stamp this Highland peasant as no ordinary man.” In 1850, in consequence of ill-health, he visited Canada, and while here received an appointment to the Customs at Kingston. He never solicited any favour from the Conservatives, and the overthrow of the Mackenzie government in 1878 effectually quenched his hopes of preferment, and two years afterwards he was superannuated. No man ought to know Mr. MacColl better than his friend, Charles Sangster, a poet of considerable repute, who speaks thus of him in his article in Wilson’s work on Scottish, bards:— “In private life he is, both by precept and example, all that could be desired. He has an intense love for all that is really good and beautiful, and a true and manly scorn for all that is false, time-serving, or hypocritical; there is no narrow-mindedness, no bigotry in his soul. In the domestic circle, all the warmth in the man’s heart—the full flow of genuine feeling and affection—is ever uppermost. He is a thoroughly earnest man, in whose daily walks and conversation as well as in his actions, Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’ is acted out in verity. In his friendship he is sincere; in his dislikes equally so. He is thoroughly Scottish in his leanings. His national love burns with intensity. In poetry, he is not merely zealous, but enthusiastic, and he carries his natural force of character into all he says and does.” All his virtues he inherited from his parents. Among Evan MacColl’s old country friends have been John Mackenzie, of “The Beauties;” the late R. Carruthers, LL.D., Hugh Miller, the brothers Sobeiskie Stewart, at Eilean-Aigais, and drank with them out of a _cuach_, once the property of Prince Charlie; Dugald Moore, author of “Scenes before the Flood,” and “The Bard of the North;” Alexander Rogers, the author of “Behave yourself before Folk,” Rev. Dr. Norman McLeod, Dr. Chambers, Bailey, the author of “Festus;” Leighton, author of “The Christening of the Bairn;” J. Stuart Blackie, the great Edinburgh professor; James Logan, author of “The Scottish Gael;” Fraser, of _Fraser’s Magazine_, and Hugh Fraser, the publisher of “Leabhar nan Cnoc.” He is a member of the Royal Canadian Literary and Scientific Society, founded by the Marquis of Lorne, and was the guest several times of his lordship and the Princess Louise at Rideau Hall, Ottawa. MacColl has been twice married. Of a family of nine sons and daughters, Evan, the poet’s eldest son, has been educated for the ministry, and is now pastor of the Congregational Church at Middleville, Ontario. His eldest daughter’s productions have merited a very high admiration, and the more youthful members of his family give promise of proving worthy of the stock from whence they sprang. John Massie, of Keene, a brother poet, not having heard from the “Bard of Lock Fyne” for over six weeks after having written him a letter, thus addressed the Limestone City:—