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think, as we come out into the open air, perhaps with a new, keen sense stirring at our hearts, of the beauty of the outer world, and the preciousness of personal liberty, that after all, the sunshine is not

exclusively to be found outside there is sunshine, and that too of the best sort, within those walls we have just left behind us. [From Macmillan's Magazine.

NORMAN MACLEOD.

BY ALEXANDER STRAHAN.

ON the 20th of June, I followed to his grave, in Campsie Churchyard, Dr. Norman Macleod, the most manly man I ever knew, the most genial, the most manysided, and yet the least angular. In his funeral sermon on his kinsman, Dr. John Macleod Campbell, he said, "I have had the happiness of knowing, and of meeting once in his house, the late Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, the late Principal Scott of Owens' College, Manchester, and Professor Maurice; and such men of culture, both of intellect and of spirit, such outbuilt,' holy, living men, breathing an atmosphere of such lofty thought and deep devotion, I cannot hope again to meet together on this side the grave." This sermon was printed in the May part of Good Words, with this note appended to the passage quoted:"Alas! since this was written, the great and good Professor Maurice has departed!

"They are all gone to that world of light.'" Short was the time during which the writer of that pathetic note had to

"alone sit ling'ring here."

He now is one of those whose

"Very memory is fair and bright."

A more impressive funeral than his I never witnessed. From all parts of Scotland, from all parts of the kingdom, those who reverenced him-some of them forced, by his manly talent, faithful conviction, and goodness, to reverence him, in spite of great diversity of opinion-had mustered to pay the last tribute of respect to his remains. Norman Macleod was no mere paper and pulpit and platform good man, putting all his goodness into books and sermons and speeches. Where he was best knownknown as standing the crucial test of the "dreary intercourse of daily life"-there he was most respected and beloved. Glasgow had known him for many a year as a most unpretentious, and yet most inde

fatigable, worker for his brethren's weal in this life and beyond this life; and moneymaking Glasgow struck work in the middle of the week to show that it felt it had lost its best citizen. Had one of the members of the Royal Family, who looked upon him as a friend, and gracefully manifested their estimate of him at the grave, been the occupant of the hearse, the pavements, the windows, the housetops of the funeral route could not have been more densely thronged, or with sincerer mourners.

I esteem it no common honor to have known such a man as intimately, I believe, as any one outside his family circle knew him. My acquaintance with him began in this way. When I was a young man of twenty-four, quite unknown, I formed a project of starting a magazine to contain (as Dr. Arnold puts it), not so much articles of a religious character, as articles of a general character written in a religious spirit. But where was I to find a fit editor for it? Whilst I was pondering this difficulty, I chanced to read in the Scotsman a report of a chat on "Cock Robin," and other nursery ballads and stories, which Dr. Macleod had had with children, at the close of an examination in an Ayrshire school-room. His words seemed to me so kindly, so wise as well as wittythere was so much broad humanity in his humor-that I said to myself, " Here's the man, if I can but get him."

I offered the editorship of my embryo periodical to Dr. Macleod. He drolly replied, that his only qualification for the post was the fact that for ten years he had conducted the Edinburgh Christian Magazine, with heavy loss to himself and all concerned. This did not frighten me, however. I continued to importune him, and at last prevailed. "I'll become the captain," he said, "provided you become the sailing-master. More than this I dare not undertake, in face of my heavy pulpit and parish duties."

Good Words did not please him as a title when I first suggested it to him. His religion was of a robust type, and he thought it sounded too "goody-goody." However, I hunted up the "worth much and cost little" motto from Herbert, and Dr. Macleod consented to take the command of my venture when launched and christened as Good Words.

His agreement with me was characteristic-to wit, that there was to be no agreement; I was to pay him much or little, according to my estimate of what the magazine could afford. Such verbal agreements, as a rule, prove unsatisfactory to both parties; but we had no more definite agreement down to the end, and yet no question ever arose as to meum and tuum, nor did any cloud, even of the size of a man's hand, appear to darken our horizon.

It so happened that Part I. of Good Words was published on the same day as Part I. of the Cornhill Magazine. The latter sprung into fame and popularity at once, the former had an uphill battle to fight for a year or two. Yet, when Dr. Macleod went to India, in 1867, he wrote thus to me :-"Go where I will I am received with open arms. Good Words is everywhere, and is a magical open sesame for me."

