of the Celtic character from the continual aspersions of the uncircumcised Saxon. He did his work with a will, but there was no need for it. It was as uncalled for as Thomson’s work on _Liberty_, which, undertaken in an unwise moment, notwithstanding its fine poetry, the public, not without reason, condemned to “gather spiders and to harbour dust.” When highly needed work goes without its reward it cannot be a matter of surprise that unnecessary ebullitions of patriotism do not always pay; so poor Livingston, like not a few of the order of Bards, died somewhat neglected in an obscure street of the philanthropic city of Glasgow. But he did not die unknown to a few sympathising friends. The members of the Islay Association and others were always anxious to relieve the necessities of the poet when his temper and ways made it possible to be of some service to him. In some respects his own independence was like that proud independence of his native country, of which he was so fervent a singer. He died in 1870, his wife predeceasing him a few weeks. Much of the character of Livingston is traceable to his upbringing. In youth he received no education, and his earliest training when a boy was herding cattle. Was not Rob Donn, the Sutherlandshire Bard, also a herd? But it was thought fit to set the embryo herd-poet to learn a trade, and he served his time at tailoring, which he carried on in a desultory fashion all his days, and in which he was intelligently and sympathetically assisted by his frugal wife. He was thus a grown-up man before he got any education, and all he ever got was self-taught; and had his pride permitted him to tell the story of his struggles after knowledge, English, Latin, French, Greek, and a little Hebrew, it would furnish an interesting chapter in the annals of the pursuit of learning under difficulties. The manuscripts of his in possession of the writer show the extraordinary pains he took with his work—his endeavours after a purer English style, even when well-advanced in years—and what a long time he was a wooer of the muses before he arrived at the intensity of poetical conception which distinguished his later poetry. His earlier efforts do not seem to have been very successful, and they are of a somewhat humorous character. He almost stands alone among the prominent Gaelic bards in having given us no love songs. The reason is that he was probably a married man before the dormant powers of his poetic nature awakened. While there is much tenderness in all his descriptions of nature, the reader of his poetry must feel that he is always surrounded by an atmosphere of martial enthusiasm and intense patriotic sentiment. He was too wise to attempt the singing of a passion the power of which did not evidently permeate his nature; but the love of fatherland, the story of the gory struggle of Scottish independence were to him all-absorbing sources of inspiration; and to these he always turns,