Give me my Highland dress, ’Tis grand beyond compare; Give me my Highland maid, Sweet, smiling, young, and fair; Then banish sleep and care, From eve to rosy morn, In happy love beneath our plaid, The proudest dress that’s worn. Ross is one of the best known and best loved of all the Gaelic bards. His career, so similar to that of Keats, ends so prematurely and pathetically that his memory has become engraven on the hearts of all who hear his story and love to sing his songs. EWEN MACLACHLAN. Ewen MacLachlan, a poet of real culture, sweetness, and light, was born in 1775, in Torracaltin, Coiruanan, where his ancestors, who originally came from Morven, were for several generations. His great-grandfather was a bard of note. He was educated first in the parish school of Fort-William, and afterwards in King’s College, Aberdeen. While carrying on his studies he was tutor successively in the family of Cameron of Camishy, in that of Cameron of Clunes, and in that of Macmillan of Glenpean. He distinguished himself highly at school and at the University, especially in classics. He intended to enter the Church, but on the eve of taking license some friends dissuaded him from taking the step, recommending him to wait, and aim at a professorial chair. Among these was the gentle author of “The Minstrel,” Professor Beattie, who thought much of MacLachlan, and became his fast friend. In 1798 MacLachlan published some of his own productions in Allan Dall’s volume, which he himself committed to writing for the Blind Bard. These were the “Songs of the Seasons,” etc., and several books of Homer’s Iliad translated into Gaelic heroic verse. In 1818 he published his “Metrical Effusions,” where Greek, Latin, English, and Gaelic poems appear. He was engaged by the Highland Society of Scotland to compile a Gaelic dictionary. For this work he was eminently qualified, being intimately acquainted with old Gaelic, as well as with Eastern and classical languages. He died before the work was finished, in 1822, in the 47th year of his age. When he died he was head master of the Grammar School of Old Aberdeen, a post for which his classical attainments peculiarly fitted him. A love-song by MacLachlan—_Gur gile mo Leannan_—is still among the most popular in the language. He himself has furnished us with an English equivalent, which will give a fair idea of the more tender qualities of his genius. These simple and pretty verses, usually sung to a plaintive air, come to us laden with the purity and freshness of the mountain breeze:— Not the swan on the lake, or the foam on the shore, Can compare with the charms of the maid I adore; Not so white is the new milk that flows o’er the pail, Or the snow that is show’r’d from the boughs of the vale.