The rancorous opposition Good Words had to struggle against-perhaps, though, "rancorous" is rather too strong an adjective, since sometimes "things are not what they seem," and, as Carlyle says, even cant may be sincere the opposition, then, Good Words had to breast and buffet before we fought it up to the first place in point of circulation among monthly magazines all that is an old story, and I have no wish to revive unpleasant bygones. The fable of the Viper and the File might be alluded to, were it not that I do not believe that the bulk of the assailants of Good Words were really venomous; and, though Dr. Macleod could give and take as well as any man, a hard, rasping file is the last thing any one who knew him would think of likening him to. He had Celtic fire, Celtic sarcastic wit, in his composition, but also too much Celtic love of the liking of others, to suffer him to lapse into passive cynicism.

How anxious Dr. Macleod was to make Good Words answer to its title in the strictest sense is not, perhaps, sufficiently

well known. One of the most distinguished novelists of the day, a personal friend of his own, was engaged to write a story for it. When Dr. Macleod received the MS. and read it over, he wished it to be returned to the writer, because a clergyman was in his opinion unfairly satirized in it; and this was done accordingly, although it involved a loss to the magazine of £500. Again, when our common friend, Mr. George MacDonald, was about to write "Guild Court," Dr. Macleod was very anxious that no "heterodox" views the subject of future punishment should be introduced into it. For hours the two discussed the matter in the publishing office with friendliest warmth. At last in tripped a little girl, and by her simple wise prattle, not only put an end to the controversy, but actually became the model for the most interesting character of the story. Before his death Dr. Macleod had adopted Mr. Maurice's stand-point on this question, as he emphatically made manifest in the last sermon I heard him preach at Balmoral.

I have heard him preach scores of times, and cannot call to mind one sermon of his that was dull. Many preachers soar now and then in their discourses, and then come down with painfully flapping wings; but when Norman Macleod went up he kept up with a strong, steady flight that never flagged. I have often heard him preach under exceptional circumstances— in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Damascus, -but the most striking of these exceptional services were when he preached on board a Peninsular and Oriental steamer in the Mediterranean to a congregation of forecastle-men-the shaggy-breasted tars all crying like children; and again, when, on the banks of the Caledonian Canal, he addressed the crews of half a hundred fishing boats. I have said "preached," but in neither case was it a set sermon— simply friendly talk, made eloquent by its earnestness.

Dr. Macleod liked to see a man, and had a warm place in his heart for soldiers and sailors. He would sing his own warsong, "Dost thou remember!" to a company of old soldiers; and "The Old Lieutenant and His Son" and "Billy Buttons" show how sympathetically he could limn old salts. An absurd report,

by-the-bye, has been spread that the latter story was plagiarized from Bret Harte, the fact being that, although only recently republished in a book, "Billy Buttons" appeared in a Christmas number of Good Words long before the publication of "The Luck of Roaring Camp."

"Wee Davie" was his own favorite among his works. It was rattled off at a sitting. But he thought very little of his writings, and full of shrewd observation, lively description, and good humor, in two senses, as they are, there can be no doubt that Norman Macleod was infinitely greater in his life than in his books. The last thing of his that he saw published was a sermon preached before the Queen, on Christ blessing little children; it was printed in the June part of Good Words. His children will remember that coincidence, for a fonder father there never was, as all will admit who were privileged to see him surrounded by his little ones, telling them his wonderful "once-upon-a-time" stories by the hour together. The Scottish character is thought to be rugged, but it holds, like honey hived in rocks, a rich fund of tenderness. To speak only of Scotsmen of our own day, in no men has this store been richer than in George MacDonald, John Brown, and Norman Macleod. But it is not for me to touch on his domestic life. The beauty of it, in all its relations, will, I trust, soon be portrayed by a congenial hand.

Sunny is the best epithet for his social life. At a public dinner, in a private draw ing room, in a cosy tobacco-scented tête-àtête he radiated enjoyment. He was full of fun-full to overflowing. And one of the readiest ways in which his abounding spirits found expression was at the point of his pencil. Almost all his letters to me were illustrated with little whimsical drawings, -very slight, but showing artistic faculty of the highest kind.

The favorite student and devoted admirer of Dr. Chalmers, he nevertheless had to fight manfully against his old master at the time of the Disruption; and yet Dr. Macleod did more, perhaps, than any other man to breathe a spirit of comprehensive charity into all the churches. More than once have I seen his stalwart form bent forward in deep interest as he listened to the debates in the Free Assembly Hall; and he devoted the entire profits of his "Earnest Student" to the Free Church Indian Mis

sions. How much all this implied can only be known by those who are in some way acquainted with the fierceness with which the ecclesiastical battle raged, which, for better for worse, rent Scotland in twain, dividing family from family, parent from child, and brother from sister. I well remember the eagerness, too, with which he accepted for Good Words a poem sent to him by the daughter of one of the doughtiest champions of the Free Church, and one of the hardest hitters amongst its leaders.

