GEORGE MACDONALD. POET, NOVELIST, AND PREACHER. MONG the most popular writers of stories is George MacDonald, a Scotch independent minister. He is a native of Aberdeenshire, and was born at Huntley, in 1824. After completing his education at the University of Aberdeen, and preparing for the ministry in the Independent College, in London, he entered upon the work of a pastor, in which he continued for a number of years. Then, however, he resigned his ministry, and, settling in London, began his career as a writer. Some years later he made a lecturing tour in the United States, and in recent years he and his family have resided principally in Italy. His first work was a dramatic poem entitled "Within and Without," which was published in 1856. Two or three other books of poems followed before the appearance of his first novel, "David Elginbrod," in 1862. He has since written more than twenty volumes, some of which have been quite widely popular. His stories usually deal with some phase of Scotch life, and add to the interest which always seems to attach to the character of that hardy people and the scenes of their rugged life, the merits of a good literary style and a quite unusual power of word-painting. Among the most notable of his novels are: "Alec Forbes of Howglen," "The Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood," "Robert Falconer," "Malcolm," The Marquis of Lossie," "Donald Grant," and "What's Mine's Mine." Besides these, he has written several tales for the young. 46 IN THE BELL-TOWER. JOBERT wandered about till he was so weary that his head ached with weariness. At length he came upon the open space before the cathedral, whence the poplar-spire rose aloft into a blue sky flecked with white clouds. It was near sunset, and he could not see the sun, but the upper half of the spire shone glorious in its radiance. From the top his eye sank to the base. In the base was a little door, half open. Might not that be the lowly narrow entrance through the shadow up to the sun-filled air? He drew near with a kind of tremor, for never before had he gazed upon visible grandeur growing out of the human soul, in the majesty of everlastingness-a tree of the Lord's planting. Where had been but an empty space of air and light and darkness, had risen, and had stood for ages, a mighty wonder, awful to the eye, solid to the hand. He peeped through the opening of the door; there was the foot of a stair-marvelous as the ladder of Jacob's dream-turning away toward the unknown. He pushed the door and entered. A man appeared, and barred his advance. Robert put his hand in his pocket and drew out some silver. The man took one piece, looked at it, turned it over, put it in his pocket, and led the way up the stair. Robert followed, and followed, and followed. He came out of stone walls upon an airy platform whence the spire ascended heavenwards. His conductor led upward still, and he followed, winding within a spiral network of stone, through, which all the world looked in. Another platform, and yet another spire springing from its basement. Still up they went, and at length stood on a circle of stone surrounding like a coronet the last base of the spire which lifted its apex untrodden. Then Robert turned and looked below. He grasped the stones before him. The loneliness was awful. There was nothing between him and the roofs of the houses, four hundred feet below, but the spot where he stood. The whole city with its red roofs lay under him. He stood uplifted on the genius of the builder, and the town beneath him was a toy. He turned and descended, winding through the network of stone which was all between him and space. The object of the architect must have been to melt away the material from before the eyes of the spirit. He hung in the air in a cloud of stone. As he came in his descent within the ornaments of one of the basements, he found himself looking through two thicknesses of stone lace on the nearing city. Down there was the beast of prey and his victim; but for the moment he was above the region of sorrow. His weariness and his headache had vanished utterly. With his mind tossed on its own speechless delight, he was slowly descending still, when he saw on his left hand a door ajar. He would look what mystery lay within. lay within. A push opened it. He discovered only a little chamber lined with wood. In the center stood something-a bench-like piece of furniture, plain and worn. He advanced a step; peered over the top of it; saw keys white and black; saw pedals below; it was an organ! Two strides brought him in front of it. A wooden stool, polished and hollowed with centuries of use, was before it. But where was the bellows? That might be down hundreds of steps below, for he was half-way only to the ground. He seated himself musingly, and struck, as he thought, a dumb chord. Responded up in the air, far overhead, a mighty booming clang. Startled, almost frightened, even as if Mary St. John had said she loved him, Robert sprang from the stool, and, without knowing why, moved only by the chastity of delight, flung the door to the post. It banged and clicked. Almost mad with the joy of the Titanic instrument, he seated himself again at the keys, and plunged