however, without giving the reader a glimpse of the lighter portions of Mr. Lang's work, which abounds in cheerful touches, as well as those of darker color. Haydon, the painter, was one of the supposed victims of Mr. Lang's cankered witch, and he chose to think it was Lockhart who was his assailant. He found, however, when he went to Edinburgh, that the "Tory wags" were his kindest entertainers. None of them remembered anything about the arrow, thrown at a venture, which had chanced to wing the pugnacious painter. They were all delighted to see him, made big dinners for him, and praised and petted him to his heart's content. Perhaps it was inconsistent, but it was Maga's" way. "I felt," Haydon says, "as if for a fortnight I had been sailing with a party of fine fellows up a placid and beautiful river.' But still he believed that it was Lockhart who had flung the arrow, and attributed his lighthearted kindness to penitence. "Lockhart's whole life," he adds, " has since been a struggle to undo the evil he was at the time a party to." As Lockhart did not do the particular evil in question, perhaps the conclusion was less certain than Haydon thought; but he

adds:

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"Hence his visits to me in prison, his praise in the Quarterly,' and his opinions, expressed so often, on what he thinks my deserts. This shows a good heart, and a fine heart Lockhart has; but he is fond of fun

and mischief, and does not think of the wrecks he has made till he has seen the frag. ments."

The wrecks he made were very problematic, we think. "Nobody but Haydon wrecked Haydon," Mr. Lang remarks, and Leigh Hunt and his company were certainly not broken into fragments by any blow from Edinburgh.

There is a charming little notice of Crabbe the poet-" The excellent old Crabbe," Lockhart calls him-which is quite delightful on both sides. Speak ing of Sir Walter Scott and his hospitalities, Crabbe says, "I am disposed to think highly of his son-in-law, Mr. Lockhart, of his heart-his understanding will not be disputed by any one." While, on the other hand,

Lockhart writes to Crabbe's son, making a sketch of him, not like the usual sketches to which the young man was addicted:

"The image of your father, then first seen,

His no

but long before admired and revered in his works, remains as fresh as if the years that have passed were but so many days. ble forehead, his bright beaming eye, without anything of old age about it-though he was then, I presume, above seventy, his sweet, and I would say innocent, smile, and the calm mellow tones of his voice-all are reproduced the moment I open any page of his poetry; and how much better have I understood and enjoyed his poetry since I am able thus to connect it with the living presence of the man."

Of Lockhart's sketches above referred to, not in pen and ink, but water-color, several specimens are given; but we doubt how far Mr. Lang was happy in his selection. Their effect is rather grotesque than humorous. There are caricatures and caricaturessome not without a sense of beauty, and therefore always agreeable, some of an ugliness which the finest wit can scarcely make tolerable. We fear Lockhart's are of the latter class. The faces are often good, but the bodies that carry them almost always as bad as possible, with a kind of badness which specially belongs to the caricatures of the period, a squalid disproportion which reminds one of the Johnnies and Jennies on a broadsheet of ballads. They are not even funny nowadays, since the personal spice of resemblance is beyond our appreciaIt would have been wiser to tion. leave them in the portfolios. His drawings of himself are the best, and still capable of raising a smile-some curious touch of personal consciousness, let us not call it vanity, preserving them from the usual grotesque. No man, we suppose, ever made himself ugly-a perception of les attaches, and how approximately to shape a limb, coming, one would say, from the same subtle inspiration. same subtle inspiration. And there is a pretty, graceful, faint sketch of his wife; and something very good in that of Charles Scott, not a caricature; but the groups, we regret to say, are appalling things.

Here is a sketch of Wordsworth extremely edifying, but not a caricature

-the outcome of Lockhart's swift penetrating observation, of a curious and most distinguished party assembled at the poet's house, whither Lockhart went with Scott on their return from Ireland. They paused at Elleray with Professor Wilson, and thence paid a visit to the Bard:

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Canning was at Storrs, near Elleray, and Wordsworth evidently thinks Canning and Scott together not worth his thumb. Wordsworth told Wilson yesterday he thought he seemed to have no mind at all, for the statesman evinced little interest in these humbugs, the principles of poetry, nor had Wordsworth any other topic. Wordsworth,' however, knew all about his [Lockhart's] history in Scotland, and spoke gayly thereof. Wordsworth and Scott quoted Wordsworth's poems all day, but the great Laker never by one syl

lable implied that Scott had ever written a line either of verse or prose !''

