After the publication of these works Dr. Mackay made a tour to America, where he delivered lectures upon "Poetry and Song," receiving everywhere a cordial and enthusiastic reception. After his return to England he published his Life and Liberty in America, which is characterized in the Athenæum as a bright, fresh and hopeful book worthy of an author whose songs are oftenest heard on the Atlantic. Dr. Mackay lately published a narrative poem entitled "A Man's Heart," and has just edited A Collection of the Jacobite Ballads of Scotland.

Like all the great song-writers, Dr. Mackay is a musician and the composer of all the melodies published with many of his songs. He possesses in a high degree the rare faculty of a true lyric poet-that of working his words and music up into harmony and unison with the feelings they express.

paign, he was so severely wounded at Chapultepec (September 13, 1847) that he was left for dead on the field. Mentioned in despatches, he was honorably discharged at the close of the war. In 1849 he started with a body of troops to aid Hungary in her struggle for independence. On his arrival in Paris he was stopped by the intelligence that the cause of Hungary was lost by the overthrow of her arms. He then settled in London and began rapidly to write books more or less imaginative, but suggested by his observation and experience in travel. The Rifle Rangers and The Scalp-Hunters were followed by a large number of volumes, many of them intended for the perusal of boys. They have been very popular. He died in October, 1883, while still in literary vigor, and with no indications of a falling off in the verve and interest of his writings.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

HIS poet was born on December 3,

TH

1776, at Honington, in Suffolk, England. He served his time as a shoemaker's apprentice. It is related of him that he read by moonlight, being too poor to purchase candles, and that many of the stanzas of his most celebrated poem, "The Farmer's Boy," for lack of pen and ink, were scribbled with a shoemaker's awl on scraps of leather. His poems are chiefly pastoral. Vivid pictures of farm-life, they teem with quiet descriptive beauty, but are lacking in enthusiasm. He died August 19, 1823.