Wild cries the Winter, loud through all our valleys
The midnights roar, the grey noons echo back;
About the scalloped coasts the eager galleys

Beat for kind harbours from horizons black;
We tread the miry roads, the rain-drenched heather,
We are the men, we battle, we endure!

God's pity for you, exiles, in your weather

Of swooning winds, calm seas, and skies demure!

Wild cries the Winter, and we walk song-haunted
Over the hills and by the thundering falls,
Or where the dirge of a brave past is chaunted
In dolorous dusks by immemorial walls.

Though hails may beat us and the great mists blind us,
And lightning rend the pine-tree on the hill,
Yet are we strong, yet shall the morning find us
Children of tempest all unshaken still.

We wander where the little grey towns cluster
Deep in the hills or selvedging the sea,

By farm-lands lone, by woods where wildfowl muster
To shelter from the day's inclemency;

And night will come, and then far through the darkling

A light will shine out in the sounding glen,

And it will mind us of some fond eye's sparkling,
And we'll be happy then.

Let torrents pour, then, let the great winds rally,
Snow-silence fall or lightning blast the pine,
That light of Home shines warmly in the valley,
And, exiled son of Scotland, it is thine.
Far have you wandered over seas of longing,

And now you drowse, and now you well may weep,
When all the recollections come a-thronging,

Of this rude country where your fathers sleep.

They sleep, but still the hearth is warmly glowing
While the wild Winter blusters round their land;
That light of Home, the wind so bitter blowing-
Look, look and listen, do you understand?

Love strength and tempest-oh come back and share them!
Here is the cottage, here the open door;

We have the hearts although we do not bare them,-
They're yours, and you are ours for evermore.

Bravo! Bravo!

NORTH.

SHEPHERD.

Brawvo! Brawvo! There's an eerie sough aboot thae lines, a

kin' o' quate melancholy, that a'maist gars the Shepherd greet. It's true there's no' muckle luve lost atween an Ettrick man an' a Hielander. For ma pairt, I prefer ma ain breeks to the philabeg o' the proodest chief wha struts an' majors it north o' the Grampians. An' yet Donal' has his gude p'ints, an' aiblins a sort o' genie, whiles, that even huz borderers canna pretend to— gin he wadna yatter about "Celtic renashences" an' sic like nonsense. I hae aye thocht that ye catch the speerit o' the Gael in its maist teepical manifestawtion in Neil Munro's stories. But, no' to be beat, I'se gie ye an answer frae the Nor'-West o' Cawnada. Mistress Moira O'Neill wrote the words, an' bonny words they are.

THE NORTH-WEST-CANADA.

Oh would ye hear, and would ye hear
Of the windy, wide North-West?
Faith! 'tis a land as green as the sea,
That rolls as far and rolls as free,
With drifts of flowers, so many there be,
Where the cattle roam and rest.

Oh could ye see, and could ye see
The great gold skies so clear,

The rivers that race through the pine-shade dark,
The mountainous snows that take no mark,
Sun-lit and high on the Rockies stark,

So far they seem as near.

Then could ye feel, and could ye feel
How fresh is a Western night!

When the long land-breezes rise and pass
And sigh in the rustling prairie grass,
When the dark blue skies are clear as glass,
And the same old stars are bright.

But could ye know, and for ever know
The word of the young North-West!
A word she breathes to the true and bold,
A word misknown to the false and cold,
A word that never was spoken or sold,
But the one that knows is blest.

NORTH.

I am satisfied of this, at all events, that no statesman will henceforth command the confidence of the nation unless he is in sympathy with those wider and loftier aspirations which have ousted the miserable, pettifogging, penny-wise-and-pound-foolish ideals of a bagman like Cobden. Accordingly I prophesy (and mark my words, sumphs twain that ye be) that Sir William will have ample time for many years to come to write letters on the Church question-and excellent letters many of them are, too and that Mr Morley will not be distracted by the duties of office from the biography of his leader. They will thus both be able to bestow upon mankind the benefit of the great gifts hitherto squandered upon party.

SHEPHERD.

Aweel, aweel —it's a rale pleesure to see that a taste for leeterature still survives amongst politeecians. There's Lord Rosebery has written a Life o' Pitt

NORTH.

And Sir George Trevelyan a history of the American Revolution

SHEPHERD.

Him that wrote a life o' yon chiel Macaulay? 'Od, sirs, but Maister Paget gied Tom his paiks brawly!

NORTH.

Indeed he did, James. Macaulay did worthier work since the days when we discussed his early reviews of better men, but I think we have made up our minds touching the value of his judgment of evidence, whatever we allow to his power of language. We were speaking, however, of politicians and a taste for literature. It is noticeable that public speeches have not the classical flavour they had once.

