an air of great condescension and suavity; as
if indeed he were doing this Earth rather
an honour than otherwise by twirling his
moustache in it.

JOSEPH TRAIN.

WHILE visiting the west of Scotland at the
end of last year, a casual passage in Lockhart's
Life of Scott recalled to my memory the
worthy old antiquary, Mr.Train. I soon
learned that Mr.Train, thus recalled to my
remembrance, was actually living in retired
old age in Castle Douglas. He had been a
long time in the Excise:—in Scotland it
would seem rather a favourite reward of
genius. Few men deserved better of modern
literature; for it was to him Scott owed,
not only many a good story, and many
a strange tradition, but he suggested the
subject of Guy Mannering, and to something
which he dropped in conversation with him,
we owe the machinery of the Tales of
my Landlord. These are facts to make a
man notable; but Train was a notable man
in essential character. Although born to
narrow fortune, he was bent on acquiring
knowledge for its own sake. After glancing
at his personal history I shall describe what
kind of old man he was when I penetrated to
his retreat. The facts of his life I derive from
a memoir of him prefixed to his History of
the Isle of Man, and from a sketch in the
Dumfries Courier, published on the occasion
of his death last December.

Train was a native of Ayrshire—the son of
a land steward there—and was early apprenticed
to some "mechanical occupation," which
the author of the memoir does not
particularise. He was, from his childhood, studious;
and, in the way of gathering knowledge,
omnivorous, but with a strong bent towards
everything antiquarian. Train appears to
have begun life aa a private in the
Ayrshire Militia. The commander, Sir David
Hunter Blair, one day entered a bookseller's
shop in a town where the regiment was
stationed: on the table Currie's edition of
Burns just out, and price one pound eleven
shillings and sixpence, was lying. It had
been specially ordered, the bookseller said,
for a private in his own corps. We may
suppose the laird's surprise, for in those days
a reading plebeian was looked upon as a
learned pig. Sir David got the volumes
handsomely bound, and presented them to
young Train. But this was not all. He looked
about for a provision for him, and (Burns
being a case in point), got him, in 1808, into
the Excise.

The life of an exciseman was in those days
a venturesome career; he scoured the country,
wet and dry, and having brought the chase
to bay, had to fight. Train discharged his
duty faithfully, first in Ayrshire, then in
Wigtonshire. But in all his wanderings,
there was one object never neglected;—the
tubs once fairly attended to, Joseph Train
could gratify the passion of his heart, and
wherever he was

        'Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr,
             Port-Patrick aud the Cruives of Cree,

or wherever else, the antiquities of the
country were the object of his love and his
labour. A wandering beggar who could roll
out a bit of a ballad; an old woman with a
ghost story, a boy who had found a bit of
some old brass instrument, strange to modern
Gallovidian eyes, were the visitors dear to
Joseph. He left the village club and the
schoolmaster's jokes at the village public-
house, to go off and disturb the jackdaws
among the ruins of some old castle, with a
half recognisable fosse. This was no idle
dilettante curiosity. In the dead forms, he
loved the memory of the old life. It was
natural therefore that he should aspire to
create; and, in 1814, he published the "Strains
of a Mountain Muse".

Scott was now in the height of his poetical
reputation, and his still greater day was
dawning, for his poetical fame set into
sunrise when the Waverley light broke. The
influence of Scott is visible in the Strains,
which do not indeed display much original
power, or much culture. They are all
illustrative of the old country traditions. Elcine
de Aggart begins with great spirit:

    "Why gallops the palfrey with Lady Dunure?
     Who takes away Turnberry's kine from the shore?
     Go tell it in Carrick and tell it in Kyle,
     Although the proud Dons are now passing the Moil,
                    On this magic clew,
                    That in Fairyland grew,
     Old Elcine de Aggart has taken in hand,
     To wind up their lives ere they win to our strand."

The volume chanced to be printed at
Ballantyne's office; and was in the press at the
same time with Waverley. Scott took up
one of the proofs, casually, in November 1814;
saw, probably with most interest, that the
Poems by Joseph Train were to have Notes
illustrative of traditions in Galloway and
Ayrshire, and at once wrote to the author
"begging to be included," says Mr. Lockhart,
"in his list of subscribers for a dozen copies".
A vast deal turned on the proof picked up
casually. It happened to be the very one with
Elcine de Aggart on it! Two men so like in
the point of the antiquarian heart, so
different in culture, history, social position, and
genius, were all at once brought into relation,
and a bridge thrown across the chasm of
distance at once, fortune had been preparing
and developing Train into just the man for
Sir Walter, whom she was nobly ripening for
higher works. Train could scarcely know to
what point the results of his studies were to be
directed. He had followed, however, a tasteful
instinct—and chance helped him. Like
the fisherman in the Arabian Nights, he cast