No more we see that guiding Light; Oft did he tell in words of might The danger great to Albin nigh In clouds of gloom athwart our sky. Well in our slumber may we start: He warned, ere hence he did depart, That from the ominous day to come He would be taken to his home. As Lot was saved from Sodom’s fate Ere God poured out His fury great, So judgment from the Lord we dread Since good Macphail, our guide, is dead! In the “Elegy” we find several good verses bearing on the subject of patronage in the Church of Scotland. They show us how galling that yoke of Parliament was always felt to be; and how clearly Bible-cultured people, of no pretence to a knowledge of the mysteries of statecraft, discern the radical ills by which communities and individuals are fatally afflicted. It was only in 1874 that statesmen legislatively acknowledged the evils which were so patent to the poetic eye of MacLauchlan of Abriachan a century before:— PATRONAGE. Our Mother, by State’s wiles untaught, A thoughtless slumber low has brought; Dark perils grew before her face, In watchless and unfaithful days. Her true-soul’d witnesses are rare; The gospel now so few declare; Our secret griefs we cease to hide Since conscience everywhere has died. Though Patronage had her interred, Like Lazarus unsepulchered,— Forsaken in the bonds of death, All stinking with corruption’s breath; Yet when her Head the word has spoken The stone is raised; Death’s power is broken; The Patron’s power disappears, And we’ll have praise instead of tears. The “State of the World,” or the worldly, is another poem of considerable merit. It not unlikely represents much of the style of thinking and manner of the bard in his preaching addresses. Indeed our religious bards in general give us a good deal of general preaching and exhortation in their productions. Buchanan has done so; so has Macgregor; while Grant’s hymns, as well as those of Dr Macdonald, are very much evangelical sermons in verse. The following translation is as literal as the exigencies of rhyme and metre can admit:— THE WORLDLY. When proudly they stand On the heights of the world The storm then descends And below they are hurled! When they are least anxious They’re hurried away, For iron misfortune, Will brook no delay. When life’s breath is going, At grim Death’s command, Think not thine own power Had helped thee to stand, Think not those weak hands Had preserved thee thy strength; Thy frail members yield To Death’s summons at length.