he knew more of nature in its grand and solitary moods. He took it more to heart; at every turn it more enters into his song and forms its texture.

MacIntyre's poetry eminently disproves as indeed all Gaelic poetry does that modern doctrine, that love of nature is necessarily a late growth, the product of refined cultivation. It may be so with the phlegmatic Teuton, not so with the susceptible and impassioned Gael. Their poets, MacIntyre above all, were never inside a schoolroom, never read a book; yet they love their mountains as passionately as Wordsworth loved his, though with a simpler, more primitive love.

Mr. Arnold concluded his lectures delivered on Celtic Literature by pleading for the foundation in Oxford of a Celtic chair. He thought that this might perhaps atone for the errors of Saxon Philistines, and send through the gentle ministrations of science a message of peace to Ireland. Oxford since then has got a Celtic chair, but has not thereby propitiated Ireland.

Another Celtic chair is just about to be founded in Edinburgh University. But the foundation of Celtic chairs will be of small avail, unless the younger generation takes advantage of them. To these let me say that, if they will but master the language of the Gael, and dig in the great quarry of their native song, they will find there, to repay their efforts, much that is weird and wild, as well as sweet and pathetic, thrilling with a piercing tenderness wholly unlike anything in the Saxon tongue. There they may not only delight and reinvigorate their imagination, but they may fetch thence new tones of inspiration for English poetry.

And more than this, they will find there sources of deep human interest. The knowledge of the Gaelic

language will be a key to open to them the hearts of a noble people, as nothing else can. England and Lowland Scotland alike owe a real debt to the Scottish Gael, if not so urgent a debt as they owe to Ireland, a debt for the wrongs done last century after Culloden battle. a debt still unrepaid, perhaps now unrepayable. A debt, too, for the world of pleasure which so many strangers annually reap in the Scottish High. lands. The native Gael are capable of something more than merely to be gillies and keepers to aristocratic or plutocratic sportsmen. Within those dim, smoky shealings of the west beat hearts warm with feelings which the pushing and prosperous Saxon little dreams of.

That race, last century, sheltered their outlawed Prince at the peril of their own lives. While they themselves and their families were starving, they refused the bribe of thirty thousand pounds which was offered for his head, and chose to be shot down by troopers on their own mountains, rather than betray him. Can any nation on earth point to a record of finer loyalty and purer self-devotion? Yet for the race that was capable of these things no better fate has been found than to be driven, unwilling exiles, from the land that reared them.

Perhaps I may fitly close this brief sketch with some lines conveying the feeling with which Duncan Ban's romantic but now desolate birthplace was visited a few years ago:

The homes long are gone, but enchantment still lingers

The green knolls around, where thy young life began,
Sweetest and last of the old Celtic singers,

Bard of the Monadh-dhu, blithe Donach Ban!

Never mid scenes of earth fairer or grander
Poet first lifted his eyelids on light,

Free through these glens, o'er these mountains to wander,
And make them his own by the true minstrel right.

Around thee the meeting and green interlacing

Of clear-flowing waters and far-winding glens, Lovely inlaid in the mighty embracing

Of sombre pine forests and storm-riven Bens:

Behind thee, the crowding Peaks, region of mystery,
Fed thy young spirit with broodings sublime,

Gray cairn and green hillock, each breathing some history
Of the weird under-world or the wild battle-time.

Thine were Ben Starrav, Stop-gyre, Meal-na-ruadh,
Mantled in storm-gloom, or bathed in sunshine,
Streams from Cor-oran, Glashgower, and Glen-fuadh,
Made music for thee, where their waters combine.

But more than all others, thy darling Ben Doran
Held thee entranced with his beautiful form,
With looks ever changing thy young fancy storing,
Gladness of sunshine, and terror of storm, -

Opened to thee his most secret recesses,

Taught thee the lore of the red deer and roe,
Showed thee them feed on the green mountain cresses,
Drink the cold wells above lone Doirè-chro.

There thine eye watched them go up the hill-passes,
At sunrise rejoicing, a proud jaunty throng,

Learnt the herbs that they love, the small flowers and hill grasses,
To make these forever bloom green in thy song.

Yet, child of the wilderness! nursling of nature!

Would the hills e'er have taught thee the true minstrel art, Had not one visage, more lovely of feature,

The fountain unsealed of thy tenderer heart?

The maiden that dwelt on the side of Mam-haarie-
Seen from thy home-door- -a vision of joy
Morning and even, the young fair-haired Mary
Moving about at her household employ.

High on Bendoa, and stately Benchallader,
Leaving the dun deer in safety to hide,
Fondly thy doating eye dwelt on her, followed her,
Tenderly wooed her, and won her thy bride.

O! well for the maiden who found such a lover!
And well for the Poet; to whom Mary gave
Her fulness of heart, until, life's journey over,

She lay down beside him to rest in the grave.

From the bards of to-day, and their sad thoughts that darken
The sunshine with doubt, wring the bosom with pain,
How gladly we fly to the shealings, and hearken

The clear mountain gladness that sounds through thy strain!

In the uplands with thee is no doubt or misgiving,
But strength, joy, and freedom Atlantic winds blow,
And kind thoughts are there, and the pure simple living
Of the warm-hearted Gael in the glens long ago.

The Muse of old Maro hath pathos and splendor,
The long lines of Homer in majesty roll;

But to me Donach Ban breathes a feeling more tender,
More akin to the child-heart that sleeps in my soul.

CHAPTER XI.

THE THREE YARROWS.

THE ideal creations of poets generally have their root, whether we can trace it or not, in some personal experience. However remote from actual life the perfected creation may appear, whether it be a Midsummer Night's Dream or a presentation of Hamlet, we may well believe that all its finer features were the birth of some chance bright moments, when certain aspects of nature, or expressions of human countenance, or incidents of life, or subtle traits of character, struck on the poet's soul, and impressed themselves indelibly there. But though we may be quite sure of this, yet so subtilely works the transmuting power of imagination, so reticent have poets generally been about their own creations, so little have they been given to analyze themselves, that the cases are few in which we can lay our finger on this and that actual fact, and say, these are the elements out of which the bright creation came. There are, however, some instances among modern poets in which we are allowed to trace the first footprints of their thought. And when we can do so, this, instead of diminishing our admiration of the perfected results, gives them, I believe, an added interest. Lockhart has recorded his belief that there is hardly a scene, incident, or character in all Scott's poems or romances, of which the first suggestion may not be traced to some old verse in the Border Minstrelsy, or to some incident or character which he fell in with