William Livingston was born in Gartmain, in Islay, in the year 1808. There are not many of his kith and kin in that island now, nor is there any evidence that his humble progenitors were anything else than some of those nomadic individuals or families, of a Celto-Germanic character, unconnected particularly with any of the well-known clans, but who, in the political economy of the Highlands were ranged under the name of “siol Dhomhnuill,” or some other, and in latter days became more unreasonably Celtic in their race antipathies than the purer Celts themselves. The late notorious Mitchell and the present leaders of the Irish Home Rulers are Irish instances of what has been stated. The bard Livingston is a Scottish instance; and the proximity of his native place to Ireland’s northern coasts may have some suggestive value, especially when his training, or rather no training, and the sources of his historical and social knowledge are taken into consideration. There is another Livingstone of Highland extraction—his family were originally from Mull—who has had some connection with Glasgow like his namesake the bard; but Dr David Livingstone, the devoted and distinguished African traveller, turned his attention and directed his labours to the amelioration of the condition of Africa’s benighted and dusky children. Livingstone, the traveller, regarded all the sons of humanity, whether they were black or white, of whatever race, as the sons of the one great Father, equally good and precious in his sight, and all of one blood; but Livingston the bard devoted all his energies to the patriotic rehearsal, in prose and verse, of the doughty deeds and ancient prowess of our Scottish ancestors; with him the Scotsman alone ought to occupy the position of lord of creation, especially if it could be proved he was a Celt,—and the Englishman especially, on account of his continual oppression of the smaller kingdom of Scotland, he, like Irishmen of a certain order, regarded with intense dislike, as the universal tyrant throughout the civilised world. The bones of the distinguished traveller Dr Livingstone were deposited in their final resting-place in Westminster Abbey amid the sympathetic tears of all civilised nations. He was a cosmopolitan patriot, one of the few extraordinary men whom God vouchsafes in the progress of the ages for the enlightenment of the dark places of the earth and the promotion of the highest interests of universal humanity. Livingston, the bard, whose pursuit after knowledge under unusually unfavourable conditions, and whose indomitable perseverance and fervour of heart were not unlike those of David Livingstone had but a very limited vision of the functions of his mission into the world. The duties which he assigned to himself were the magnifying of Scotland’s fame and glory, the lashing in Wallace and Bruce fashion of the Teutonic intruder from the south of the Tweed, and the special vindication