His stand on the "Sabbath question" has taken much of the irrationalism out of Scotch opinion on that subject-loosened the grave-clothes, and washed the face of that sublime gift of God, the day of rest. And many men of other communions first began to respect Presbyterianism when they became acquainted with Norman Macleod.

In literature, (besides Good Words,) The Contemporary Review, The Sunday Magazine, and Good Words for the Young can call him father, for without his generous aid and encouragement at the beginning and all through, I could never have projected or established any of them.

And his life-long championship of the poor has had fruitful results. He did much by his own personal exertions, and also by his little work, "How to Help our Deserving Poor," but he did more by directing our common friend, the Rev. W. Fleming Stevenson, into this path, and by getting him to write such papers as the one on "Dr. Chalmers at Elberfeld," which appeared in the first Part of Good Words, and to which can be directly traced all the great Charity Organization movements of the day.

What more need be said? Writing for a critical journal, I feel that some recognition of Dr. Macleod's fine faculties, and some attempt to estimate them, cannot be dispensed with even from the least capable of his comrades.

The word falls from the pen not infelicitously. A noble comrade! That was what Dr. Macleod was, and it is a type of character not too often exemplified in circles to which any such word as "evangelical" is usually applied. There is a song of parting" by one of the truest poets of our time, of which in the chorus the recurring words

are:

758

"The love of comrades,

The life-long love of comrades,
The manly love of comrades,

The high-towering love of comrades."

And who can help thinking of this chorus
when the image of Norman Macleod
arises in his mind? He was the comrade
of all good things. There are pioneers, and
camp followers, and leaders, and the rest.
Dr. Macleod had much of the soldier in
him, and would have struck a good stroke
in the very van, but it was not his character-
istic to want to hurry in advance of his
company. There is a rather conservative
French epigram which says, "The better
is the enemy of the good"-and it has its
truth. Dr. Macleod would not thank me
for trying to elevate him at the expense of
any human being; so I need not depreciate
any lonely fanatic or pioneer of the better,
when I say that he was the comrade, rather
than the fighting man of the good. Having
put his hand to the plough-and manlike-
deep were the furrows he made, and straight
also, he was not one to look back; but
he liked to abide with his own people, and
he did. It was in the spirit of a Christian
comrade that he did his best work.

Dr. Macleod was a striking example of
solidarity of character. You cannot sepa-
rate in him, even hypothetically for purposes
of criticism, the morals from the intellect,
or either from the religious currents of his
nature. Admitting that his creed does look
a little outside of him, his entire simplicity
prevents this from being in any way un-
pleasant. If there were things in his
opinion which did not "mortice in" or
"splice" with exactitude, the discovery,
when you made it, struck you as it might
have done, if you had made it in the mind
of a big good boy.

The burden and the mystery had made marks on him, as on the rest of us, and he avows it in his writings; but he enjoyed life very much-his soul lived, if one may so say, with a very full, very strong, very complex life. If you add a double portion of the Celtic religious fervency and glow to something of Sydney Smith, something of Thackeray, and even something of Lord Palmerston, you have gone some way towards reconstructing Dr. Macleod. He loved work, but he took hold of things by their smooth handle. His mind went straight to its conclusions in ways which irresistibly remind one of the buoyant canon and also of the buoyant prime minister; but his con

scientiousness and reverence were, in comparison to theirs, mountainous in height, and volcanic in force. He had in his nature the "great strong stock of common sense" that each of these distinguished men carried about with him; and he had much too of Thackeray's equalizing humor. His humor, like Thackeray's, was largely, too, the humor of comradeship.

