DR. CHARLES MACKAY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.*
Tars is, in the main, a readable book, eminently a book for those hours of leisure in which we are too lazy to be very critical. It is often trivial in substance and careless in form, and has occa- sionally a suspicion of vulgarity in its tone; but if Dr. Mackay's training has not taught him everything, it has at any rate taught him the way in which to appeal to the taste of that influential person " the general reader," for whose applauding breath Mr. Mudie and his rivals spread their sails. Indeed, it is probable that the people who like this book best will be those who like the personal gossip of the drawing-room or the smoking-room at the club better than any book in the world. Dr. Mackay has in his time done some good work, and he has also done some work that is the reverse of good. As United States' correspondent for the Times during the struggle between North and South, he probably did more than any other single man to diffuse error concerning the great issue involved, and to imperil the cause of human freedom. It was hard to forgive this ; it was harder still, when it was remem- bered that in earlier days the offender had been an enthusiastic disciple of Bright and Cobden ; it is, perhaps, hardest of all now, when we see that though the course of history has confuted his reasonings and falsified his predictions, Dr. Mackay has no word of regret or apology for his strenuous, but happily in- effectual, endeavour to make the worse appear the better canes. In printing the pathetic letter of Mr. Seward (Vol. II., p. 274), he publishes his own condemnation, and readers will form their own opinion both of Mr. Seward's position in relation to Dr. Mackay, and of the taste shown by the latter in aggressively indicating a slip of the pen of an invalid just recovering from the effects of a dastardly outrage.
We will not, however, say anything more of this portion of Dr. Mackay's work, but will turn to those parts of it which pro- vide no materials for controversy. We do not know that the world demanded a record of the "long day" whose story is told here ; but having got it, we are disposed to make the beet rather than the worst of it. As we have said, it is a readable book ; for the life of a successful journalist can hardly fail to possess elements of interest, and Dr. Mackay has known—in various instances with considerable intimacy of acquaintance—many men in whose more private sayings and doings our friend the general reader is apt to be interested. He will perhaps be all the more interested in the eminent persons who figure in these pages because they do not appear en grand., tonne, but wear an intellectual undress in which it is quite im- possible to distinguish them from men who are not in the least eminent. Dr. Mackay has met and conversed with a fair proportion of the notabilities of two generations ; and though he Boswelliees very copiously, and apparently very accurately, we have failed to catch a single one of the notabilities in the act of making a remark which is worth remembering. There is only one remark made by a distinguished person which lingers • Through the Long Day ; or, Manuarialaqf a Literary LifIl during Hall...Century. 8 Tula. By merles Mackay. LL.D. Loudon: W. H. Allen and Co. in our memory, and this not for its own sake, but because of a certain curious side-light which it caste upon the character of the speaker. On several occasions Dr. Mackay met Prince Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III., and on one of these occasions the conversation turned upon Louie Philippe, and his probable conduct in the event of a revolution. The Prince expressed his opinion that even if barricades were erected in the streets of Paris, the King would not give orders to disperse the mob by force of arms ; and on being asked his reasons for this view, replied i--" The King is a weak man,—a merciful man. He does not like bloodshed. I often think he was a fool not to have had me shot after the affair of Strasburg. Had our cases been reversed, I know that I would have bad him shot without mercy." This was a characteristic remark. Napoleon III. was not the monster of cruelty that some would paint him ; but he was essentially a relentless man, in the true sense of the word,—that is, a man who, while not naturally disposed either to cruelty or any other form of crime, would shrink from no crime did he find it necessary for the accomplishment of his aims.
Dr. Mackay tells us a good deal more about his juvenile poems than we care to hear ; indeed, his popular songs, which he affects to despise, are, we think, the only notable things he has done in verse; but some of the recollections of his early years are not uninteresting. As a boy, he was compelled to attend to the Sunday ministrations of Edward Irving, of whom he tells a characteristic story. Irving, as every one knows, preached not only very eloquent but very long sermons, and on one occasion some of his congregation, wearied beyond endurance, and probably, as Dr. Mackay suggests, anxious concerning the con- dition of their dinners, began to rise from their seats and move towards the doors :— "This excited the displeaanre—I will not Ray the wrath—of the preacher. Suddenly arresting the torrent of his eloquence, snapping the thread—or, I may call it, the cable—of his discourse, he called to the door-keeper in a familiar tone, but with a load emphasis, to shut and fasten the doors, so that nobody might quit the building. He then addressed himself to the congregation : Yon seem to prefer your dinners to the word of God—at least some of you do; and, though you treat the Gospel with disrespect, which I cannot help, you shall not treat me with disrespect, and shall hear me out whether you like it or not. I have ordered the doors to be shut, and they shall not be opened again until the service is concluded.' The congregation was overawed, as sheep are at the bark of the collie, and, without resuming their plows in the pews which they had quitted, stood near the door, and made no further attempt to resist the imperious mandate of the pastor."
Dr. Mackay has been pre-eminently a journalist, and his most interesting reminiscences are those which belong to his purely journalistic experiences. At,his age, he is naturally and blamelessly lauclator temporis acti, and he looks back with regret to the dignified and decorous days of journalism when the "comic leader" had not been invented, and when respect. able editors never dreamed of flooding their columns with filth. His earliest important engagement was the sub-editor. ship of the Morning Chronicle, which half-a-century ago was a formidable rival of the Times. For this post Thackeray and Mackay were both competitors, and the one who obtained it attributes his success to a little political squib a propos of Sir Robert Peel's expression of reluctance to take office. The verses are, indeed, so neat and clever, that they would not have disgraced Prior; but we should think it probable that Mr. Black and Mr. MacGillivray, in whose hands the appointment rested, were more impressed by the fact that young Mackay was a fellow-Scot than by the knowledge that he could on occasion produce a copy of happily expressed political rhymes. It was during Dr. Mackay's tenure of office at the Morning Chronicle that it, in common with other newspapers, was taken in by a very circumstantial but altogether false report of the death, by a carriage accident, of Lord Brougham. The editorial leaders of public opinion all expressed decorous regret; but the conductors of the Chronicle went so far as to put a whole page of their paper into mourning, as they were wont to do only in announcing the death of a Royal personage. Deep was the indignation of the journalistic mourners when, in the course of two or three days, they discovered that the report was an entire fabrication,—that Lord Brougham was alive, unhurt, and probably in a state of high satisfaction, induced by a perusal of numerous more or less flattering obituary notices. But of all the editors, the most indignant was the editor of the Chronicle, whose sable borders had served as a frame for the most perfervid eulogy. Dr. Mackay writes :-
"Mr. Black, who had been more enthusiastic than his oontem. poraries in laudation of the great virtue of the 'departed,' was loader
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