THE SCOTLAND OF YESTERDAY.* AT one time volumes of Scottish
reminiscences were common on publishers' lists. From Lord Cockburn's Memorials onward, there flowed a goodly stream, and the house of Blackwood was foremost in their production. And then some years ago they ceased, and we wondered whether all the good stories had been told, and whether all the people who were in touch with the great past had vanished. Mrs. Seller comes with her delightful book to relieve our fears, and to satisfy our slightly morbid appetite for that gossip which time has almost hallowed into history. Born in 1829, she married when very young the late Mr. W. Y. Sellar, afterwards the Professor of Latin in Edin- burgh University, and perhaps our greatest historian of Roman literature. Her husband had had a distinguished career at Balliol, and for the rest of her life Mrs. Seller saw as much of Oxford as of Scottish society. Their first home was in St. Andrews, where Mr. Sellar was Professor of Greek. (He said, when he changed his Chair for Latin, that he felt as if he had "been jilted by a beautiful and exquisite woman, and bad married an admirable matron and grown really fond of her.") But much of the year, in the pleasant fashion of Scottish professorships, was spent in the country, at the beautiful West Highland house of Ardtornish, which belonged to Mr. Seller's father, in Galloway, or on the Continent. To see them came all manner of visitors, including many of the chief names in Victorian literature ; and the Sellar household must have bad a soothing atmosphere, for nowhere did great men so unbend or saturnine men talk so readily. Scotland, too, had its own intellectual aristocracy, and not the least pleasant of Mrs. Seller's pages are those in which she tells of the eminent professors, lawyers, and divines who made Edinburgh a good place to live in. Her manner of writing could scarcely be bettered. It is simply good talk, free from any taint of self-consciousness, and the touch of the family chronicler in it all is an added attraction. It is the voice of age speaking wisely for the entertainment and profit of a later generation. The book has another merit. Volumes of gossip and recollections often amuse at the expense of reticence and good taste. But Mrs. Seller can interest without such con- descension. She makes it clear on every page that, in Lady Louisa Stuart's phrase, she has " an old-fAbhioned partiality for a gentlewoman."
Jowett was one of the chief visitors, and we know no portrait of that remarkable man which exhibits him in a more amiable light. His letter to Mr. Seller on his engagement is full of true kindliness and a worldly wisdom more delicate than that with which the Master was usually credited. There is an excellent story of his being asked to occupy a Presby- terian pulpit in Fife, and astounding the fishwives, who had come to hear the everlasting gospel, with a polite discourse on the "Art of Conversation." Tennyson in 1853 came to Ardtornish with Francis Turner Palgrave, and was for him in a mild, not to say playful, mood, making nonsense rhymes, and reciting his own poetry. Herbert Spencer came too, and fished zealously on some peculiar principle of his own inven- tion. He thought Mrs. Seller bad the most "rapid cerebration" of any one he had known:— " He was full of fads and fancies about his health ; was afraid to get into an argument lest it disturbed his somniferous faculties'; and once when Mr. Jowett was staying with us and we were going to spend the afternoon at Mr. Smith's place, so great was his fear of an encounter of wits that he lay down with indiarubber balls in his ears,—an invention of his own, which proved so successful that he fell asleep, and when he awoke, like a giant refreshed, Mr. Jowett had come and gone."
We are given a spirited picture of Carlyle's great Rectorial Address in Edinburgh, when be cast aside his heavy robes, and in his weak voice delivered an extempore speech which seems to have had all the effect of the greatest oratory. Mrs. Seller went to see him in Cheyne Row in the summer of 1880 :—
"When I entered the sitting-room, so often described that it seemed familiar, I thought it was empty, but I saw the coverlet on the sofa move, and, on going nearer, Mr. Carlyle—shrunk and attenuated—was under it, with his face to the walL He put his band over hie shoulder to shake mine, and on my asking him how he was, he answered, Waiting for my latter end.' `I hope with- out pain and discomfort,' I said. With a considerable degree of both,' he replied."
• Recollections and Impressions. By K M. Bella'. Told= t W. Blaeltwood and Sone. [10s. ed. net.]
One of the most interesting reminiscences is of Tourgenieff, whom the author met at Balliol when he was in Oxford to receive the degree of D.O.L. He spoke much of happiness. "If it did not come, why pursue it P It is like health : when you don't think of it, it is there. Happiness has no to- morrow, no yesterday; it thinks not on the past, it dreams not of the future." Of the great Oxford names that appear in these pages, the most attractive, because the most mysterious, is Henry Smith. He left no work behind him by which a later generation can judge of an academic reputa- tion which was, perhaps, the highest of his day. Mrs. Sellar has one story of him which deserves quotation :— " A Mr. Simon, who chose to pronounce his name Simane, was dining with Mr. and Miss Smith, and she said to her brother, Why does he not pronounce his name in the usual manner ? ' 'Oh,' he replied, 'he is afraid lest Satan should desire to have him, and sift him as wheat!"
Of Lord Bowen, another intimate friend of her husband's, there is much to tell, and for the benefit 'of collectors of Bowen stories we quote a riddle of his which we have not seen before. "Why is a stepfather an inexpensive article P " —" Because cis n'est que is premier pas qui e,ofite."
But good as all the chapters are, we prefer the Scottish recollections. Others have told us of Jowett and Tennyson and Carlyle, but no one has given us such a charming picture of that accomplished, broad-minded, and yet highly idiomatic society which grew up around the intellectual aristocracy of Scotland in the latter half of last century. What strikes the reader is its complete freedom from pedantry. Mrs. Seller complains that the world seems to be less high-spirited than • it was in her youth. We find her enlivening parties of academic dignitaries by "dressing up," like the famous Miss Stirling Graham, and there is throughout a flavour of innocent and witty " high-finks" which used to be a characteristic of Scottish society. For one thing, there was no barrier of misunderstanding between the classes; gentlefolk could and did talk the broad Doric when they pleased, and this comprehension added vastly to the humours of life. Where but in St. Andrews could we find part of the Professor's salary paid in kale by the farmers,—that is, they were bound to 'supply so many fowls, or their equivalent in money. But it did not do to trust to this in giving a dinner-party, for the answer to your applica- tion was very likely to be: " We has nee fools to-day, but we can gie you a cart o' manure." The book is full of such pictures of the past, and of the men and women who lived in that old world. The sketch of Dr. John Brown is perhaps the best; but we have also Principal Shairp, Sir John Skelton, the Ferriers and Grants, Fleeming Jenkin, Sir David Brewster, Sir Hugh Playfair, and a score of others whose names are familiar north of the Tweed. We are grateful, too, for the portrait of Mrs. Gordon of Kenmore, the last direct descendant of a great Jaoobite house, who had the manners and charm of the old regime combined with the keenest and friendliest outlook on all things modern. We have quoted enough to show what a delightful book of memories Mrs. Seller has compiled. It is like a gallery of pictures by some later Reeburn in which we can meet again friends whom we have long missed.
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