refuge from Phaethon's ill-guided chariot. They found rest at last in the water-butt; and my most carnest entreaties to have that useful fixture of the back yard cmptied that I might recover my lost treasures, were unavailing.

"As I advanced in years my ardour in pursuing knowledge of all things relating to water-sports did not cool. On the contrary, no sooner had I read anything theoretically, especially about angling, than I yearned to prove the subject practically.

"I found a capital tutor in a man whose ostensible avocation in life was rat catching; but who, I am now well convinced, found poaching a more reliable means of living. He taught me how to take jack with a horse-hair noose, and how to jump boldly into the middle of a stream to scare the trout into holes at the banks, whence they might be taken with the hands. In fact, I was up to every device for catching fish; and my breakfasts and suppers were mainly supplied by my own skill in the stream which flowed hard by my father's house.

"In time, having entered the medical profession, I obtained an appointment in India; and on arriving out here I at once turned my attention to the fish of the country, and their culture and propagation.

"My delight on first coming to these hills was unbounded, as I saw in the numerous streams a practically unlimited opportunity for following my favourite study, and I resolved to populate every river on the Neilgherries with mahseer.

"At some expense I obtained from Bombay a box of young

1 Sarcium, arrack.

mahseer, a considerable number of which survived the journey to Metapollium, where I met the box myself. I was delighted to see a number of strong healthy fry swimming about; and I looked forward to having in a few hours successfully introduced the Indian salmon into the Neilgherry waters.

"Elated with the fortunate result of my enterprise, I mounted my tat and rode gaily up the ghaut, dreaming of thanks from His Excellency the Governor in Council, and possibly the distinction of C.S.I. in recognition of my public service.

"I was agreeably surprised when the gang of coolies, bearing the box, came chanting into Coonoor fully an hour before the time I had reckoned they could possibly bring such a load up the ghaut. Of course they wagged their heads, and patted their stomachs after the manner of all coolies, chattering all the while with ape-like vivacity, the words sareium1 and eenam2 recurring with marvellous frequency.

"Pleased with the quick journey they had made up the ghaut, I parted with five rupees as a present; and as they disappeared into the bazaar I hastened to inspect my box.

"Horror! every fish was dead, floating belly uppermost on the

water.

"For some time the matter remained a mystery to me. All I knew was that my money was thrown away, and the remainder of my stay on the hills was too short to admit of the experiment being repeated even if I had had the heart to make it.

"Of course the coolies protested their ignorance of any reason for

2 Eenam, present.

THE changing season is not more distinctly apparent in any other sign than in that of the odd sprinkling of books which now appear upon our library tables, scarcely showing in the solitude of the Old Saloon, which like other places acquires about this period of the year a subdued composure not like its usual dignified animation. A little gentle waft of autumnal dust, which is within doors what the mist is without, softens the marble outlines of those busts of our departed demigods that stand out under the dome, to whose number, by the way, a gentler image has been added, in the beautiful bust of Lady Martin by Mr J. H. Foley, which gives a charm of novelty and living fame to the records of glory past. Few feet of passers-by disturb the echoes. The children of 'Maga' are busy with their preparations for mountain or river, whither they go as their great chief did in days of old. Now and then a reverential tourist is shown in to look round those sacred images; but on other occasions the unusual silence deepens, and everything reminds us that the Twelfth is approaching, that the Courts are up, that the salmon are quivering in the golden-brown streams, and the young grouse chirping among the heather. Soon the ping of the guns and the whirr of the rod will come to us in echoes on the sunny air, which begins to be sharp in the mornings, with a touch of-call it not frost! a bracing keen intimation that the dogdays are over. There is something not unpleasant to the dweller at home in all these echoes from afar. We sit well pleased, and think with a certain maternal complacenco, as

identifying ourself with the timehonoured image of 'Maga,' of all the cheerful brethren who are taking their holiday. Where is the scene in which they are not to be found? Not only on Highland loch and brae, but in dark Africa and blazing Burmah, and over all the Indian plains: nor less certainly upon the snowy mountains, the Alps and the Fiords-the links at home and the glaciers abroad, and wherever sport or pleasure or health is to be had; which is probably the case, let us add, not only with our contributors, but with the still greater, and let us hope as cheerful, army of our readers, whom August scatters as by a strong wind to all the airts. Good luck to your fishing, your hunting, your climbing

even your flirting, our gentle friends! To ourself, always under the shadow of 'Maga,' the silence is grateful. The thought of all you are doing to amuse and refresh yourselves is pleasant to our heart. We sit at home and keep the nest warm, and are proud to hear of your exploits. Our own romantic town is more impressive in its comparative abandonment than is the dusty desolation of Belgravia, or the desert nooks of Mayfair. The boom of the one o'clock gun from the Castle, midway between earth and heaven, keeps us in recollection of the progress of time, and counts off our tranquil days. We look with indulgence at the endless succession of tweed suits and knickerbockers streaming north. The tourist gazing about him at hill and hollow, inspires us with that delightful sense of superiority which is dear to humankind. We could tell him many things which

