Dr. George Macdonald, who died on Monday at the age
of eighty-one, was not only a writer of real though intermittent genius, but a man of deep and sincere spirituality. Though his mission was in great measure one of revolt against the extreme Calvinistic doctrines in which he had been born and bred, he remained throughout a faithful interpreter of the noblest traits of the Scottish people, and his character was so disinterested and fine that the fluctuations of his theological attitude availed little to impair his influence as a teacher. He wrote too easily and diffusely to achieve a complete mastery of his means of expression, but his style had that elevation which, in the phrase of Longinus, is " the reverbera- tion of a noble mind," and the best of his books—including " Phantastes," "Robert Falconer," "David Elginbrod," and "Alec Forbes of Howglen "—by their exalted mysticism, poetical imagination, lifelike portraiture, and impassioned love of human kind will secure him an abiding place amongst the writers and preachers of the last half-century.
Bank Bate, 3 per cent.
Consols (2i per cent.) were on Friday 89i.
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