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and left her in charge of the guard of the train. His nature was so simple and generous that he did not even then seem to realize that he had done an exceptionally kind action.

Though, however, on such occasions as these Mr. Buckland used the language of advanced Tories, he habitually shrank from political discussion. He declared that he did not understand politics, and that he reserved himself for his own im- A volume might perhaps be filled with mediate pursuits. Into these pursuits he an account of Mr. Buckland's eccentricithrew himself with his whole energy; and ties. When he was studying oysters, he his energy was extraordinary. The great- would never allow any one to speak; the est example of it was in the search which oysters, he said, overheard the conversa he made for John Hunter's coffin in the tion and shut up their shells. More vaults of St. Martin's Church. He lit- inanimate objects than oysters were enerally turned over every coffin in the dowed by him with sense. He had church before he found the one of which almost persuaded himself that inanimate he was in search, spending a whole fort- things could be spiteful; and he used night among the dead. He was ultimately to say that he would write a book on their rewarded by obtaining a grave for his spitefulness. If a railway lamp did not hero's remains in Westminster Abbey. burn properly he would declare it was John Hunter was his typical hero. He sulky, and throw it out of window to had pursued the studies to which Mr. see if it could find a better master. Buckland also devoted himself. He had punished his portmanteau on one occafounded a great museum. He had almost sion by knocking it down, and the portoriginated a science. Like John Hunter, manteau naturally revenged itself by one of Mr. Buckland's main objects was breaking all the bottles of specimens which to form a collection which would illustrate it contained, and emptying their contents the whole science of fish-culture. The on its master's shirts. To provide himmuseum at South Kensington, which he self against possible disasters, he used to has left to the nation, exists as a proof of carry with him an armory of implements. his success. Inferior, of course, to the On the herring inquiry he went to Scotsimilar collections in the Smithsonian land with six boxes of cigars, four dozen Museum of the United States, it forms pencils, five knives, and three thermomean unequalled example of what one man ters. On his return, three weeks aftermay accomplish by energy and industry, wards, he produced one solitary pencil, Thousands of persons have interested the remnant of all this property. The themselves in fish-culture from seeing the museum; and the collection has long formed one of the most popular depart ments of the galleries at South Kensing

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ton.

Energy was only one of Mr. Buckland's characteristics. His kindliness was another. Perhaps no man ever lived with a kinder heart. It may be doubted whether he ever willingly said a hard word or did a hard action. He used to say of one gentleman, by whom he thought he had been aggrieved, that he had forgiven him seventy times seven already; so that he was not required to forgive him any more. He could not resist a cry of distress, particularly if it came from a woman. Wom en, he used to say, are such doe-like, timid things that he could not bear to see them unhappy. One night, walking from his office, he found a poor servant girl crying in the street. She had been turned out of her place that morning as unequal to her duties; she had no money, and no friends nearer than Taunton, where her parents lived. Mr. Buckland took her to an eating-house, gave her a dinner, drove her to Paddington, paid for her ticket,

He

knives were lost, the cigars were smoked; one thermometer had lost its temper, and been thrown out of window; another had been drowned in the Pentland Frith, and a third had beaten out its own brains against the bottom of a gunboat. No human being could have told the fate of the pencils.

Such were some of the eccentricities of a man who will, it may be hoped, be recol lected by the public for the work which he did, and by his friends for his kindliness, his humor, and his worth. As he lived, so he died. Throughout a long and painful illness his spirits never failed, and his love of fun never ceased. "I wish to be present at this operation," was his quaint reply at the proposal of his surgeon that he should take chloroform, and his wonderful vitality enabled him to survive for months under sufferings which would have crushed other men. He is gone: his work is of the past; and posterity will coldly examine its merits. But his friends will not patiently wait the ver dict of posterity. When they recollect his rare powers of observation, his capac ity of expressing his ideas, his quaint

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humor, his kindly heart, and open hand, | The country is always in a better condi-
they will say with the writer, we shall not
soon look on his like again.

SPENCER Walpole.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
CURLING.

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tion after a good old-fashioned winter; and nothing removes, too, the effects of a keenly contested political campaign so speedily as a week's good play on the ice, where Whig and Tory agree, on the same or on opposite sides.