into a tempest of clanging harmony. One hundred bells hang in that temple of wonder -an instrument for a city, nay, for a kingdom. Often had Robert dreamed that he was the galvanic center of a thunder-cloud of harmony, flashing off from every finger the willed lightning tone: such was the unexpected scale of this instrument-so far aloft in the sunny air rang the responsive notes that his dream appeared almost realized. He did not know that only on grand, solemn, worldwide occasions, such as a king's birthday, or a ball at the Hotel de Ville, was such music on the card. When he flung the door to, it had closed with a spring lock, and for the last quarter of an hour three gendarmes, commanded by the sacristan of the tower, had been thundering thereat. He waited only to finish the last notes of the wild Orcadian chant, and opened the door. He was seized by the collar, dragged down the stair into the street, and through a crowd of wondering faces. Poor unconscious dreamer! it will not do. to think on the housetop even, and you had been dreaming very loud indeed in the church spire; away to the bureau of the police. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. WELL-BELOVED NOVELIST AND POET. HERE was a quality in the character of Robert Louis Stevenson which created for him a circle of personal friends whose number and devotion can hardly be equaled. His quick sympathy, which was shown in his love for children and his comprehension of them, and in the power which, in the closing years of his life, he acquired over the untutored natives of the Samoan Islands; his acute intelligence; and his noble character, made him, perhaps, the best-loved among contemporary men of letters. Coming of a race of hard-headed, practical men (his father and grandfather were engineers and famous builders of lighthouses), he determined from the first to turn his back on the more practical professions and devote himself to literature. Deferring to the wish of his father, he studied law, and was actually called to the Bar, but he never engaged in the practice of the profession. In 1873, at the age of twenty-three, his health broke down, and he was no longer able to endure for any length of time the rigorous climate of his native Edinburgh, but passed the remaining years of his life in an almost constant and courageous battle with pulmonary trouble. He lived in the south of France, in Southern California, at Bournemouth in England, in the Adirondacks, and finally sailed away with his American wife and her family to the South Seas, where, in the Samoan Islands, he established himself, and, until his death in 1894, lived in continuous literary activity, and free from the frequent relapses and acute suffering which he experienced elsewhere. The story of his life in this remote corner of the world, how he won the confidence of the natives, the part he took in their affairs, and the succession of exquisite stories, essays, and poems which came to tell the rest of the world that his productiveness had not ceased-all this forms one of the most delightful stories which our literary history affords. His published works include some thirty titles-poems, volumes of essays, stories for children, and novels. The most famous of his works is the "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which was one of the most talked of books of its time, and still retains its position as a triumph of invention and artistic work. The vivid portrayal of the two characters assumed at will by the one man,-the highminded, noble Dr. Jekyll, and the base, degraded, vicious Mr. Hyde, the despair of the miserable man as he discovers that it is more and more difficult, and finally impossible for him to throw off his lower character, and that he must face and suffer the consequences of being Mr. Hyde, is a most admirable example of Stevenson's keen insight, imaginative power, and command of language. His own opinion was that "Kidnapped" was his best work; but the "Master of Ballantræ," particularly its first part, is unsurpassed in its kind. The best known of his other works are: "Treasure Island," "The Black Arrow," "Prince Otto," "Merry Men," two volumes of essays, "Virginibus Puerisque," and "Familiar Studies of Men and Books," and a book of poems, "Underwoods." He is buried on the summit of Mount Vaca, a precipitous peak near his Samoan home, where his monument will be visible for great distances at sea, like the lighthouses of his fathers. After his death, the chiefs and people of the Samoans came in large numbers to kiss his hand and to bring their customary funeral offering of mats for the burial of their friend, "the Story Teller," and in this character Stevenson's fame will be secure. THE TWO PHILOSOPHERS. IN ONE of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a little dark figure perched in a meditative attitude, and immediately recognized Jean-Marie. "Aha," he said, stopping before him humorously, with a hand on either knee. "So we rise early in the morning, do we? It appears to me that we have all the vices of a philosopher." The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation. "And how is our patient?" asked Deprez. It appeared the patient was about the same. "And why