is purely a lip loyalty, exemplified by a phrase quoted in a letter sent me: We shall join the Boers when they come, but we are quite loyal." The Bond motto is "Africa for the Afrikanders"; and it has done its work so well that there is a positive premium on disloyalty. This campaign is well supported by the Dutch organ Ons Land, the seditious tone of which shows the extent of freedom allowed in an English colony.

a

movement

It is true that, owing to the profound contempt which the vacillation and cowardice of the British Government has inspired, it was thought a war would be a picnic, and that the British soldier would not and could not fight. But was already on foot. Arms had been supplied to all the Dutch in Dutch districts, including the very poorest; arms have been found in large quantities in several districts since the war broke out. Promises of armed help had been made, and, as it appears from the prisoners, are well known not only to commandants, but also to the rank and file of the Transvaal forces. Threats have been levelled, not only at loyal colonists, but also at the loyal natives; and it seemed as if the threats would be carried out. Such was the situation at the commencement of the war, and it is not too much to say that, bad as the situation now is, in a year or two it would have been much worse.

It would, therefore, seem that the war was both just and inevitable, if we were not to abandon our kith and kin to those whom our own weakness and vacillation have made their bitter enemies. The only end of the war which Great Britain can tolerate is the hoisting of the British flag at Pretoria and Bloemfontein, and the annexation once and for all of the

two Republics, the foci of intrigue and sedition. This and the compensation of all loyal colonists for the losses they have suffered, together with provision for equal rights for all white men and equal protection for all coloured men, is the very least the country can ask. It is certainly the very least that cur colonists in Australasia and Canada, who have a right to be consulted, would tolerate, and the least the people of India, who have so large a stake in Africa, will require if British prestige is to be maintained there. I for one firmly believe that out of all our misfortunes much good has come, and that there is more to follow. The federation of the Empire bids fair to be an accomplished fact before the war ends. Our military sys

tem must be reorganized on that basis. Great imperial questions can only be considered henceforth from that point of view. It will be no small gain to England, if we can lift colonial, imperial, military, and naval policy out of the slough of party politics. It will be no small gain to our cousins in America to have gained in us a strong military as well as a strong naval ally! and if that alliance, unconditional and unwritten as it must remain, only becomes an accomplished fact, there will be some prospect that the year which began in such a disastrous war may be the harbinger of many years of worldwide peace. For who is there amongst us to whom peace is not the first and foremost object of public policy, or to whom the words, once quoted, I believe, by Lord Chatham, do not appeal as strongly now as ever?" God bless our country! May length of days be in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour; may all her ways be plenteousness, and all her paths peace!"

may be inconsiderable, but it bulks larger in public interest than bigger places. To be exact, the number of souls in it is 4,179, and if the whole parish be included, the number is 6,090; a cleanly, thriving,

wee toon." I inquired of an intelligent shopkeeper as to the meaning of "Kirrie;" as for "muir " (moor), I thought I knew what it meant. In saying this I soon found that I was speaking away from the book, for my interlocutor replied that the name had fully a dozen renderings, from "Corrie Mohr," the Gaelic for "great corrie," or the hollow between +1

hills, to Kerlymore, Kerimore, and so on till I cried, "Stop, stop, my friend, I give it up." But what about "Thrums "? "Oh, it's the strands or threads of yarn spun into thrums for weaving." The place was once a hive of weavers, though I only heard the click of the loom once that day. Let no

one imagine, as I did, that it is an ancient-looking, old-world sort of town, with thatched houses, earthen ficors, and tumbledown buildings.

Whether Mr. Barrie has reformed Thrums or not, I dare not affirm anything, but that he has re-formed it is patent to all; he gave it renown, and it rose to the apprecia

the top of which Babbie stood beside the "little minister" as he cried to the rioters, "Lay down your weapons!" is gone, and on its site stands the brand-new postoffice, a contrast to Lizzie Harrison's so-called bookseller's shop, the stock-in-trade of which was not literature, but "nicknacks, from marbles up to concertinas," and where the inquiring Lizzie "steamed" the letters, learned every one's business, and then despatched the letters at her leisure.

