their heads about depriving the public of their valuable work. But if it be really thought necessary to guard against a contingency which may happen once in three centuries, a similar provision may be made to that which exists with regard to the universities-viz. that if the copyright be abandoned by disuse, it may become common. The details of what shall constitute an abandonment, it may be perhaps difficult to arrange-they are very vaguely given in the University Copyright Act, probably because there was a certainty felt that they would never be called into practice. But even here, it may be said that, in strictness, we are invading the rights of the author;-during his life we certainly are: for, if he should change his opinions on the subject of a work he has published early in life, it would be very hard to say that he must continue to multiply it, because it continues popular with any large body: and it would be against all existing principles of property, for the assignee to acquire the full property, and yet not to be allowed to exert his own discretion in its use. However, as in cases where a work is manifestly hurtful to the public interests, other means would be available to put a stop to its circulation, we do not see that any very great injury would accrue to, at least, the representative of the author, if an enactment similar to that we have named as existing with regard to the universities, were to be passed. Probably it would be called into action once between now and the year 2000.

Lastly, and we believe it is to some judges of the land (not existing, good reader) that we owe the majestic dictum,-it has been said that " Glory is the reward of science, and those who deserve it scorn meaner views." Really!-This is a very broad dictum. We might ask what the deservers of glory are to live upon while they are seeking it through science?—We might ask whether the same principle would not apply to every liberal profession-whether the bar, the army, the navy, even the Church-are not equally open to it. We say the Church also, for, if this mean anything, it means that the moral reward, as contradistinguished from the worldly one, is all that a man of talent and worth should look to. But we really will not waste our readers' time and our own by discussing such an absurdity as this.

We have now stated what the law, as to the duration of copyright, is-what we think it ought to be, and our reasons for so thinking. And the more frequently it is brought before the public, the more, we cannot but believe, its opinion will come round (if indeed it be now otherwise) to our doctrines; and, at all events, the more likelihood there will be of its speedy and loud expression.

There is another large division of Mr. Maugham's book, of which (to say nothing of a multitude of technical details) we have made no mention. We mean what he denominates the Library Tax; viz., the right of eleven public libraries to a copy of every book published. We have abstained from treating of this, because, besides its being a totally separate branch of the subject, it would have interfered, as to space, with a full exposition of that which we have just considered; and also because we think it of sufficient importance to give it some separate, consideration at a future opportunity.

THE MINISTER OF INVERDONHUIL.

SINCE the light of civilization swept across the Grampians, and the other lofty ridges of mountains that seam the northern division of this island, and which used to render the inhabitants of one glen as detached from, and as hostile to, those of another as the nations on the opposite shores of a channel full twenty miles wide-since the very last remains of feudalism were broken down, and the contents of a man's pocket procured him more respect than the name that he boresince the chieftains of the clans were breeched, and enticed to wander lorn and lost in the ways of the modern Athens, or the still more crowded and chieftain-neglecting ones of the great Babylon-since those who have remained preferred killing their own mutton to hanging their own vassals-since the very island was drilled through by the engineering of Mr. Telford, and a man could pass from the eastern sea to the Atlantic, not only without making his will, (as was the case a century ago,) but without any more effort of volition than suffices to carry him on board a steam-boat-and especially since the genius of Scott threw such wizard charms across those southern parts of the Caledonian mountains, which are almost within hail of the Scottish metropolis-since these wonders were wrought, the land of the north, that land of which the beauties had just begun to be seen, and the marvels to be recorded, has become, as it were, a sealed book. An occasional wanderer from the south, smit with the glories of grouseshooting, may penetrate as far as he is able into the interior; that is to say, he may pass to the distance of a southern mile, or about a tenth of a Highland one, from the high-road or the inn. But as in such situations disturbances are occasioned among the flocks, and sometimes casualties ensue in consequence of the wry point of the Joe Manton, and the winking start of the gunner, the Highland farmers prefer supplying such a traveller with as much grouse, ready cooked, as well as ready killed, as his magazine will hold, to letting loose such an enemy among the sheep. The consequence is, that mankind in general are far more conversant with the passes of the Alps than with those of the Managhlea; for one who has seen the stupendous cascade of Ess na' Glomich, there are fifty that have looked upon the comparatively trifling one of Tivoli. Even though the steam-boat might moor within a gun-shot of it, few now can condescend to look upon the Acherontic stream of the Feachlin as it thunders over the dark precipices of Foyers-emulating at once the din, the dense smoke, and the dazzling brightness of Ætna in the fiercest of its ire.

