THE STARLING.* DR. Ktazon's writing is always worth reading, often

worth studying. We have ere now observed that his weightiest sentences are often uttered in so light a tone, they scarcely strike with their full force till afterwards recalled. This is pre-eminently the case in the little work before us. It has been Dr. M.acleod's fate often to combat the sturdy prejudices and intense narrow-minded- ness of the Church he loves, and one of whose chief ornaments he is. But the keen-edged weapon he wields so well he has rarely used to better purpose than in the simple story before us.

Adam Mercer, his hero, is cousin to John Spence, gamekeeper, and as a young man has an irresistible taste for poaching, in which exciting occupation he is at length discovered by the old gamekeeper, who looks on a tendency to poach as human nature. 4' But ye ken human natur's wicked, desperately wicked, and afore I was a keeper my natur was full as wicked as yours—full, Adam, if no waur. But I have repented ever sin' I was made keeper." We see intuitively the twinkle in the old man's eye as he speaks, and expect the convicted delinquent to escape condign punishment. But it is not quite so easy for a keeper not to do his .duty; and Adam, to avoid bringing troubles upon his relative or disgrace upon himself, promises to enlist for a soldier. It is on his return many years afterwards, after seeing much hard service, winning the rank of sergeant, and settling down to his old trade as shoemaker in the parish of Drumfylie, twenty miles from his former home, that we first make his acquaintance. A fine char- .acter is the old sergeant, with his erect bearing, his high principles, Ida fiery spirit cooled by many years of hard service and the disci- pline of military life. His quiet sympathy with every form of dis- tress and his ready aid made him a welcome guest in many a home- stead which had reason to bless the day when he first crossed its doorstep. It was not long before by a unanimous vote of the con- gregation Mercer was elected to the office of Elder in the parish, an event which was followed shortly by his marriage. Adam was grey-haired and getting into years when this took place, but Emerson has well said, "While we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but young. Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so." And so it was with Adam Mercer ; he had preserved the child's heart in the midst of the full-grown flock, and Katie Mitchell found herself loved with a "freshness, fullness, and strength " which did not grow less as the years went on. A boy was born to them, and during his short life Adam had caught and tamed for him a starling, and taught him to speak with great precision. "It's first and most important lesson was, 'I'm Charlie's bairn.'" The sergeant had also taught him to repeat 'the words, "A man's a man for a' that," and to whistle a bar or two of " Whall be King but Charlie?" Katie at first scarcely liked the starling, she was sure it was not canny for a bird to speak sae weel, and has only a too distinct recollection of an over-edu- cated parrot, who, "When the minister was veesitin' and exhortin' in Willie Jamieson's house, cried out, 'Stap your blethers!' just ahint the minister, wha gied sic a loup, and thocht it a cunning device of Satan." But all little differences ended with the death of their boy ; from that day "Charlie's bairn" was the most cherished member of the little household, till one luckless bright Sunday morning, guided by his good or, as at that moment it Seemed, his bad angel, Adam Mercer hung the bird out in the sunshine, and he, as in gratitude bound, "began to pour out more confessions and testimonies than had been heard for weeks." The subtle irony that runs through the whole of this and the next chapter must be read entire to be fully appreciated. We com- mend them to the careful attention of every Kirk Session in Scot- land. We content ourselves with the barest morsels of fact, con- scious that in appropriating them we leave the aroma and, we must add, the pungency behind.

The group of happy children who gather round to look with wonder on the starling, to shout with laughter at his oracular statements, and yet speak carefully of the bird, "for wee Charlie's dead," had their unwonted Sabbath merriment disturbed by the sudden apparition of the portly parish minister, the Rev. Daniel Porteous, at sight of whom the children made off with a terrified shout, "as if they had seen a wild beast." And yet the minister was not a bad man, only a man "fond of quoting the text,