The game is difficult to describe without the aid of diagrams, but if the reader wishes to have a good idea of it let him FEW people south of the Tweed have go to a "bonspeil". not the great one witnessed a "bonspeil; for although between the curlers of the north and numerous golfing clubs have been started south of the Forth at Carsebreck or Lochin England curling is little known. In winnoch, but what is known as a provinthe north, when the frost is keen and the cial bonspeil a struggle between certain ice holding, it is the game of games. parishes for the medals of the Royal CalRich and poor enjoy it alike, the peasant edonian Curling Club. It is a bitterly claiming an equal footing on the icy board cold morning, and the sun is just indicatwith the peer- everything being forgot- ing his wished-for arrival by a bright glow, ten in the enthusiastic enjoyment of this which shows the black line of trees on most invigorating of pastimes. Here you the hills to the east. With icicles on may meet the earl playing third hand to your beard, your frozen breath, and silver, the directions, or rather commands, of icy threads, your frozen perspiration, his own coachman; there a baronet skip- hanging like gossamer from your rough, pit or captained by his own gardener. homespun trousers, you make your way The one game in the north which is truly to the appointed rendezvous, the village orthodox, you will find the village minis- inn. Already there are many keen curlter yielding to the admonitions of the ers gathered at the door waiting for the most unruly and irregular of his flock, for vehicle, their curling-stone handles suswreck though ye may be as a man, ye pended round their necks, their besoms may yet be a king among curlers. Just in the hollows of their elbows, and their now no other game is thought of in Scot- hands seeking warmth in the bottoms of land; indeed, save shooting no other their pockets. Soon you are all huddled sport can be safely indulged in, as golf, together in the rude waggonette used by the boast about which is that it can be tourists and fishers in summer time, and played all the year round, is impossible in funerals, wedding parties, and curlingfrosty weather, unless there is a coating matches in the winter. Joke follows joke of snow on the links to save the club- and story follows story, and laughter and heads, which would snap off on coming merriment is only broken at times by the in contact with the unyielding ground. remarks of anxious skips as to the condiLairds, tenants, ministers, masters of tion in which the ice will be, with upward hounds, masons (the latter are great pa- glances, to see if any clouds are about to trons of the game, owing to their being indicate a thaw. Arrived at the loch-side, frozen out of employment and their ability generally some lonely moorland sheet to shape and polish their own curling- little known save to the wild duck and the stones) are every day just now to be grouse cock, you find the carts which have found mixed up together on the ice in been sent on ere daylight with the curlfriendly rivalry, it may be for parish jugs ing-stones all drawn up on the bank, and or kettles and medals presented by the the secretary busily engaged in taking Royal Caledonian Curling Club, meal and the entries from the various skips. The coals for the poor, or perhaps happiest draw follows, and as the papers are taken matches of all "beef and greens" din- from the hat, parish and skip are called ners for the players themselves. The out thus: "Wanlockhead, Davidson, amount of good which is done to the peo- against New Cumnock, Ivie Campbell." ple by curling in the removal of parochial | As the names are announced away fly the disputes and bickerings may be said to curlers four aside to the pond, where soon correspond with the benefit which is said all are busily engaged in sweeping and to be derived by the soil from the frost in scraping the ice and forming a rink. First destroying numerous insects which are a ring of seven feet diameter is drawn. lying dormant below the surface, ready to This is generally known as "the hoose.' spring into life and annoy the farmer An inner ring, four feet in diameter, next under the first rays of the summer sun. is made for the purpose of letting the

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players know at any time what stones are lying nearest to the centre. Inside the latter ring there is another circle, two and a half feet in diameter, in the centre of which is the pot-lid, or tee, of the diameter of an average-sized curling-stone. From the centre of the tee all winners are marked. Thirty-eight yards off another set of rings is drawn of similar size. Then at right angles to the central line between the two, and seven yards off, hog scores are formed, failing to cross which stones played purposely slow or otherwise are removed from the ice. An imaginary sweeping score crosses both rings or houses, and not till a stone has crossed this line are the members of the side opposed to the player entitled to sweep the ice, unless it is before one of their own stones, struck and impelled forward by the stone just played. In the latter case every effort is made to get the stone into the "hoose" where it may count as a shot. Should it happen that a stone passes the tee, brooms are at once plied by the members of the opposing side in order that it may be taken completely out of the counting ring, or too far back to prove of use. Much of the excitement of the game is derived from the sweeping, as in numerous cases it is sometimes all but impossible to judge the rate at which the stone is travelling. When apparently delivered with too little force the sweepers will rush forward to mid-ice (the sweeping boundary), but dare not ply their brooms until they get the word from the guiding skip, who cries at them to keep their "hands up, not a corve [broom], my lads; he's strong enough till it comes to the hog score." When to his watchful eye it appears to be lagging he at once enjoins them to "bring him on," and the brooms are soon at work on the ice in front as smartly handled as the whips of jockeys at the close of a wellcontested struggle on a racecourse. How difficult it is to judge the pace of curlingstones and the improvement which may be made in their speed is instanced by the fact that on numerous occasions the playing sweepers have brought laggards which threatened to stop every few inches from the hog score into the house, where,

as if taking fresh life, it sails out across the tee, and inch by inch yielding to the invitations of the besoms of the opposing "sweepers" goes out on the other side amidst roars of laughter and loud cries of "Weel soopit!"

