Enough remains to entitle Norman Macleod to a certain recognition in Scottish letters. Among the ‘Character Sketches’ there are some striking portraits--_Mr. Joseph Walker_, for instance, the highly respectable man, who never drank, never cheated, never lied, and yet ‘could do a very sneaking, mean thing.’ That is a subtle study, vigorously composed. As a writer of fiction it is remarkable that Macleod should be forgotten, when work similar to his, only duller, is boomed over all the earth. His stories, it is true, have a set religious aim, but that should be no offence in days when the most belauded fiction is nothing if not didactic, nay, when the novel is made a pulpit for the promulgation of moral heresy. If art in fiction is to be strangled, religion may as well be the executioner as the last indecency. The evangelical tale, no doubt, is usually in a sense immoral, not only taking mere church piety for the height of human perfection and setting up as its reward material success, but deliberately distorting, in the name of Jesus, the truth of nature and the facts of life. Macleod purposed to write stories which should be religious, and yet do no violence to reality. And his characters are plainly genuine, except, perhaps, the hero of his first attempt--_The Old Lieutenant and his Son_. Ned is to be a sailor and an exemplary Christian. Fall he does indeed, but not very far, and we know for sure that the author will set him up again at once, and higher than ever, on the plane of paragons. A sea-captain may be a good and pious man, but if, like Ned, he has chosen his profession at the cost of a mother’s tears, driven by the need of adventure-- ‘God help me save I take my part Of danger on the roaring sea: A devil rises in my heart Far worse than any death to me’--