• The Staring. By Norman Macleod, D.D. London: AloxanderStrahan. 'First pure—then peaceable,'" as if the second clause were reserved for some distant day. A man who had a strong

will, "or, as he always called it when in a passion, his con- science." A man apt to blow from his pipe a "huge soap bubble of what he called 'principle,' which, when fully developed, he contemplated with admiration, as if it were a glorious globe of thought." "Feelings and tender affections were, in his estima- tion, generally dangerous, and always weak commodities." But within this bard shell Dr. Macleod believes there was a kernel. It was clear, however, on this particular morning the shell was not cracked. Here was a bird daring to provoke to Sabbath- breaking half the children in the parish, and that bird hung out, as if by the instigation of Satan himself, hung out to the chil- dren's view by an Elder of his own Church! The minister was confounded. "lie put on his spectacles and looked at the bird, and the bird, without any spectacles, returned the inquiring gaze with most wonderful composure." The full force of the scene which follows will scarcely be appreciated by those who do not understand with what crushing force the condemnation of a Kirk Session can fall on any of its members. The minister, with his broad assertion that the sergeant had insulted every feeling

the most sacred, besides injuring the religious habits of the young, looks like a caricature, when, in fact, he is a photo- graph under a not very powerful microscope. His demand that the bird should be destroyed, though startling at first, is really in strict accordance with the nature of the man, whose imagination had never penetrated beyond the range of his "principles." Equally in accord with Adam's character is the rejoinder, "Destroy Charlie—I mean the starling ?" stroking his chin, and looking down at the minister with a smile in which there

was more of sorrow and doubt than any other emotion. "Do you mean, Mr. Porteous, that I should kill him ?" The minister cer- tainly did mean it, but it is sometimes awkward to have our thoughts translated for us into clearer English than that in which.

we have chosen to clothe them. "To destroy" looks peaceable beside "to kill." But the minister was not a man to flinch before his own idea of duty. He returns to the charge ; we need not say the Elder proves obstinate, and is deposed from office, but not without the introduction of other personages upon the scene who will all interest the reader. There is Miss Porteous (Thomasina), who, "being next the Bishop, evidently considered herself an arch- deacon, dean, or other responsible ecclesiastical personage," and

Dr. Macleod's description of her as her brother's newspaper and spiritual detective seems to put us at once in possession of her exact position in the parish. But "wee Mary" comes in the

midst of all their trouble to cheer the good sergeant and his wife, fill Charlie's empty cot, and raise them out of the depression intc which the heavy cloud of ecclesiastical censure had plunged then Wee Mary is an orphan, the only child of a large class, who dareu come on that same Sunday night to be taught as usual by the sergeant. The woman with whom she lived had beaten her severely, and the sergeant, with his mind ever quickly made up, resolves to keep the child with them always. There are few pages in the book more truly touching than the scene in which, acting on this resolve, and weary with the day's unwonted conflict, the good sergeant talks to Mary of his bird :—

" It was to mak' him weal, no' to mak' you play, that I pit him oot. But ye see God kens aboot the bird, and it was Him that made him, and that feeds him ; and see boo he sleeps ower your new bed,—for that's whaur Charlie used to sleep ; and ye'll sleep there, dear, and bide wi' me ; and God, that takes care o' the wee birds, will tak' care o' you." Mary said nothing, but turned her face and hid it in the Sergeant's bosom next his heart ; and he was more than ever persuaded that his heart was not wrong in wishing the orphan to lie there. "Mary," the Sergeant whispered to her, after a while, "ye mauu aye ca' me faither." Mary lay closer to his Heart. Katie, who had been sitting in the same arm-chair which she had occupied in the morning, heard her husband's words, and rising, bent over the child, and added, "And, Mary, ye maun aye ea' me mither." The starling, who was asleep, suddenly awoke, as if startled, shook himself, elevated his yellow bill above the round ball of feathers, turned his head, and looked at the group with his full bright eye, and although too drowsy to say, "I'm Charlie's bairn," he evidently remembered the relationship, and would have expressed it—partly from jealousy, partly from love—had he not been again overpowered by sleep.

