cabinet pictures worthy of a place in any collection. Few poets, however prosperous, are so certain of their immortality. I can scarcely conceive a period when William Miller will be forgotten ; certainly not until the Doric Scotch is obliterated, and the lowly nursery abolished for ever. His lyric note is unmistakeable: true, deep, and sweet. Speaking generally, he is a born singer, worthy to rank with the three or four master-spirits who use the same speech; and I say this while perfectly familiar with the lowly literature of Scotland, from Jean Adams to Janet Hamilton, from the first notes struck by Allan Ramsay down to the warblings of "Whistle Binkie." Speaking specifically, he is (as I have phrased it) the Laureate of the Nursery; and there, at least, he reigns supreme above all other poets, monarch of all he surveys, and perfect master of his theme. His poems, however, are as distinct from nursery gibberish as the music of Shelley is from the jingle of Ambrose Phillips. They are works of art,-tiny paintings on small canvas, limned with all the microscopic care of Meissonier. Possibly, indeed, they are not large enough or ambitious enough to attract those personages who are infected with Haydon's yearning for an enormous canvas and Gaudish's appreciation of "'Igh Art;" yet it is not improbable that it required more genius to produce them than to mix up Euripides and water into a diluted tipple for groggy schoolmasters, or to indulge in any amount of what Professor Huxley styles "sensual caterwauling." The highest praise that can be said of them is that they are perfect "of their kind." That kind is humble enough; but humility may be very strong, as it certainly is here. And now, what of William Miller himself? Is he living or dead, rich or poor, sickly or well, honoured or neglected? He is alive, certainly very poor, sickly to extremity, and, so far at least as practical sympathy goes, neglected by the generation which owes him so much. My informant, indeed, describes him as a "cripple for life." He resides, to his misfortune, in the depressing city of Glasgow, with its foul air, its hideous slums, and its still more hideous social life. Were my power equal to my will, this master of the petit chef d'œuvre should be transported forthwith to some green country spot,-some happy Scottish village, where, within hearing of the cries of children, he might end his days in peace, and perhaps sing us ere he dies a few more songs such as "Hairst" and "Spring." Then might he say again, as he said once, in his own inimitable manner— "We meet wi' blithesome and lithesome cheerie weans, Wi' gowans and buttercups busking the thorny wands, Sweetly singing wi' the flower-branch waving in their hands!" There might the Laureate of the Nursery enjoy for a little while the feeling of real fame, hearing the cotter's wife rocking her child to sleep with some song he made in an inspired moment, watching the little ones as they troop out of school to the melody of one or other of his lays, and feeling that he had not lived in vain-being literally one of those happy bards whose presence "brightens the sunshine." To honour a poet like William Miller is not easy; he seizes rather than solicits our sympathy and admiration; but when the thousands who love his music hear, as I have heard, that his fellow-citizens are raising a Testimonial in his behalf,* to show in some measure their appreciation of his genius, help of the most substantial sort is certain to be forthcoming in abundance. Wherever Scottish speech is spoken and wherever these words penetrate, there will awaken a response. Miller's claim to the gratitude of his countrymen is unmistakable. If that claim were contested, every child's voice in Scotland should be raised in protest, and every Scottish mother and father would be convicted of worse than lack of memory-the lack of heart. As for myself, after having indicated very briefly how Miller's compositions affect me personally, and the high poetical place I would assign them had I the will or the power to pronounce literary judgments, I can but wish William Miller God speed, and (in the words of one of his own songs) "a coggie weel fill'd and a clean fire-end" so long as he lives to wear those laurels which have been awarded to him, north of the Tweed, by universal acclamation. ROBERT BUCHANAN. The trustees of this fund are the proprietors of the "North British Daily Mail" newspaper, Glasgow, who have consented to receive all subscriptions, and to acknowledge them in their columns. LITERARY LEGISLATORS. No. V.-MR. AND MRS. FAWCETT. "WE seem to be coming on days when any Tory can carry an English county, and no Liberal can carry an English borough." This agreeable intimation is from the Spectator of the 15th of June. I neither affirm nor deny, and do not think that particular way of looking at the matter a very important one, until, at the least, we have made up our minds what a Tory is, and what a Liberal is. Mr. T. Hughes is counted among Liberals, but if sane human beings can classify him as anything but a good-natured Tory, warmed up by the most modern distillations from the New Testament, I am only fit for a madhouse. Ten times rather would I trust my personal liberties in the hands of Mr. Henley or of Archdeacon Denison than in those of at least half the "Liberals" in the House of Commons; and if I were called upon to decide, as a matter of immediate expediency, to abolish one House of the legislature, it would not be the Upper that would, by my sentence, go to the wall. It is hard to have to choose between King Log and King Stork, but if the choice must be made, give me King Log. Of course this is a sentiment that could only come from a person who was profoundly unimpressed with the uses of government. And indeed, it was with the deepest regret that I found the great experiment that was being carried out by main force at Newcastle come so rapidly to an end. One had earnest hopes that the strike of police might last so long that the inhabitants would wake up to the consciousness that they could do without them, and that a general "barring-out" of Home-Secretaryism, Scotland-yardism, and the like, might be the issue. We would then have discovered over again how small a part of the ills men endure it is which laws and kings can either cause or cure; and a paltry strike of a few policemen would have been, in effect, the compulsory origination of something like a true republic. It wakes you with a chuckle in the small hours to think what would have been the amazement of Europe and America, the