Throughout the bonspeil, which generally consists of twenty-one heads, the hills resound with shouts of "Weel played!" "Weel laid doon, sir," from the skip to the player; then cries to the knights of the besom to "soop him up," followed as often by the command to "Let him alone, he will be here soon eneuch." Then there are anxiously spoken requests to "clap a gaird" or " chip a winner"-i.c., remove the stone nearest the tee by passing through a port among the guarding stones, and striking out by hitting all that is visible, sometimes only a couple of inches, the shot nearest the pot-lid. Now and then the player is requested to "wick and curl in," that is, cannon off an outlying shot, and, by means of a twist applied to the stone in delivery, which brings about the same "side" or 66 effect as "" screw at billiards, work into the centre, which cannot be directly reached, owing to the shots which lie in front. It is from this "curl" or twist that the name of the pastime is derived, though it is sometimes known as "the roaring game," from the peculiar reverberating sound which a particularly hard played or "roaring" stone makes among the hills on its passage along the ice. Sometimes, too, it is designated "the channel stane," which is also the name of a well-known song written upon it by the Ettrick Shepherd, the stones being shaped out of huge blocks cut from the channels of certain noted burns, notably that of Burnockwater in Ayrshire, and Crawfordjohn in the upper ward of Lanarkshire. Of late, however, beautiful curling-stones have been cut from Ailsa Craig, which when polished up are exceedingly pretty to look at, and have the reputation of being very keen on the ice. Curling altogether, indeed, is a most exhilarating sport, and has been played with equal zest by peer and peasant, while its praises have been sung by nearly every Scottish poet of eminence.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

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A BACK-LYING farm but lately taken in ;
Forlorn hill-slopes and grey, without a tree;
And at their base a waste of stony lea
Through which there creeps, too small to make
a din,

Even where it slides over a rocky linn,
A stream, unvisited of bird or bee,

Its flowerless banks a bare sad sight to see. All round, with ceaseless plaint, though spent and thin,

Like a lost child far-wandered from its home,
A querulous wind all day doth coldly roam.

Yet here, with sweet calm face, tending a cow,
Upon a rock a girl bareheaded sat,
Singing unheard, while, with unlifted brow,
She twined the long wan grasses in her hat.

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II.

So sat the maiden: to the outward eye

The flower-like genius of a flowerless waste
Dropt from the hand of Providence in haste,
And left neglected here to wane and die.
And yet, who knows what youthful fancies, ay,
What heavenly visitants, descending, graced
That lonely life, and with bright dreams
displaced

The cloudy terrors of the natural sky?

Heaven lies about us in our infancy,
And Heaven is not a thing of sight or sense;
Here on this desolate flower-forsaken lea,
It opens to the eye of innocence:
There is an Eden for us all, till we
Let in a devil who straightway drives us
thence.
Blackwood's Magazine.

GONE AWAY.

I WILL not think of thee as cold and dead,
Low-lying in the grave that I can see,
I would not stand beside when life had fled
And left thy body only, there for me.

I never saw thee with thy pale arms crossed
On that unbeating heart that was mine own,
They only told me all that I had lost

When from thy breast thy lovely soul had
flown.

Thou wert not that! and so I turned away, And left the house when other mourners stayed;

Nor did I come on that unhappy day

When in the tomb that dreadful thing was
laid.

To me thou art not dead, but gone an hour
Into another country fair and sweet,
Where thou shalt by some undiscovered power
Be kept in youth and beauty till we meet.

Thus I can feel that any given day,

I could rejoin thee, gone awhile before To foreign climes, to pass dull weeks away

By wandering on the broad Atlantic shore; Where each long wave that breaks upon the sand

Bears thee a message from me waiting here, And every breath spring breathes across the land

Seems as a sign that thou art lingering near.

So I will think of thee as living there,
And I will keep thy grave in sweetest bloom,
As if thou gavest a garden to my care

E'er thou departed from our English gloom.
Then when my day is done, and I too die,
'Twill be as if I journeyed to thy side;
And when all quiet we together lie,
We shall not know that we have ever died.
All The Year Round.

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