Few men, perhaps, have drunk in more deeply the spirit of the command, "What God bath cleansed that call not thou com- mon," than Dr. Macleod. We can imagine him gazing steadily into the face of the most hardened criminal, the wildest prodigal that ever spent his all in riotous living, and repeating with our starling, "A man's a man for a' that." He understands Jock Hall, the ne'er-do-weel, as absolutely as he understands Adam Mercer or the Rev. Daniel Porteous. The man, with his ragged clothing, his dissipated life, to whom no respectable householder

would give a night's lodging ; who only dares to enter the ser- geant's house because, as he himself put it, "that now the fingers of religion are grippen yer windpipe and chokin' ye, as the evil speerit is chokin' me I thought you wad like ane waur than yersel to speak wi' ye, and if ye liked, to curse wi' ye," but

whose eye, nevertheless, has taken in the orphan child cared for by the deposed Elder, and then burst out with,— "I hated my hither ! I hated my mither! They hated me. My faither was a Gospel man ; he gaed to the kirk on Sabbath—win but him l—and ho drank when he could got it the rest o' the week; an' he threshed my mither and us time aboot—me warst o' a', as I was the youngest. I focht mony a laddie for lauchin' at him and for ca'in him names when he was Lou, and mony a bluidy nose I got ; but he threshed me the Izmir. My mither, tao, gaed to the kirk, and begged class for me and my brithers and sisters frac guid folk, and said that my faither wasna wed, and conldna work. Oh, mony a lee I telt for them baith ! And she drank, as wool, and focht wi' my hither and us time aboot. And syne they belt a' their class and a' their blankets, and left us wi' toom stomachs and toom hearts, cowerin' aboot a toom grate wi' cauld cinders. I never was at skule, but was cuffed and kickit like a doug; and my wee brithers and sisters a' dee'd—I dinna ken boo : but they were starred and threshed, puir things ! But they were waik, and I was strang. Site I leered—WI/09 me ! I leered ! hae sat oot in the plantin' mony a nicht greetin' for my brither Jamie, for he had a sair cough and dwined awe', naked and starved. He aye gied me his bit bread that he stealt or beggit "—and Jock cleared his throat and wiped his forehead with a scrap of a ragged handkerchief. "Bat my faither and mither deed, thank God ! I hate them non, and they hated me— they hated me, they did ! "—and he fell into a sort of dream. His vehemence sank into a whisper ; and he spoke as one in sleep—"An' a' folks hate me—hate me. An' what for no' ? I hate them !—God forgive me! Na, nit! Ill no' say that. There's nae God! But I believe in the Deovil—that I do, firmly."

The sergeant is perplexed, and Jock continues his wild tirade. "I'm Jock Hall ! a' body kens me, an a' hates me, as I do them. And what guid did yer ministers and elders, yer Sabbath days and preachings do for me? Curse them a', I say. What's Jock Hall's soul worth ? It's no worth the burning. What care I?" And the sergeant, for answer, gives him food and a pipe. And the devil in the man lies down awhile, till Jock's better self asks "What was I saying e'en now ?" And Adam answers,

"Nothing particular, never heed Jock, but bide a wee ; I'll get ye a nice cup of tea, and a smoke after it ; and we'll have a crack, and yell comfort me in yer ain way, and I'll comfort you in mine." To some purpose has Dr. Macleod "ventured down the dark

descent," when be can change the song of chaos and eternal night into such harmonies as he weaves through the remaining history of this man's life. His half superstitious fear of the starling and

the effort made by the sergeant to divert his mind from his wild thoughts by the sight of the bird, is well told.

it is just when Jock has most emphatically declared, "I tell ye 'T'm a deevil," that the sergeant gives him bread to give to the bird, aiho, seeing the gift in Hall's hand, declares "a man's a man for

a' that." We will not do Dr. Macleod the injustice to trace his story further. He has the power, given to so few, of seeing other men's mind's from the inside, and it is this which gives the special interest to his most meagre sketches. We watch the minister through each phase of his own self-satisfaction till it breaks down, clinging towards the last more tenaciously than ever to his " principles " because he feared they were melting, "his irrita- tion measuring, on the whole, very fairly his disbelief in the thorough soundness of his own position." The sergeant, stricken with malignant fever, with Jock as his sick nurse, the brusque, kindly-hearted, rough-mannered doctor, and the bird which was "Charlie's bairn," and so near the hearts of them all,—we know them well. But a thread of deeper purpose runs through the

story. Dr. Macleod has aimed a blow at Scottish Sabbatarian- ism, only with a sling and a stone, it is true, but none the less effectual on that account. His power lies in discerning, not in creating,—in dispelling as with a breath 'the ignorant fumes

that mantle the clearer reason' of the people he addresses. But we almost think he has not yet put out his full strength, and we hope it may be our lot to welcome from his pen something less ephemeral than he has even yet attempted.