bewilderment and humiliation of statists and jurists, to discover that a voluntary committee of public safety, which cost about nothing, accompanied by the abolition of sewers' rates, lighting rates, poor-rates, police-rates, assessed taxes, excise duties, and the rest. of that breed, with the consequent devolution of the cognate matters upon voluntary effort, could make a town comfortable, keep it healthy, and leave room for the development of a truly national spirit among all, instead of the bastard rage which now does duty among a few : enlightened cads for the thing which has been rated and taxed and balloted and representationed and worried out of Englishmen. "Order reigns in Newcastle. Man-traps and spring-guns set here, for Secretaries, Under-Secretaries, Prime-Ministers, Tax-Gatherers, and Police. Down with the representation of the people!" This placard might have appeared upon the earthworks which would have had to be thrown up around the town, and what could anybody have done? If the State of Newcastle to herself had proved but true, who could have made her rue? A question might have been asked in the House of Commons, and the foreign and coast-wise relations of the port might have proved difficult; but we must not forget what happens when a man puts his head between his legs and runs at a mad dog-the animal is too much astonished to do anything. Again in my first game of chess I got a fool's-mate, which was natural, considering that I began without knowing the moves. But, in my second, which began at eleven at night, my untutored but brilliant and versatile evolutions with the knight sent my opponent home at two in the morning with the barren triumph of a stale-mate. Now, in politics, every man has already learnt the fool's-mate: for we all know that a policeman can take you to the station-house. But you cannot take a whole colliery port to the station-house, and I am persuaded that even before stale-mate could have been reached, the political problem (I say "the" advisedly) would have been solved. The great lessons of "Gheel, the city of the Simple" would have been illustrated over again in the face of the Universe. Forcible Taxation would have been replaced by the political Offertory. Centralization would have died the death. One fact would have been worth a thousand arguments. Dis aliter visum, and the "solution walking" being thus denied to us, we are remitted to other chances. Mr. Fawcett, professor of political economy in the University of Cambridge, and one of the members for Brighton, is an Intellectual Radical of the type that still believes in laissez-faire, but with what I should call the shortcomings that attach to every laissez-faire politician who approaches the great problem from the economic side. His line of thought, fairly "produced," leads to the minimising of governmental interference, but so long as he announces his belief in national education, it is impossible to rely on his consistency. It is impossible, for the same reason, to rely on Mr. Mill's; and an odd shock comes over one, at the end of his Political Economy, in reading the words:-"In the matter of education, the intervention of government is justifiable, because the case is not one in which the interest and judgment of the consumer" [who is the consumer?] are a sufficient security for the goodness of the commodity." Mr. Herbert Spencer has expressed his surprise that Mr. Mill should write like this, and well he might. It is perfectly obvious that there is no kind of paternal government whatever which such an argument may not be made to support. But to return,-Mr. Fawcett is a very able and highly cultivated man, and he is, in point of fact, the best politician of his class now in the House of Commons. His Liberalism is not a “boiled tulip,” and his influence, so far as it consistently "produces his first principles, is in the direction of the "walking solution" of which the gods cheated us at Newcastle. He is not a new man, like Mr. Harcourt; he has shown his hand, and no one doubts his entire sincerity of political purpose. Indeed, his sincerity is the first thing that strikes one about him. Such fire as he has is of the kind that shows itself in steady and "gritty" persistence, rather than in radiant heat, but he can warm up in a sufficiently attractive manner as when he declared, not long ago, that he would rather never enter the House of Commons again than be a party to enacting a Permissive Prohibitory Bill. He is not that confused and confusing person, a Working-man's Liberal, and has the courage to oppose the Payment of Wages Bill on the well-known grounds of the school to which he is affiliated, and in all his procedure, notably in the "tussle " with government before Whitsuntide, he showed that he, at least, possesses that intellectual tenacity, which I said, last month, was being hurried away to the limbo of lost virtues; nay, that he possesses something better still, or as good namely, the instinct that if moral steadfastness should happen to stand in the way of the everlasting question-How is the government to be carried on the latter must take its chance. It is a great point that one knows him and can predict his vote upon almost any conceivable question. This is much more than can be said for every Liberal. Mr. Stansfeld, for example, would, if he were an independent member, be a dark horse, except so far as his morale would guide one in guessing at what his exact attitude would be on particular questions. He is the essence of candour when the hour has struck, but you cannot add him up beforehand as easily as you can Mr. Fawcett. He has much more general plasticity and is not so easily disturbed as the member for Brighton. You may say of Mr. Fawcett that he brings to every question, and every situation, a prepared set of convictions; and so he ought. But the method of his mind seems to me monotonous. This is a thing which is less to my taste, though it is doubtless the essential condition of the successful working of a mind like Mr. Fawcett's. It is well known that Mr. Fawcett was made blind early in life by the accidental explosion of a gun; and I have often wondered, not only as to him but as to the blind in general, what particular mental and moral short-comings may result from missing the light and shade of the human countenance, with all the peculiar suggestions that it must convey. We all know, in our own experience, how painful it is to have to listen to a speaker, even when we know him well, without seeing his face; and, whatever one sense, put upon its mettle and |