This is sublime. Here was really the true Poet, above all prejudices, transcendent over every impression. Scott's sentiments of benignant amusement may be imagined. Probably in Lockhart's mind there was a spark of anger; but the humor of the situation must have quenched all such inferior feelings.

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And here is the sentiment of 1825 in respect to newspapers, which is beautiful. It is contained in a letter from Mr. Wright, evidently a person of much influence, and largely instrumental in deciding the appointment of Lockhart as editor of the Quarterly." The reader will perhaps recollect that this matter was somehow involved with Murray's project of a great daily paper, the greatest of all the papers, which he was about to found, with the most sublime ideas of its future importance and success. "I saw Murray," says Mr. Wright. "He disapproved of his editor, and I recommended and he approved of you."

"For the newspaper business I did not recommend you as fit; but on being asked as to your fitness and inclinations, I stated my belief in your fitness, accompanied with strong observations as to its unsuitableness to your rank and feelings; and I believe Mr. Canning, on being spoken to by Mr. Ellice, said you would come as editor of the Quarterly, but not as editor of a newspaper. I told Disraeli before he left that he had a very delicate mission; and though my rank in life was different to your own, having no relations whose feelings could be wounded by my accepting

any honest employment, I should not receive an offer of the editorship of a newspaper as a

compliment to my feelings as a barrister and a gentleman, however complimentary it might be to my talents. In short, I enter entirely into your feelings on this head, and we think alike, for whatever our friend Disraeli may say or flourish on this subject, your accepting of the editorship of a newspaper would be infra dig., and a losing of caste. An editor of a Review like the Quarterly' is the office of a scholar and a gentleman; but that of a newspaper is not; for a newspaper is merely stock in-trade, to be used as it can be turned to most profit, and there is something in it which is repugnant to the feelings of a gentleman."

These very fine sentiments are bewildering. One wonders whether the editorship of the Times," then approaching its zenith of influence and power, would have been unsuitable to the "rank" of a Scotch gentleman-a son of the manse and the modest gentility of a West Country laird? But Lockhart had always been something of a fine gentleman. When other sons of the manse cultivated the Muses on oatmeal he kept a black servant, and gave dinner-parties, to the consternation of the Ettrick Shepherd, with six colored gentlemen behind the guests' chairs. And rank is a visionary matter at most times, in the case of younger sons at least; but perhaps Lockhart, with his "hidalgo airs," dazzled the humble observer. This judgment, however, on the newspaper is amusing and remarkable. Scott, too, held it degrading, though he says nothing of his son-in-law's "rank," to be connected with the newspapers. What a curious suggestion for the noble army of journalists, who at this present writing are so far from thinking humbly of themselves! Perhaps this was a product of the remoteness of Edinburgh, perhaps an instance of Scotch pride, that well-recognized quality, for we have no recollection that Mr. Arthur Pendennis had any high notions about the newspapers twenty years later. He was, on the contrary, pleased to get Mr. Bungay's five guineas and to see his copy of verses published in the first "Pall Mall Gazette,' the visionary one of which Captain Shandon was the editor. Lockhart's income, as Mr. Lang tells us, was to be, for the Quarterly," but £1000 a

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year; but as literary adviser, specially in the case of the " Representative" newspaper and occasional contributor (anonymous, of course, which saved his dignity), he was to receive £1500 inore. This, we imagine, dropped when the "Representative" failed, as it did very shortly. But we have alBut we have always understood, though Mr. Laug ought to be the best authority, that the income from the "Quarterly" was considerably larger. It would not indeed have been much of an advance in life to have landed a young household in London, even in the modest retirement of Regent's Park, on £1000 a

year.

The letters which Mr. Lang quotes are not all so interesting as they might be; indeed, except in special cases, or when there is much to say, the average of letters, even by distinguished men, are but seldom interesting. Now and then there arises a man (or perhaps more often a woman) who has the gift -but it is not general, or even common; and the persons who interest us most in themselves very often part with their charm when we come to their correspondence. Perhaps the best in the book are a few exchanged between Lockhart and Thomas Carlyle, who, being so unlike him in every respect, fell in love with him, so to speak, suddenly and forever, which is the finest kind of friendship. It would

seem to have been between this unlikely pair of friends a clear case of l'un que aime and the other que se laisse aimer. Lockhart was much less interested than his greater contemporary, who sought occasion of communication with him, and loved him with an admiring affection; but he was evidently touched and pleased by that gift bestowed upon him. A few consecutive letters which passed between them are among the most graphic in these volumes, illustrative of both men in a very high degree. They began by a letter from Carlyle apprising him of the death of that uneasy connection, his mother-in law, but with words of strange affection not often bestowed upon such a relation. "She was a person of much generosity and worth," he says, whose very frailties and failings, being, as they were all, virtues in

