heart or the head of his hero. "If, "said
that prince of biographers (and toadies),
"Johnson was particularly prejudiced
against the Scots, it was because they were
in his way, and because he thought their
success in England rather exceeded the
duo proportion of their real merit; and
because he could not but see in them that
nationality which I believe no
liberalminded Scotsman will deny."

Of all these suppositions Percy's is the
most favourable, and Boswell's the most
unfavourable, to Johnson's character. Percy
was but slightly acquainted with Johnson,
and Croker was not born when Johnson
flourished; but Boswell knew his hero
intimately, and has succeeded in making
every reader of his remarkable book as
intimate with his burly friend as he was
himself. But still the reason of Johnson's
ill will to Scotland and its people remains
a mystery. Let a Scotsman, not at all
aggrieved, but highly diverted by the
goads of the great man, suggest a solution.
It is this: Johnson was a Scotsman.
Owing to the unpopularity of the
Scotch in England, at the time when he
was endeavouring to push his way in
London, he tried as well as he could to
conceal what he thought a damaging fact;
and the better to mystify the public, and
divert suspicion from his true origin, made
himself conspicuous for abusing the
countrymen of his father, the Scottish
bookseller at Lichfield. He had, like the
personage in the play, to dissemble his love;
and so like his prototype he overdid it, by
kicking its object down-stairs. His hatred
of Scotland was all a sham, as Percy
supposes. He had a personal object as Croker
supposes, and Boswell asserts; and his
fulminations against the Scotch were
merely rhetorical red-herrings, to lead the
too cunning dogs, his contemporaries, off
the scent of his nationality. If this be not
the true solution, I can only say, that any
body who likes is at liberty to suggest a
better.

THE LAST FAIRIES.

All in the gloaming of a golden day,
All in a mellow autumn long since mute,
A small voice wander'd out across the mountains.

And the moon listened, and the stars grew paler,
The thin brooks hushed themselves, and everywhere
A tender trouble grew in leafy places.

And little eyes among the ferns were wet
With tears, not dew, and folding small thin hands
They gathered with no shadows in the moonlight.

For the voice cried, "The feet of men come nearer,
The peat-smoke curls where ye have lived so long,
And it is time to seek another dwelling."

Saying, moreover, "Whither man's foot cometh
The fairy ring upon the grass must vanish,
The tree must fall, the dreamy greenness perish.

"His breath is vaporous in the air around him,
His heel is on your dwellings, his sharp knife
Staineth with blood the running brook ye drink of.

"How shall ye dwell where men and women gather?
How shall pale things linger in their shadow?
Each shadow is a sorrow and a sleep."

Then small folk look'd in one another's faces,
And little mothers cried above their bairns,
And all the things of elfland learnt the trouble.

For unto them the thymy dell was dear;
Dearer than life is to a glad girl-mother;
Dearer than love is to a happy lover.

There was no light elsewhere in all the world,
There was no other home under the moonlight;
Here had they dwelt, here had their days been happy.

And not a squirrel in the boughs but knew them,
And not a building bird but sang out loud,
To see their bright eyes peeping at the fledglings.

The strong deer and the wild fowl feared them not,
The eagle with his round eye watched them calmly
When in the moon they clamber'd to her eerie.

They had been friendly to each dying thing,
Until the dying; then they knew what followed,
And watching how things came and went was pleasure.

And these things had they named by happy names,
Down to the little moth new born, and swinging
Under the green leaf by a thread of silk.

Home-loving, gentle, tender-hearted folk,
How could they bear to leave for evermore
The little place whose face was so familiar?

Yet the voice cried, "Man comes and man is master:
Ye are as silver dust around his footstep,
Wafted before him by his weary breathing."

And with one voice they answered broken-hearted,
"Man's footsteps thicken over all the world,
Yea, even on the high and misty places.

"The tall tree falls before him everywhere,
The leaves from every hill are on his face,
How shall we find a place to rest our feet?"

And scattered thence by a soft wind from Heaven,
They fled, they faded; but within the greenwood
Still gleam the round rings where their feet have fallen.

A BATTLE AT SEA.

(BY AN EYE-WITNESS.)

MY ship, the Genoa (seventy-four guns),
was a fine ship, with good officers, and a
brave crew, and with not quite so much
holystoning to do aboard of her as there
was on board some other ships of the fleet.
Our captain was Walter Bathurst, a fine
greyheaded old gentleman, beloved by every
seaman under him. During the mutiny
of the Nore, Parker forbade, under pain of