In youth he was very ardent and affectionate, but as he advanced in years the hardships of his life and the long periods of solitude he passed through seemed to mellow the natural demonstrativeness of his nature, and he appeared to me to have suffered that chastening which all men derive as their blessed portion from communion with Nature in her loving and silent moods; the very ruggedness of mountain solitudes speaking to the heart of man with a solemnity no tongue can reach. A subtle writer in the London _Spectator_ of the 14th September last, in the course of an article on "Clouds," has attempted to describe the idealising lesson of her works to the spirit of man as "the tranquil rhythm of this fair Nature, the hurrying throb of the human interests it measures, there is the eternal poem of human life." In this wise, a subdued sweetness in William McNair's nature remained, which was a transfiguration of his ardent, buoyant, somewhat impulsive early manhood. On the cricket-field he was in his heartiest element. Men would make a scratch team at the sound of his voice, just to be led by him as captain. No mean field or batsman, he excelled in bowling. His resource in taking wickets was only equalled by the good temper with which adversaries walked away from the field with their bats after that terrible McNair had done for their score, or their hopes of one. I have seen him demoralise a whole team by the way in which he would take wicket after wicket, within an hour, by the artful way in which he adapted the style of his bowling to the character of the man who fenced him at the wicket. Boys were simply enamoured of him, for, by that instinct which never fails the young, he won their heartfelt devotion by his quick discernment of the weaknesses and proclivities of all the young with whom he ever came in contact. I have seen my youngest son--a lad of eleven--after years of separation from him, when the boy met him in London, in 1884, nestle on his knee quite spontaneously, to listen to some of his Kafiristan exploits not touched on in his paper. His beaming, manly laugh of amusement and tender compassion over the boy's simplicity when asked by my ingenuous lad why he did not kill a lot of those fellows during those days of danger, I fancy I see while I write. Indeed, this keen participation in the nature and delights of the young was the secret of his success during the Kafiristan exploration. It was the touchstone of his sympathy with the various barbaric tribes with whom he had to come in contact, and whose nature he did not require to learn, for he had already sounded all that was human in its touching variety. Love and sympathy for man as man, could alone give this knowledge and furnish this magic key to hearts in wilds unknown. No human system of mental training could ever do it. In this connection I smile somewhat at Dr. Leitner's profound German dialectic in the discussion on the paper read by McNair over the preliminary preparation