do you rise early in the morning?" he pursued. Doctor Deprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side. He was beginning to take an interest in the talk, for the boy plainly thought before he spoke, and tried to answer truly. "It appears you have a taste for feeling good," said the Doctor. "Now, then, you puzzle me extremely; for I thought you said you were a thief; and the two are imcompatible." "Is it very bad to steal?" asked Jean-Marie. "Such is the general opinion, little boy," replied the Doctor. "No; but I mean as I stole," exclaimed the other. "For I had no choice. I think it is surely right to have bread; it must be right to Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that have bread, there comes so plain a want of it. he hardly knew. Come, And then they beat me cruelly if I returned with nothing," he added. "I was not ignorant of right and wrong; for before that I had been well taught by a priest, who was very kind to me." (The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word "You hardly know?" repeated Deprez. "We hardly know anything, my man, until we try to learn. Interrogate your consciousness. push me this inquiry home. Do you like it?" "Yes," said the boy, slowly; "yes, I like it."" priest.") "But it seemed to me, when one had "And why do you like it?" continued the doctor. (We are now pursuing the Socratic method.) "Why do you like it?" 66 "It is quiet," answered Jean-Marie; "and I have nothing to do; and then I feel as if I were good." nothing to eat and was beaten, it was a different affair. I would not have stolen for tartlets, I believe; but anyone would steal for bread." "And so, I suppose," said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, "you prayed God to forgive you, and explained the case to Him at length." 66 'I should have thought God would have understood me," replied the other. "You do not see; but then it was God that made me think so, was it not?" "Little boy, little boy," said Deprez, "I told you already you had the vices of philosophy; if you display the virtues also, I must go. I am a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain and temperate nature in her common walks; and I can not preserve my equanimity in the presence of a monster. Do you understand?" "No, sir," said the boy. "I will make my meaning clear to you,' replied the Doctor. "Look there at the skybehind the belfry first, where it is so light, and then up and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it is already as blue as at noon. Is not that a beautiful color? Does it not please the heart? We have seen it all our lives, until it has grown in with our familiar thoughts. Now," changing his tone, "suppose that sky to become suddenly of a live and fiery amber, like the color of clear coals, and growing scarlet toward the top-I do not say it would be any the less beautiful; but would you like it as well?" "I suppose not," answered Jean-Marie. "Neither do I like you," returned the Doctor, roughly. "I hate all odd people, and you are the most curious little boy in all the world." "What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of forty-two! No," he continued, apostrophizing heaven, "I did not know that such boys existed; I was ignorant they made them so; I had doubted of my race; and now! It is like," he added, picking up his stick, "like a lover's meeting. I have bruised my favorite staff in that moment of enthusiasm. The injury, however, is not grave.” He caught the boy looking at him in obvious wonder, embarrassment, and alarm. "Hello!" said he, "Why do you look at me like that? Egad, I believe the boy despises me. Do you despise me, boy?" "O, no," replied Jean-Marie, seriously; "only I do not understand." "You must excuse me, sir," returned the Doctor, with gravity; "I am still so young. O, hang him!" he added to himself. And he took his seat again, and observed the boy sardonically. "He has spoiled the quiet of my morning," thought he. "I shall be nervous all day, and have a febricule when I digest. Let me compose myself." And so he dismissed his preoccupations by an effort of the will which he had long practised, and let his soul roam abroad in the contemplation of the morning. He inhaled the air, tasting it critically as a connoisseur tastes a vintage, and prolonging the expiration with hygienic gusto. He counted the little flecks of cloud along the sky. He followed the movements of the birds around the church tower-making long sweeps, hanging poised, or turning airy somersaults in fancy, and beating the wind with imaginary pinions. And in this way he regained peace of mind and animal composure, conscious of his limbs, conscious of the sight of his eyes, conscious that the air had a cool taste, like a fruit, at the top of his throat; and at last, in complete abstraction, he began to sing. The Doctor had but one air"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre": even with that he was on terms of mere politeness; and his musical exploits were always reserved for moments when he was alone and entirely happy. He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's face: "What do you think of my singing?" he inquired, stopping in the middle of a note; and then, after he had |