cited. He has mingled the base portions of the bardic literature with the more noble, and indeed, introduces the bardic history, as it were, under protest, in many cases stripping away the poetic folds in which some unimportant fact was veiled, and which was alone valuable, as the Connemara fishermen, when they boarded a wreck laden with tea, poured away the water in which they boiled the tea, thinking the tealeaves were the valuable portion. In the old bardic stories the treatment is everything, the facts enclosed are generally untrue or garbled, or can be learned elsewhere; the mode in which the imagination wrought, and the forms it created, are the really interesting and important outcome of all the old Irish bardic literature. Among others who have laboured in the cause of Irish antiquities are Wilde and Petrie. Wilde, though his efforts were concentrated on the actual productions of the Irish soil, in the form of old weapons, &c., which were found in different parts of the country, and were placed in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy, did much more to advance antiquarian science generally, than contribute anything distinctive to the accumulation of specially Irish antiquarian learning. The celts and arrow-heads, the shoes and bogwealth to which he devoted his attention, and concerning which he compiled his celebrated catalogue, are of more importance to the science of antiquarianism in its cosmopolitan character than to those who desire to see Irish history written as it should be. There is nothing distinctive as far as regards the tools and weapons in the stone age of Ireland, or the bronze age, which would attach a special interest to it. Rude hatchets of metal and flint, bronze swords, &c., were common to all the northern nations of Europe, and the collection of the Royal Irish Academy in this respect, may be defended by Irishmen only as Audrey was defended by her not over-polite lover, "A poor thing, sir, but my own: the hatchets and celts were found on Irish soil, and that is all. They might as well have been found in the ground which was Sarmatia. Moreover, these gaunt and chilly collections numb and clip the imagination. A cloak which has slept for ages in the depths of a bog is disinterred and provided with a glass case in the Academy, where its vile and windowed raggedness depends patiently from a peg. The most wretched beggarman in Munster would be ashamed to put it on his back, and the dogs would bark at it if it were exposed in a public place. A mind fresh from the perusal of the "Tân-bo-Cuailgue" and its gorgeous descriptions of the accoutrements of the Ultonian chiefs, shrinks with disgust from this spectacle, while on the mind of the man who has never read any of the bardic tales, it and the cheerless things by which it is surrounded, create a prejudice against all Irish antiquarian studies. There is a sort of truth which is not true; from the old literature we know that this unpleasant garment does not represent the apparel of the ancient Irish. ARTHUR CLIVE. OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY. SECOND SERIES.-No. 35. THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM EDWARD BAXTER, M.P. THE gentleman whose portrait we give this month is the Right Honourable William Edward Baxter, Member of Parliament for the Montrose District of Burghs in Scotland, and one of Her Majesty's Privy Council. He has long occupied a distinguished position as a Statesman, and is one of the most enlightened and consistent Liberals in the House of Commons-one of the few members of the House who have shown themselves to be masters of those questions of finance which are year by year obtaining greater influence over national policy. He has travelled much, and has been a careful student of the political and social condition of the Continent and of America. It would be difficult to name one who has paid more attention to such subjects. He is descended from a family which holds an honourable position in Scottish mercantile history. In the early part of the present century his grandfather, Mr. William Baxter, was well known in the linen trade. He is described as "an intelligent and much respected merchant, who during his long and honourable career was highly esteemed by his compeers." Vast improvements in flax-spinning were effected during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1787 John Kendrew and Thomas Porthouse, the former an optician, the latter a clock-maker, both of them resident in Darlington, took out a patent for "a mill or machine, upon new principles, for spinning yarn from hemp, tow, flax, or wool," and established a small spinning-mill on the river Skerne. Mr. James Aytoun introduced the new machinery into Kinghorn in 1792. Improvements were rapidly effected upon it. Steam was employed as a motive power, and a powerful impulse was given to the manufacture. Dundee became the chief seat of the trade in Scotland, and the country around it soon became dotted with mills, bleachfields, and other marks of a prosperous industry. Mr. William Baxter was not slow to observe that a new era was commencing in the history of flax-spinning. Many failures attended the first attempts to establish the new machinery in Scotland, but at length the difficulties were overcome, and in 1822 Mr. Baxter judged that the time had come when spinning could be profitably carried on on a larger scale than had ever been tried. In that year he and his eldest son erected a spinning-mill of fifteen horse-power at Lower Dens, near Dundee, and established the firm of William Baxter and Son. The enterprise was successful. Some years afterwards, Mr. Baxter took other sons into partnership, and the celebrated firm of Baxter Brothers and Co., was formed. In 1836 power-loom weaving was made a department of the business, and Messrs. Baxter Brothers and Co. became the largest power-loom linen weavers in Scotland, if not in the world. On The late Sir David Baxter, of Kilmaron, Baronet, one of the sons of the founder of this firm, and long the senior partner in it, was well known and will be long remembered for his munificent charities as well as his private worth. One of his many princely gifts was the noble park which he presented to the town of Dundee, and which now bears his name. the 9th September, 1863, this park was opened to the public at a total cost of somewhere about £50,000. A pavilion in the centre of it contains a statue of the donor by Sir John Steel, on the pedestal of which is the following inscription : "This statue of Sir DAVID BAXTER, of Kilmaron, was erected by 16,731 subscribers, in grateful acknowledgment of the gift of this Park to the people of Dundee by him and his sisters Miss ELEANOR and Miss MARY ANN BAXTER ; and, in affectionate remembrance of their late father, William Baxter, Esq., of Balgavies, they desire that his name be associated with the gift, A.D. 1863." Sir David Baxter's gifts to the Scottish Universities and to other educational and charitable institutions are too numerous to mention. Mr. William Edward Baxter, the subject of the present memoir, is the son of the late Edward Baxter, Esq., of Kincaldrum, elder brother of Sir David Baxter. His mother was a daughter of the late William Wilson, Esq., of Dundee. Born in 1825, he was educated at the High School of Dundee, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh. He married in 1847 Janet, the eldest daughter of J. Home Scott, Esq., of Dundee.* The political condition of Europe at the time when Mr. Baxter entered It is only fair to state that Mr. Edward Baxter was a Liberal at a time when Liberalism was at a discount, and it was no small gratification to him to find his son following in his footsteps. He was one of those export merchants whom De Quincey describes when he says, "My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland; there it means a retail dealer; one, for instance, who sells groceries in a cellar; but in the English sense, a sense rigorously exclusive; that is, he was a man engaged in foreign commerce, and no other; therefore, in wholesale commerce, and no other-which last limitation of the idea is important." |