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a state of obstruction and terrene imprisonment, make one love her more now that the imprisonment has broken down, and all has melted into clearness and eternity." Lockhart answered kindly, asking to be told, after some words of sympathy, whether the event "brings some addition to your worldly resources.' "You and I," he adds, "would not be made a whit loftier in spirit or more Mayfairish in personal habits by the sudden bequest of all that Lord S. has just not carried with him to the ingleside of Father Dis, but it would be a fine thing to be independent of booksellers; and though I don't hope ever to be so, I would fain hope that you are henceforth." Carlyle's reply gives little hope of this unlikely blessing. "The little the good mother left might, in case of extremity, keep the hawks out of a poor author's eyes. But," he adds, henceforth as. heretofore our only sure revenue must be the great one which Tullius speaks of by the name Parcimonia, meaning abstinence, rigorous abnegation-Scotch thrift, in a word!"

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tude, servitude worse than Algerian; and yet

"We grow much about bookseller-servi

at bottom we are but a foolish folk. Consider you for example how many of your good things you would perhaps never have taken

the trouble to write at all had there been no such servitude. Servitude is a blessing and a great liberty, the greatest that could be given a man. As to me, I have dragged this ugly millstone Poverty at my heels, spurning it and cursing it often enough ever since I was a man; yet there it tagged and lumbered on; Had they cut it for thee, sent thee soaring like and at length I was obliged to ask myself, a foolish tumbler pigeon, like a mad Byron ! Thank the millstone, thou fool. It is thy bal. last, and keeps the centre of gravity right. In short, we are a foolish people-born foolsand it were wise perhaps at present to go and smoke a pipe in silence under the stars.

"The mountain-tops are aglow like so many volcanoes; it is poor tarry shepherds burning their heather to let the grass have a spirit-a comrade of more than twenty years. chance. Sirius is gleaming blue, bright like a Penpont smoke-cloud and Drumlanrig Castle have alike gone out. In the north is an Aurora-footlights of this great theatre of a universe where you and I are players for an hour. God is great; and all else is verily altogether small."

Lockhart does not answer in this strain; but he sent to his friend the

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latter part of the verses we have quoted, without explanation or a word as to authorship, which was, we should imagine, one of his highest proofs of friendship-and the other long after in his extreme old age, lying upon his painful bed, and looking for the death which was so slow of coming, murmured them over and over to himself as he lay upon the verge of the Land Beyond. They were not in the least like each other, but they were both true men; and the friendship thus arriving late in life to bind them together, and the union of hope and aspiration which filled their hearts, make the most touching episode in their lives. Lockhart, though a younger man, died many years before the Philosopher. These men are mostly classed by the professedly religious, with many innocent, thoughtless, good persons in their train, as scoffers, or men who care for none of these things," if not as active disseminators of error. To see them thus groping with wistful hearts like the simplest, taking comfort from the little verses which they say over and over, communicating to each other the hope which keeps their hearts alive, is to our mind as affecting a glimpse beneath the surface as ever was disclosed to brotherly human eyes. Everything, as has been said, failed to Lockhart at the last; his occupa tion slid out of his hands. The Review went from him, we are not informed how; by stress of ill-health apparently, but, so far as we can make out, with no softening grace of parting to diminish the disruption. He spent his last winter in Rome, where he writes with an evident pang, "I had only yesterday a complete leave of absence as to Duchy of Lancaster," some small office held in connection with that royal possession which had been his for many years. This dismissal was, however, sweetened in the most gracious way. "I think it very probable," he writes to Mr. Hope, his sonin-law, that you have had some communication with Mr. Strutt, and will therefore hear without surprise what he now communicates to me-viz., that my resignation as auditor of the Duchy of Lancaster will be acceptable with reference to certain proposed reforms,

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etc.; but that Prince Albert desires me to receive a retired allowance equal to the salary. This is very gracious. In one case, therefore, the loss of occupation must have been as little painful as possible. But such a loss is always painful, and the dropping of all his bonds to life was thus accentuated.