To one, who had the satisfaction of passing over that land of wonders, just as the change was taking place-who has heard far up in some lonely glen, opening to the Atlantic, upon whose azure surface rode a vessel with her top-sails shivering in the wind,' and the trumpetnote from on board of which was "The Wilds of Canada, ho!" the wailing tones of the mountain pipe, softened by distance, and melted and modulated into the thousand reverberations from the mountain crags, sending up to heaven, as if they had been the last aspirations of a

broken heart, the solemn and sadly-prophetic notes of "Lochabar no more "-to one, who had this mournful gratification, there are regrets connected with the cold oblivion in which the tale of these distant Highlands is lost, which could not be soothed by the cultivation of an entire America. As one stood upon the green-sward, or the purple heather, amid the fitful breezes, which, on the shores of a country so diversified, are never still, even when the heat of the sun is scorching, and the horizon without a cloud, there was something in the unseen musician and his followers, which if not typified by the waiting vessel, and known from former instances, would have led one to suppose that the hills themselves had broken out in song; for, as the piper turned down the sinuosities of the glen, the sound of his playing came fitful, as if in succession from all the instruments in the best-furnished orchestra. Now he was caught in the concavity of a crag, and one could just hear a murmur in the air; anon he turned, and the opposite convexity of crag brought forward the whole volume of the sound. At length the last ballach, or pass, was reached, and the hoary musician came forward, battered by the keenness of many mountain winters, but still firm, well knit, and, from the peculiarity of his costume, appearing more akin to the spirits of the wilderness than the men of the plain or the city. After him followed the whole cavalcade, who had peopled a large extent of country; and to each of whose households the same hearth had been consecrated by scores of generations. Elders, bent double with years,-aged females tottering on crutches, men in the prime of life,-mothers with the younger portions of their offspring clasped in their arms, and the older clustered around them,-lads and lasses, who haply looked back with sorrowful regret to the localities of their first loves, and, it may be, to those objects of their affection who could not accompany them to the strange land, and from whom they were thus necessarily severed for ever. Of the children, some smiled and laughed, some wondered, and some even rejoiced; but of those come to the years of thought, there was not one heart untouched by sorrow-one eye unmoistened by tears.

We enter not into the policy or the political economy of these proceedings, because we are not sure that they would not run counter to the feelings; and, at any rate, they would lead us away from that which it is our main object to state. Suffice it to say, that as these simple and primitive inhabitants, unchanged in their manners for centuries, and having a literature and a history of their own, blended with the singular but sublime superstition of the Northmen, from whom they had received their chiefs, as they melted away from their mother country, and were lost in the wastes of other lands, a something which it would have been new and delightful for us to know and of which we can now procure no knowledge, vanished along with them. That the change is or is not for the better, as far as physical wealth and comfort are concerned, is a question for others to settle; it is for us to regret that many pages have thereby been torn from the natural history of man; and it is with the lost pages of that history, as with a lost recollection in our train of thought, how trifling soever it may be in reality, we prize it more than all that we remember. Regret is of no avail, however. It were better, just as the antiquaries of the present

time do with the ruins of those edifices which would yet have been entire but for the labour of their own ancestors, to put together and preserve the fragments in the best manner we are able.