would impress his mind with a sense of his inferior gifts; but it is still more dignified to refrain, and graciously condone the depths of his ignorance. In the evenings, that grand thoroughfare of Princes Street is alive with the everpresent populace, which takes its pleasure, by no means sadly, in the streets-and a lucky populace they are to have such a street in which to enjoy themselves. The Castle crag, rising up with its mantle of green, stately and straight like one of its own plumed and tartaned sentinels, keeping the watch of centuries over the still depths at its feet, and the human lights and crowds beyondthe dark line along the sky of the ancient, still living, never abandoned city,—the Edinburgh of all the traditions, of the Stewarts and Douglases, the gallant Jameses, and all their chivalry; the stern Reformers and their congregations and the stars twinkling over all, impartial, all-suggestive, shedding rays that reach out of infinity upon that little record in stone of a past far more interesting than the silence even of the infinite, scarcely able to contain itself against the quiet with the crowding recollections of the past. The bugle from the height, the very soul of that primitive music of meaning and human use which comes before Art, recalls us as it recalls the wandering soldiers to their shelter. Where were we ?-oh, in our own castle, our retirement, where we were sitting alone with our few books congratulating our friends on their sports and rambles and holiday-making, and ourselves on the equally delightful fact of being at home.

The books are few, however,

1

and it is a pity; and, such as they are, they are but small books, soon to be got through, which, to our own modest but persistent appetite, is unfortunate-though perhaps all the better for those who scour the mountains and sweep the rivers. Out of a few singlevolume novels, for instance, there are some which it would not become us to treat here, and some which we are reluctant to treat anywhere-as, for instance, Mr Louis Stevenson's Wrong Box,'1 which is a very wrong box indeed-one in which we had hoped that much-applauded writer would never place himself, to make the adversary blaspheme. Too much of anything is bad-even applause, though it is sweet; and coming back from the other side of the Atlantic, the reverberation of a great reputation is apt to have a certain idiocy in its roar. American taste in the cultivated classes is perhaps the very finest thing going of its kind; but the caterers for the American literary market do not belong to these high circles, and the overtures and incitements which they offer to a successful author are, when he is moved by them, too apt to lead to folly. We were all ready enough to make Mr Stevenson believe that nothing he could write would be other than delightful to us yet there were voices of warning which bade him to remember that he had a reputation to lose. It would seem, however, that our cousins across the seas take no account of this. They go by results, like the smart business men they are. A man who has once written 'Treasure Island,'

or, to speak more faithfully, a man whose book has once sold by tens or perhaps hundreds of thou

London:

sands,—has nothing to do but to go on to produce hundreds of thousands more. The good sense which ought to belong to a man born within hearing of the bells in St Giles's steeple, has unfortunately not been able to withstand the adulation which takes this mathematical form; and Mr Stevenson has given his name to a very silly and vulgar story, with scarcely any traces of his old humour or any of his beautiful thoughts, a travesty not even of one of his own books, but of a lower class, let us say, of the Tinted Venus' description-works of a very different order from his own. He is of his true nature versatile enough to satisfy any one. From the early and delightful daintiness of the first essays with which he caught the ear of the public, to the wild humour, interest, and excitement of Treasure Island,' and the quaint, tragi - comic fun of the Suicide Club,' the jump is sufficiently violent; but it is carrying it a little too far when the almost over-refined philosopher who traversed the Cevennes with his donkey, undertakes to show us how he can climb a greased pole and grin through a horsecollar. These are accomplishments no doubt, but they are not necessary attributes of the class to which Mr Stevenson belongs.

We must warn at the same time our highly prized countryman, whose aberrations we regard with the sincerest pain, that selfsacrifice, which is so high an evangelical duty, has to be practised in good as well as in evil, and that it is not expedient for a man of genius, however high his motives may be, to make himself responsible for the follies of another. Pegasus is a generous steed, and it may be permitted now and then that his rider should carry a lady

en croupe; but to put that noble animal within the shafts of another man's cart, that he may do what he can to carry that structure of wood and iron to immortality, is not permissible. In the interests of the winged creature whose fortunes are so dear to all of us, we protest against this ignoble use. Do anything for your friends but this, O brethren of the sacred pen! Lend them your money, give them your countenance, write reviews of them and puffs of all kinds, but do not drag them to their goal under cover of your name. Let every herring hang by its ain head. If the young partner in this iniquity is "young enough to learn better," let him do so without delay; but let him not be pitchforked into literature by his too indulgent friend: and as that friend is undoubtedly "old enough to be ashamed of himself," we hope he will be so, and desist from such proceedings at once and for ever. We think too much of our Kidnapped'—one of the most perfect studies which has been given to the world for years to let the genius which produced it wittingly fall into the mire. And we hope never to see him putting himself within reach again of a judgment not due, we trust, to him. He has shown signs already of having lost that discrimination in respect to his own work which becomes a writer so spoilt by the public. But no "absence of the critical faculty" could account for such a downfall as this. We will not show so little respect for the reader as to imagine that he could have any interest in the contents of the 'Wrong Box,' save regret that Mr Louis Stevenson should have been beguiled into it in the goodness of his heart.

A very different matter is the volume which stands by, in a mo