and Dalmailing were to Galt. Gudetown and Dalmailing Galt had seen, and what we see of them is the dead-sure result of his observation. Not so the Thrums of the "Auld Licht

Idylls," to Mr. Barrie or to us. It has passed away; the generation that can remember it has passed away also; and what of it has been rescued for us is the fragments of that generation's reminiscences of it, restored and transmuted by Mr. Barrie's art. So, with the other Scottish writers: their Scotland is a Scotland seen through the glass of pathetic and humorous reminiscence.

And here let us note, always as throwing light on Galt's range, that the present-day writers see their Scotland through still another glass, the spiritually idealizing glass through which their readers demand that they shall look. For the modern novel of Scottish life has been, to a great extent, the manufacture and the property of a

and was too sacred to be improved. In contriving schemes such as these my youth was spent, but they were all of too grand a calibre to obtain any attention, and I doubt if there yet be any one among my contemporaries capable of appreciating their importance.

There, was Galt running over with the new energy that filled Scotland. On the other hand, he spent the greater part of his life out of Scotland, travelling

and art of Mr. Barrie have compelled a recognition far beyond it.-but to an extent that has influenced it greatly. That religious public must not be taken to represent religious Scotland, as the English reader may be led by the "Bonnie Brier Bush" to believe. But the true stream of religious life in Scotland is lost to-day in the waters of "Kirkiness" - and drumlier waters never were; and at the bidding of this too powerful religiosity, many of the

modern writers have ignored something in Scottish life as real and characteristic in our day as in Galt's or in Dunbar's: a materialism, an animalism, not entirely ignoble, but to be transformed by this spiritual emotion with which some present writers so wholly concern themselves that with them it becomes akin to the fugitive and cloistered virtue that aroused the grave and lofty scorn of Milton. And in this way, in the picture of a Scottish life which is nothing but spiritual, there is contained a half-truth, worse than a lie, a triple lie, indeed, deceiving the writer and deceiving the reader and a libel on the life itself. Far otherwise it is with Galt, in whose work, always historically true, the spirituality of the people appears less, as, we may believe, in his day it showed less. He carries on the traditions of the vernacular literature, not missing the common or unclean, but painting a rounded and complete picture.

Thus, whatever it may lose by the absence of this idealism, Galt's work remains, as the present-day reminiscent and falsely spiritual writers' can never be, of value historically; and more, of a historical value that is maturing, being greater to us than to his contemporaries, and becoming greater still as the years go on. This is not because there is no truth in Mr. Dishart, say, an others in Thrums, but because. howsoever true these may be, they are but facets of the whole truth. They may be true portraiture, but at any rate the Thrums that is compact of them is not a true picture. There never was a village like Thrums, there never was a glen like Drumtochty; whereas we are convinced that Dalmailing and Gudetown are the true Dalmailing and Gudetown of Galt's day, and at the same time the truest pictures we possess of the Scottish village and burgh-town of our day. And this is because they were seen whole, complete, not only by a contemporary chronicler who noted, with an observation that amounts to philosophic insight, the developmental forces beneath contemporary events.

This historic insight, which differentiates Galt from the writers of to-day who glorify a characteristic-the most noble and marked-of the Scottish people, also differentiates him from Scott, his great contemporary, who has painted this transition period. From the historical point of view Scott, too, is less valuable than Galt, and that just because he was far greater than Galt, his own mind being more to him, his subject less. Scott's novels of the Renaissance are not documents of it, as Galt's are. Even as he writes of the transition, he heightens, transmutes, by imaginative power; taking away from fact, as when he shows the breaking-up of feudalism in '45; inventing, not mirroring the plain fact, so that the character of Dandie Dinmont, the infinitely greater character, is less the real thing than Kebbuck or Coulter of the "Annals."

The "Annals" and the "Provost," then, occupy a place of their own in our literature. In them local and parochial annals are informed with the dignity of philosophic history. Galt has interested us in Dalmailing or Gudetown because it is real, human, made up of men and women; and in the same presentment in which he does this, the emergent types come up so luminously, so wholly, that they are the nation in miniature. And to achieve dramatic history in this way, embodying the general in the particular, is, perhaps, what has been done by no one else.

Galt did not reach this singular position without some conscious intention of achieving it. "To myself," he says, "the 'Annals' has ever been a kind of treatise on the history of society in the west of Scotland during the reign of King George the Third; and when it was written I had no idea it would ever have been received as a novel. Fables are often a better way of illustrating abstract truths than philosophical reasoning, and it is in this class of compositions I would place the 'Annals of the Parish.'" That is interesting as showing that the author of the "Annals" and the "Provost" was a deliberate student of sociology. Nevertheless