Of these fragments one was the Reverend Donald M'Cra, who, for more than half a century, had ruled and directed the inhabitants of Inverdonhuil in all matters of faith, and morals, and gossip, and whatsoever else falls within the wide and varied scope of the parochial superintendence of a Scottish country parson. This Reverend Gentleman was, as one would say, almost self-made; or, at least, it was difficult to say whence came the means by which he received the rudiments of his education. His father was a poor shepherd, wholly illiterate himself, and, as one would think, without any possibility of having that ambition of bestowing instruction upon his son which is so general among the cottagers in the southern parts of Scotland. It is difficult indeed to imagine how, in those times, any notion at all of education could exist in the glen. It lies upon a branch of a river in the very fastness of the mountains, inaccessible on three sides, and can be entered only by two narrow passes at the sides of a rocky island which divides the stream at the fourth, and near the confluence of the Donhuil, with the larger river of which it is a branch. The rebellion had just closed, too, and the landing and final retreat of Prince Charles were tales only of yesterday. Nay, the country was in an absolute state of hostility: the M'Kenzie, the great lord of these parts, had gone into exile; and the halls of Elan Donan were mouldering in their decay; but the hearts of the clan Cuinich were true, and not one shilling of the rents ever found their way into the Exchequer, or a civil officer or soldier dared come to distrain them. The moment that a party approached within even a day's march, the Beal fires blazed, first upon Tulloch-n'-Ard, and then upon the summits of all the crags and squŭrs in that most singularly formed of lands; and ere the invading party had gained the only pass (and it was a long and difficult one) by which the country could be entered, that pass was brown with targets and beaming with claymores; while along the summit of the mountains, on each side, files of men stood ready with levers to swing the masses of granite, of two or three tons weight, from their beds on the steep, and send them booming into the ravine below with a force against which no precaution of the wisest commander could have been of any avail. Alaster M'Cra, the father of our hero, (for he was a hero in his way,) was the fleetest foot that, within the range of tradition, had trodden the mountains of Kintail; and it was generally supposed that he was appointed collector of the rents of the exiled M'Kenzie, which, when collected, were regularly carried abroad to their owner by a daring freeman of the sea, whose name, as Donhuil Spainiel, is still cherished by the few remains of that gallant and unconquerable people, who are now left to deplore that the mansion of their chief is a habitation for the gannet and the osprey; that the property has passed into new hands; and that a new people have brought a new industry, which, though it has quadrupled the productions of the district, has driven the plough of ruin over every monument and trace of those who so long dwelt there. Barrow after barrow was scattered, sometimes in quest of the rude urns of

the Northmen, but more frequently that the clay of the old inhabitants might fatten the fields of the new. Cairn after cairn was taken down; one "judgment circle" was removed after another; and, though they spared it for a little time, the reputed, and, in the belief of the natives, the indubitable grave of the mighty Diarmid himself yielded to the passion for change. It was lone, and, among monuments, was

lovely. Fast by the margin of the sea, which at that place is as transparent as glass, as the breeze steals up the inlet, at the head of which the monument was situated,-the waves murmur among the pebbles as if singing their solemn requiem for the repose of the hero. Over the little mound, with which time has nearly encased the stone coffin, two weeping birches used to hang their fragrant festoons, while, to give every finish to the enjoyment of at least one sense, the woodroof and the wild hyacinth vied in perfume with each other-the one, in its living scent, typical of the fame of the hero when alive; the other, fragrant only when withered, as good a type of that fame which cannot be made to perish. But we must not allow ourselves to be seduced to linger at the grave of Diarmid; though, in sooth, if we wished for a mood of mind more touching than another, we know not whither we should go to find its equal.

It was conjectured that, in consequence of the service performed by old M'Cra, the son received his education at the expense of the exiled family. At any rate, no sooner had Donald mastered the whole lore of the parish, which lore was then a portion of one of the books of the New Testament and some of the leading questions in the Assembly's Catechism, written in Gaelic (these fragments of theology were pasted upon the staves of a cask which the sea had drifted in), than he was removed to the capital of the Highlands, and, after due residence there, sent to King's College, Aberdeen, from which sober seminary the essential instructors of the Highlanders have emanated ever since it had a foundation, or, at least, since they had such instructors. Of the extent of Donald's acquirements, whether at Inverness or at Aberdeen, there remains no evidence; the only event at all worthy of being remembered with which his name is coupled, was the celebrated slaughter of Dauney, the janitor; who, after a mock trial, was led to the block, laid upon it, and killed in an instant by a gentle stroke of a wet towel across his throat.

One thing is certain: the experience which the Minister had of the world at these places, neither enlisted him in its pleasures nor allured him to its imitation; for, though it was believed in his native glen, that the power of the M'Kenzie (who had then just been restored, and had swung, as most of the chieftains swung, from the activeness of rebellion to the passiveness of worshipping royalty) was second only, if not, indeed, superior to that of the king himself, and could have procured for Mr. M'Cra the very foremost appointment in the island, he was contented to return to his native glen immediately when the period of his study expired; nor did he again leave it except to attend the meetings of the Presbytery and Synod, and the latter he frequented as seldom as he could. During his absence, too, he had attended so closely to his books, or, at least, had been so incurious in all the matters that he might have learned respecting the manners of