After the Celtic poems and translations of the Bard of Badenoch had begun to realise fame and fortune for their author, other writers of varying gifts sought to enter into similar labours. For literary students the Gaelic realm of letters hitherto had been obscure and untrodden fields; but now all at once the old Celtic world of the Scottish past became alive with heroes of magnificent deeds and bards of illustrious renown. The refinement, the culture, the heroic courage of grand old Scots, in the environment of the purest chivalry, kindled everywhere admiration throughout Europe. People wearied of the artificialities and platitudes of the eighteenth century, allowed themselves to get into raptures over the healthy pictures of ancient life which these Celtic compositions unfolded. The blind old Ossian was then more popular than the blind old Homer, and all “Old Lays” connected with the Highlands and Islands acquired a value which they never had before. There was a general rage for Gaelic old lays and ballads, and a search was instituted throughout the land for such productions. Bards, senachies, reciters, and singers of every description and every rank in life were requisitioned for the supply of ancient Ossianic ballads. One good result of this was to make the Highlands better known, and to help in the removal of old race-prejudices which had all along existed in some quarters, but which had become greatly intensified through the recent Jacobite rebellions for which the Highlanders as a people were not primarily responsible. John Knox may be said to have made the Scotland of his time reforming, radical, and religious, and Sir Walter Scott the Scotland of the nineteenth century romantic in verse and story; and James Macpherson may be said with equal force to have made the Highlands in the eighteenth century. It has been said that old Celtic lays and ballads became then the fashion. The pioneer in the field, it ought to be remembered, however, was not the Badenoch tutor. Three or four years before Macpherson was heard of there died, in June 1756, in the 30th year of his age, JEROME STONE,