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Mr

Take him for all in all, we shall ne'er look upon his like again. again. Times have changed, and never again will a factor have such power for good or evil. Thirty years ago Maciver was practically Eastern governor, under the restraint only of the common law of Scotland. His sultan was a wise and benevolent

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piety, with a fine presence, and it must have been from her that he inherited"-all his good qualities in short,-for in spite of his insight into Mr Gladstone's defects as a practical statesman, he considers that if he had not become a Home Ruler he would have gone down to posterity "as a good, pious, God-fearing man, -the most remarkable man Duke, who each year spent of this century." He adds to the appreciation of the mother of the statesman a criticism of his father:—

"I had occasion to know a good

Ideal about him. He was a strongminded, clever man of business, selfreliant and imperious, wholly absorbed in making a fortune. I considered him a rough, outspoken man."

Mr W. B. Blaikie, who knows more about the 'Forty-Five than anybody else, was asked by Mr J. M. Barrie: "If I were to write a book or a play about the 'Forty-Five, how should I make the Highland chiefs in hiding spend their time?" "In reading Virgil and Horace, or in making Latin verses of their own if they had no books," was the instant reply, and he promptly proved it by documentary evidence. Evander Maciver never forgot his Latin. Catullus and Martial, we are told, remained his friends and companions, and the writer remembers that an apt quotation from time to time was used by the gracious host of Scourie - not pedantically, but haply to recall the fact that life and letters were not confined to killing salmon on the Laxford and a perusal of the daily paper.

more on his Highland do-
mains than he got from them.
In times of dearth and
famine, road-making, emigra-
of food, seed, and cattle and
tion schemes, the purveying
horses for the improvement of
stock and for replenishing
holdings-all such things were
devised and carried out by
proprietor or factor without
the aid of public money or of
Crofters Commissions or Con-
gested Districts Boards. Mr
Maciver was no friend to the
Crofters Commission: he re-
garded it somewhat as a
personal insult, and when we
learn that since its creation in
1889 it has consumed about
£100,000 in salaries and ex-
penses, enough to buy up
nearly the whole of the High-
land crofts and present them
to the people free of all rent,-
sympathy must remain with
the practical
the practical administrator
rather than with the Radical
reformer.

The notorious "Sutherland Clearances" took place before Mr Maciver's day. He, however, had some part in helping to build up a Scottish Canada -but his emigrants were voluntary, their passages were paid, money was advanced to

start them in the new country, and he records that in nearly every case the whole of the outlays were repaid. He followed the careers of many of the colonists, and up to the last year of his life frequently received letters from Canadians and Australians recording the prosperity of the exiled crofters and expressing their continued gratitude to the kind friend who had helped them to the fortunes they had gathered under kindlier skies. Many young men, "lads of promise,' owed to Mr Maciver's interest their start in life, and the sheaves of gratitude he garnered in his latter years showed how judiciously the seed had been sown.

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Those who knew him, and those who read his Memoirs, will recognise that, though he was full of patriotism, there was never any trace of sentimentality about him. He helped a boy to become an excise officer at home or the chief of the police in Hong Kong, not so much because he was a Sutherland lad, as because he saw he was capable of better things than tilling a croft or fishing for herring. The personal knowledge, the will and the power to help at the right time, cannot find substitutes in any system of examinations and bursaries or

scholarships. The paternal instinct, the paternal power, were of the essence of Maciver's administration. These things have to some extent died with him. The changes that have taken place in the Highlands make the existence of another

VOL. CLXXVIII.—NO. MLXXVII.

like him impossible. Whether judicial rents and fixity of tenure will compensate the crofting population for the loss, is matter which the future will show. Maciver's career, as recorded by himself, is, amongst other things, a defence of the system of large estates owned by men

of influence. The landlord was wealthy, kindhearted, and generous, the factor was intelligent and capable, knew every man, woman, and child in his many miles of territory; was himself of chieftain's stock, an hereditary and acknowledged leader, and besides had those gifts of character and intellect which raised him above those born his equals, securing for him the esteem and the respect of Dukes and crofters.

The learned Celtic scholar who has edited these Memoirs describes the passing of the old Highlander in words so simple, so sincere, and withal so poetical, that it were wrong not to rescue them from the semi-privacy of a privately printed volume :

"Speaking of a letter, he half raised himself in bed, and in a strong voice gave injunctions that it should be sound, prudent, proper, and judi cious. I can yet recall the emphasis on these words. He had Lord Balfour of Burleigh's visit to Lewis and the Blue-book Report on his native island also greatly upon his mind. 'I am not afraid,' he then said to me, done what was for their good. I have 'of any of my friends; I have always no pain of any kind.' That was about eleven o'clock, and in a minute or two he suddenly retired within himself and ascribed praises to God. He began by reciting two paraphrases, then many parts of the Bible-largely from the Psalms, Epistles, and Gos

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pels, and with slower utterance emphasised the words 'Song of the Lamb,' raised his hands in blessing several times, once as if distributing the elements at the Communion of the Lord's Supper, and continued thus singing and glorifying the Lord, with strangely intermittent cadence of bass notes in his voice, in remarkable harmony with the deepthroated waves outside, for about five hours-interrupted but twice, as he opened his eyes and looked up as if into infinite distance and said, 'William,' then later, turning into Gaelic, A Thighearna '-'O Lord,' when distinct articulation failed, and after an hour's soft breathing, as if in sleep, in his ninety-second year, he yielded up his spirit with the receding tide, as the purity of the falling snow outside the window reflected to those around him the purity of a clean soul, whose beautiful death so clearly and triumphantly illustrated the blessedness of the pure in heart, 'for they shall see God.""