SHEPHERD.

But wha kens gin they haena gained in business-intelligence an' common-sense?

NORTH.

Wha kens, indeed, as you say, James? For my part, I think it more than doubtful. However, Mr Gladstone was almost the last statesman of eminence to quote Latin in public ultimus Romanorum, we must grant, in that at least. But Lord Rosebery habitually gives a turn of literary cultivation to his speeches.

And Mr Chamberlain

TICKLER.

NORTH (hastily).

Mr Chamberlain deserves great credit for finding time in a busy life to read at all.

SHEPHERD.

An' think ye, sir, that the taste for leeterature has declined or advanced in the kintra at lairge?

NORTH.

Let us distinguish. There is, of course, a far larger number of people who read newspapers and books of a kind. Unhappily their course of reading is not only not a course of literature, but one which, if persisted in for any length of time, makes the study of literature an impossibility. Certainly there is a popular taste for chatter about books.

[TICKLER takes up the Daily Chronicle, folds it so as to leave the third page outward, and hands it silently to NORTH. NORTH looks at it for a few seconds, sighs deeply, and hands it to the SHEPHERD. The SHEPHERD in turn looks at it in silence, opens his mouth as if to speak, shuts his mouth, and rolling the paper into a ball throws it into the fireplace.

NORTH (resuming painfully).

There is a large, a very large, number of people, many of them in other ways respectable citizens

SHEPHERD.

Wha tak' pleesure in yon bletherin'

NORTH.

Who are unable, I was going to say, James, to distinguish between knowledge and ignorance. With them to know a subject, or to have read a superficial article on a subject, is the same thing. They are the prey of such writing as our friend Tickler has shown us, with which I am by this time sadly familiar. But let us be just that newspaper page is sometimes partly filled by writers who know their subjects; it is not entirely devoted to the solemn and ridiculous eulogy of a little band of third-rate versifiers and novelists.

TICKLER.

But when you speak, North, of a popular taste for literature, may we not question if such a taste can ever exist? Literature is an art to appreciate which a man must enjoy such qualities of mind and heart as are necessarily denied to the generality of mankind. It is seldom that, on his real merits, a great writer is appreciated by the world at large.

SHEPHERD.

Verra true, Mr Tickler, verra true. Hogg

NORTH.

The poetry o' James

Well, well, James, the sun does not shine every day. But we must not judge of present-day readers altogether by presentday writers. Granted that intelligence and good taste do not necessarily increase with superficial education, still I have reason to believe that in the body of well-educated men and women— professional men and commercial men with leisure and a taste for real reading—there is as much relish for literature as ever there was it is not all swamped by contemporary novels and causeries and books about books. And if these men of finer clay are

neglected by contemporary books and journals, who knows if that fact is not a gain, leaving them the more time for old books wisely chosen?

SHEPHERD.

For the hunder best books?

TICKLER.

Replenish, James, and listen. I was about to ask Christopher if he is seriously of opinion that these worthier folk are neglected by contemporary writers; if, in other words, contemporary literature has not its fair share of serious and excellent work?

NORTH (after a pause, speaking solemnly).

Yes, Southside, that is my opinion.

[They sigh, and drink a glass of toddy in silence.

SHEPHERD.

An' whaur, think ye, lies the reason, sir?

NORTH.

Chiefly in what is, I believe, a great boast of the periodthe spread of education.

thing

Pooh!

In itself this may be an excellent

TICKLER.

NORTH.

-an excellent thing, or let us say that it will be so some day, when it is more wisely directed.

SHEPHERD.

Ay, that'll be when the deil's blind, but his een's no' sair yet.

NORTH.

Yet it has the disadvantage of almost annihilating literature. For a multitude of readers

Mostly fools.

TICKLER.

SHEPHERD.

That's no' oreeginal, Mr Tickler, as ye weel ken, but Tammas Carlyle's. A gran' man that, though ower dour to my thinkin'. He gae mony a hard knock, an' he didna aye mind when it was wise to stay his haun'. Noo a wise man gies hard knocks whiles, an' whiles jist keeps his cudgel in his nieve, an' lauchs to see the fules, puir bodies, cut their capers. Tammas forgot that they too are God's creturs, as muckle's him or me. But Mr Tickler interrupts ye, sir.

NORTH.

A multitude of readers, James, begets a multitude of writers, and in the din and clamour of these the still small voice of the Man of Letters is likely to be drowned, or else he is tempted to change its note and shout with the multitude for his greater