No one longer made any claim upon him; there was no need to hold up his head, and meet his sorrows as he had done through so many patient years. Before going to Rome he " gave up the Abbotsford MSS. to Hope and Charlotte as functus officio." Nothing remained for him, except perhaps the hope of a glimpse, when he came back, of little M. M., the baby grandchild, sole blossom of his house, who only, after some shy meetings, at last made up her little mind, to the delight of the family, to be "good" to grandрара. He made a heroic stand while in Rome to fulfil his social duties, go out to dinner, he who loathed food, and hold his head erect, and keep up with "the best people," who were all anxious to be civil to him-with that sense of the importance of doing so, after all importance had gone out of it, which becomes a sort of forlorn creed with a man who, during the best years of his life, has always been on his promotion. He drove on the Campagna with Mrs. Sartoris and her sister Fanny, which was some consolation. “I am becoming an adept in the Campagna beauties for seven or ten miles round," he writes; "and she proves an inexhaustible fund of entertainment in her talk meantime, about anything but poetry and picturesques, her course of life being one not imagined by me, and by her portrayed with a marvellous, though not at all harsh or uncharitable, frankness. In fact, she is a delightful person-worth five hundred Fanny Kembles even in talent, which is not her forte." He listened while the brilliant lady talked, and was thus carried through an hour or two of the monotonous days. But he hated Rome and all foreign ways with the strenuous dislike and impatience of most of the men of his time, anticipating with delight the day when he should "touch a bit of well-dressed cod or salmon, with a slice of roast

beef or mutton, and a glass of sound ale or port"-neither of which he could touch when he got them-with a sort of ferocious dislike of everything foreign. Why should the men of his day have been so savage? Is it that we are more enlightened nowadays, or that the Continental countries, which even then all who could manage it rushed to visit, have taken a number of hints from the Britishers? Perhaps it is a little of both.

And then he returned home languidly and patiently, and had the good luck to die in Abbotsford, the house most dear to him, and about which all the happiest associations of his life gathered. A poignant touch of nature comes in, in the record that Baby was at last good to him, and took his kisses.

sedately; and then he died, and they laid him at Sir Walter's feet. Thus ended the young satirist who laughed at everything and everybody, and got himself into endless mischief out of pure inconsiderateness, fun, and frolic; but who even then and always in his deepest heart was the most serious, the most tender of men, love and kindness being to him the breath of life, a baby's kiss the last sweetness of consolation, and a place at his friend's feet the most perfect resting-place. If ever there was a lesson for charity and against judgment, it surely is to be found in the life of Lockhart, so much abused in his youth, so lonely in his age, always so tender, so faithful, and so true.-Blackwood's Magazine.

If ever the word "boom" was justified, it is in relation to bicycling. No other will express the sudden rush of popularity, unprecedented both in violence and extent, which has taken place during the last eighteen months. Two or three years ago the use of the bicycle, though spreading gradually, was still almost confined to athletes, who were understood to be engaged in the monotonous occupation of breaking the record" week by week, and to gangs of hobbledehoys who scoured the roads with the apparent object of contracting spinal curvature and annoying pedestrians. To forty-nine people out of fifty, the machine was an object of scorn, tempered by fear. To-day, the man, woman, or child who can afford one and does not ride is an exception not altogether free from the suspicion of eccentricity. It is not my purpose to discuss the causes of this remarkable change, but rather to inquire into its effects, actual and probable, upon trade and industry.

Some weeks ago an interesting article on the manufacture of cycles appeared in The Times, from which I take the liberty of extracting a few statements. In 1894, says the writer,

A

the cycle trade was in a very depressed condition. This timely reminder of the extreme suddenness of the boom comes with a shock of surprise, so accustomed have we already grown to the inflated market of the last twelve months. Prices were very low. Humber could be picked up then for a sum which would make many a maiden sigh, and many a father groan, remembering what they have recently paid for the same article. Of course, the cycle industry had been growing slowly for many years, but the demand had not kept pace with the output, and no marked increase was expected; nor did any take place up to so recently as the early part of last year. In England, that is to say. In America, for some reason or other, the rise was foreseen, and manufacturers there, taking advantage of the low prices prevailing in England, placed large contracts for cycle tubing, which practically swallowed up the output of that indispensable material until quite lately, and so made it impossible for the English manufacturers to cope with the subsequent rush of orders. Cycle tubing, it may be explained, is the material of which the framework of the machine