Dr. Macleod, however, had infinitely more tenderness than either of the three men I have named. This quality is abundantly shown in his writings, especialis young ly in what he has written for children and about children. The love of the a quality which may stand for a great many Sometimes it is strong, and yet things. there is nothing to lay hold of but the bare instinct, which is as strong in monkeys and birds. Sometimes it is cynicism turning in upon itself to get a taste of geniality. But occasionally, as in Norman Macleod, it is a much more comprehensive quality, and much more of an index. For example, it Then, may point to natural simplicity and complete truthfulness of character. again, no one can write with much sympathy about children who has not really lived with them; and this requires both patience and compassionateness. There is something deeper still. When the devil and his angels have done their worst, no one can mix much with children without feeling that man was made for God and goodness; in their society the most unsophisticated play of the better impulses comes so easily to the surface, and so unconsciously, that we can kindle our own torches anew at their little lamps, even in the gustiest weather of this weary world. From all these points of view it is easy to discern that Norman Macleod loved the young, and the fact is full of significance.

Incidentally, it may be added that Dr. Macleod had, in perfection, one great sign of simple solidarity of character-he could sing songs, and, what is more, sing his own songs, in such a way as really to heighten the pleasure of a social gathering. The gift is not a very rare one among the Scotch, in whom the minstrel type is always cropping up; but among the English, especially the cultivated English, the faculty of social song-singing in such a manner as not to throw a cold blanket over the listening circle is much more rare.

All he did in literature was good, and like him. But he had no self-competing

ambitions, and never pushed any specialty beyond a certain point of excellence, which may be called the domestic. It was in companionship that his best broke into flower. He had always a happy pencil of his own, as I have said, but the sketches intended only for the eyes of his more intimate friends were the most humorous and effective that he ever drew. Great humor he had, but this, too, was domestic; his "humor of comrade," as a Frenchman might put it, was good, but his more domestic humor was better still, and his very finest playfulness was unreported and unreportable. It thus happens, that whilst on the one hand the first thing that strikes one, on looking at the character of Dr. Macleod, is the breadth and reach of the lines upon which it was built, the second is undoubtedly the fact that his very best was always something intimate and domestic. Nor does this for one moment lessen the greatness of anything that he did for the Church, or for the State, or for Indian missions; for whatever he did, the fulcrum of his activity never changed. His nature was of the radiant order, and though it could and did project heat and light to very far off, you required to get near the "ingle-nook" to know the best of it. His mind was not of the order that makes wide circuits from intellectual or mixed points of view, and returns upon its moral centre every now and then for more force; it was, as I have said, a radiating mind, and the world has gained accordingly.

When the cordage of his strong heart cracked to pieces, and the signal for departure came, it found Dr. Macleod already on the way, for he had practised himself in dying-no trifling science. No pilgrim ever gazed on Jerusalem more eagerly than he did when he first saw it from the brow of Neby Samwil; but soon his conversation turned from the old Jerusalem to the new-the earthly city seeming to suggest the abiding city rather than anything else. And when we left Jerusalem, and turned our last lingering look upon it, he was lost in the contemplation of the idea of departure, which contains. all infinite ideas. It might have been expected that the abundance of his thoughts would have made him live more intensely, and consequently rendered death more difficult and strange. But it was not so, as is well known to all who noted how frequently his conversation treated of the after life and the boundless possibilities of enjoyment in it,-how in his most brilliant talk (and who could be so brilliant in talk in this generation ?) he, giving free play to his imagination and ignoring the limits of time and space, soared to "worlds not realised," and wandered at large in the fields of immortality. And when Death walked straight up to the strong man, and laid him in the dust, it found him ready, with the humble peace which is the most magnificent ornament of that solemn moment.

[From Contemporary Review,

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE FORMS OF WATER IN CLOUDS AND RIVERS, ICE AND GLACIERS. By John Tyndall, LL.D. New-York: D. Appleton & Co.

To an American-Professor Youmans-himself eminent as a popularizer of science, belongs the honor of devising and initiating a series of works designed to bring the most authoritative thinkers and workers in the various fields of science into direct connection with popular scientific culture all over the world. The "International Scientific Series," of which The Forms of Water is the first volume, will consist of compendious scientific treatises, representing the latest advances of thought upon subjects of general interest, theoretical and practical, to all classes of readers. "While the books of this series," says the preface, "are to deal with a wide diversity of topics, it will be a

leading object of the enterprise to present the bearings of inquiry upon the higher questions of the time, and to throw the latest light of science upon the phenomena of human nature and the economy of human life."

The excellence of this plan is patent, and "goes without saying," but much of the value of the series will depend of course upon the manner in which the plan is carried out; in other words, upon the character of the writers to whom the work is confided. It is gratifying to know that in this respect, also, Prof. Youmans has been completely successful. Many of the subjects are already announced, coupled with the names of the authors who have promised to treat them; and in looking over the list, the reader will find that almost every subject is in the hands of the man who, above all

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