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Beside the mother of his children, the inspirer, as himself would have said, of all the good he did and tried to do, he lies within sound of the breakers on Handa. Those who knew these two respected and

admired the husband, but as for the wife no words can express the affection she inspired. A princess saw her during a brief visit: she left feeling that she had parted from a friend. The people of the country regarded her as a mother and a ministering angel. Born of the Macdonald branch which gave to Scotland and to history the immortal Flora, Mrs Maciver was capable of all that the Highland heroine compassed, and even more. Evander Maciver was the last of the Highland factors, but it will be the end of the race when his helpmeet ceases to be an example and a type of a Highland lady. The old order changeth, but it will be a dreary world, could it be imagined, when kind hearts, which find their expression in gracious manners, cease to influence the men who guide it. "Manners maketh the man," perhaps, but & woman's manners are the outcome of her heart.

1 Probably his dear friend Mr William Gunn of Glendhu, killed in a carriage accident in 1864.

THE DAWN-BIRD AND OTHER FRIENDS.

IT is the very quietest hour of all the night. The latest dog has ceased barking, and the earliest bird is yet silent. Shortly afterwards a watchman beats out the hour of four o'clock on his gong hard by a double knock, followed by a double knock, and then to show that it is four, neither more nor less, he ends up with a rapid succession of taps.

Very shortly after this the bird who lives just outside my verandah tunes up his hearty little song. By this I know that the long night is ended, and that although it is full night down in down in our valley, Cheena peak, fifteen hundred feet above us, is already greeting the dawn, and that the bird is returning thanks for being brought to the beginning of another day. With some of us it is rather a feeling of gratitude for reaching the end of another night. And the bird has the anthem all to himself, for still there is not another sound but that of his shrill, fervent piping. With its commencement Morphia, Angel of Sleep, takes her flight, leaving, however, an aching head lest one should prove unmindful of her truly great benefits. For it is she and she alone who brings three blessed hours of sleep, and who, steeping the senses in a delicious languor, drowns all pain and all recollections of its irksomeness.

As dawn comes stealing into the room, the bird ceases as

abruptly as he began, no more to be heard for twenty-four hours. I have never seen him, though he lives so close by me, but his services I shall not forget, for he has never failed me just when he is wanted most.

So another day begins, and with light comes the welcome clatter of the tea-cup. Tea is a sure antidote for Morphia's legacies.

As I take post in my verandah a little later, the O'Haras are astir. But of them more—perhaps too much

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Oh, but the fresh morning air, and the sunlight, and the movement and life about me, are welcome after the long long night! A chestnut-tree in full bloom and a walnut form the screen behind which my observations are conducted. They grow close to the verandah, thrusting friendly leaves and blossoms through the railings, causing, by their freshness and abundance, the poor geraniums in their pots to look gaudy and meretricious. In the walnut-tree dwell two tireless tits, a dull couple, quite voiceless, but always busy peck, peck, pecking at invisible somethings. Their nest must be close by, the exact locality never discovered; and dull and silent though they be, they are company for all that, and I should miss them were they not always hard at work in their accustomed place.

In the gap between the two trees is a prospect passing fair. Yet, though I look on it with delight in the morning, such is the ingratitude of man that by evening (a long twelve hours' interval) I am weary of it, surfeited with its sameness, longing for a change of view.

The verandah looks down on a pretty shaded garden, and that is only separated from the lake by the main road. But garden and road are mere details, interesting indeed for what one can see going on in either, but the merest pendants to the great jewel that lies beyond. The lake, just dimpled by the light morning breeze, lies embosomed in its setting of densely wooded slope or sheer precipice. It is just a mile long, and my verandah enfilades it all. At the farther end Cheena, with her feet amongst the pines and rhododendrons, rears her face, scarred by nature and furrowed by man, and arrests farther view. And beyond! Well, we are tied and bound here and cannot see beyond, but on such a morning as this the snowy Himalayas, dazzling white against the palest blue, should be looking more unspeakable than ever.

And yet the unlovely, unlovable hill-folk that dwell hereabouts have neither legend nor fairy-tale telling of the Lady of the Lake imprisoned in the hills by cruel stepmother Cheena. The lake is to them the "Tal." The densely gathered cloud-packs that come floating silently in at the southern end, and spread themselves up

the hillsides, are just clouds; the thunder rolling superbly amongst the peaks is a common enough sound, called "Gurruj"; while "Zillzilla," the earthquake, terrible enough, one would think, to be classed at least amongst the deities of the lower world, is an occurrence to be borne stolidly, but on no account to be dignified by the weavings of romance.

"Charlee and Johnnee! Nahtee boys! come here!" So breaks the unmusical voice of the Lady O'Hara in upon my day-dreams. In good sooth, she and hers form the background, will I, won't I, to my existence. If they are not seen, they are heard, and vice versa, more particularly heard. My stout and leafy walnut- tree forms, with all its brave foliage, but an ineffectual screen from the galling fire of the O'Hara voices. If you asked Mr O'Hara what his nationality was, he would promptly reply "European "; but Europe has never seen him, much less the Emerald Isle. The accent with which he and his speak is not a brogue, but what men call in the East "chee-chee," and though all describe it vaguely by saying that it is a chopping short of all the vowels, it is really indescribable and indescribably horrid. In England I have heard it said of an old gentleman (of possibly remote Highland ancestry, for his name was MacTavish) that the funny accent he spoke with-which was really a bad chee-cheewas Gaelic. And just as the

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