The character and habits of the people at the beginning of the eighteenth century harmonised well with the nature of the place where they fixed their habitations. From this rather inaccessible nest they carried on for years with impunity a regular system of smuggling. They had every natural advantage on their side; they were reluctant to give up a profitable though nefarious traffic, with the lawfulness of which their consciences were not much concerned; and so hitherto they had refused to submit themselves to the more civilised conditions under which the people around them began to settle. This was the sphere of labour assigned by the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge to the poet-evangelist MacLauchlan, who was virtually the first to preach the Gospel to the people of Abriachan. LAUCHLAN MACLAUCHLAN. This bard-evangelist was born about the year 1729. He came of a family who occupied for generations a portion of the farm of Kinmylies, called Balmaclauchlan, near the town of Inverness. He was about sixteen years of age when the Rebellion of 1745 broke out, and remembered well seeing the wretched fugitives from that disastrous field of battle being cut down in their flight by the English soldiery. While quite a young man he was selected by the society already mentioned to be one of their evangelist-teachers at Culduthel, some three miles from Inverness. After a few years of successful labour there he was sent to Abriachan, where by the weight and general excellence of his character and the judicious exercise of his talents, the people soon became quite transformed. It is said that the godly people of the district used to travel ten and even twenty miles to hear the bard MacLauchlan exhort. He was twice married, but had no family by his first wife. In his second wife he found a truly congenial companion. While he was an admirer of the famous Hector Macphail, minister of Resolis, she was equally devoted to the no less famous James Calder, minister of Croy, the two being, along with Mr Alexander Fraser of Kirkhill, the most eminent ministers in the north at that time. The poet died in the year 1801, and his remains lie interred in the churchyard of Kirkhill. MacLauchlan was evidently a remarkable man in his day, and appears to have possessed very fair culture. An English letter of his addressed to his son, a divinity student, afterwards the Rev. James MacLauchlan of Moy, shows how well he could write English, and how well versed he had been in evangelical theology—“I say when two things are awanting, to go along with either the doctrines of law or gospel has little or no effect; _i.e._, when either wants a homely or particular application. It may be sound morality or sound gospel (even when both differ), yet so general that attentive hearers may hear, and never be made to cry out, _What shall we do to be saved?_ Secondly, when law or gospel is not attended with the operation of the Spirit