The first thing was to see the square, "packed away in the centre of Thrums;" the theatre not only of the riots, but of the life of the

tion of its fame. Pilgrims come from all parts of Britain, as well as from the wide, wide world. One informant said: "They had crowds. of Americans the last summer," and another declared that "a special train-full of Americans. came one day from Perth," remarking that "Mr. Barrie's books were better known in America than at home." So Thrums rises to the occasion, and an air of respectability pervades everything and every one; new red-sandstone he

face you wherever you is new, "spic an' span." Town House, with its er and outside stair, on

town, for every one gravitated thither; but to see it in its glory you must go to the Weekly Fair, or chiefest, to the great "Muckley" Fair. There was no difficulty in finding the square; indeed, you cannot miss it, for if one may compare small places with great, as all roads lead to Rome, so in Thrums all wynds and ways lead to the square. I counted seven ways of access, and if three lanes be reckoned, as I was told they may, then you have ten avenues of approach. But it is not the square Barrie describes, where "the houses squeeze close to it like chickens clustering round a hen;" no, for new shops

and buildings confront you whatever way you turn." A little distance down Bank Street stood the Auld Licht Kirk; I say "stood," for it is gone now, and a new one stands on its site, with shops on the ground floor. True, the south gable is part of the old structure. The spire of the parish kirk obtrudes itself upon your vision wherever you are, so I went down the wynd from the square and wandered round the kirkyard, seeing (in my mind) the "ancients" of the family with whom Snecky Hobart, the bellman, lived, following "their favourite dissipation, all dressed in rusty blacks, dandering about among the grave-stones.' Inside the kirk I recalled the rowdy scenes when the seats were "rouped" (put up to auction).

But it was time I made my way to "The House on the the Brae," where Jess sat for twenty years sewing and observing the life of Thrums out of the window. Going from the square by Baillie Street, you descend a steep brae leading to the South-muir. The brae descended means the brae to climb, and as we mount it the road sweeps round, with the "commonity" on your right hand, and there before you on the brow of the hill stands the whitewashed cottage; so steep is the brae that

cyclists are warned not to ride down it. There, in the gable-end is the one little window; so wee is it that Mr. Barrie speaks of it as "one square foot of glass." With the aid of her husband, Hendry, and Leeby, her daughter, and "clutching her staff," she made her daily journey from her bed to her chair at the window, and at nightfall back to bed. Like all the rest of Thrums, this cottage has been brought up-to-date; structurally, it is as it was; internally, it is renewed. I sat in the "but end " (kitchen), where Hendry, Jess, and Leeby lived, and where the humorous and deeply deeply pathetic scenes occurred described in that best of Barrie's books, "A Window in Thrums;" who can forget that touching twentieth chapter, "The Last Night," and all that followed?

I went "ben" to the parlour, where Hendry received his company, "Tibbie Mealmaker and her Man," to Jess' and Leeby's consternation, as they were not "redded up" for company; it was all trim and nice the day I stood there. Going out through the well-kept garden and across the road, I came to Mr. Barrie's own house, the gushet" house, as it is called in Scotland, the triangular point dividing two roads, a substantiallooking building where his father

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lives, and where he himself often comes. There was the room in which Margaret Ogilvy died: and in that other room, Jane Ann, the best and best-beloved of daughters, dred three days before her mother. a scene never to leave the memory of the readers of Margaret Ogilvy." I stood in the room where she sat with her New Testament on her knee: or maybe she was buried in "The Master of Ballantrae," or in "Carlyle:" in this room, and at that table the famous son wrote the "Auld Licht Idylis." Nor was it a small treat

inimitable comely rose up bef.re me as I went up the brae to Tammas McQuhatty's farmsteal saying to myself that if any one rea is that chapter without a good laugh. it is because he cannot laugh.

My next point of attraction was the Den. I had been told that keeping to the burnside I should in a few minutes come to the mouth of the Den, at the head of which I should see the Cuttie Well, the Lair, and by climbing the steps. I should be on the border of the Caddam Wood, and in a few minutes will reach the Windyghoul.

to see the very fine photograph of mother and daughter together, and I ventured to say: "Would that Mr. Barrie had given us that as a frontispiece to 'Margaret Ogilvy.' In "A Window in Thrums," we are told that it is only a cry from the cottage to T'nowhead Farm, that is over the hill in " a bee-line." That was one of the places I must see, for have I not laughed heartily

d again as I have read that porous bit of writing I The Courting o' T'now1." chapter eight of : Idylls"? The whole

On entering the glen, the cliff or hill on either side, crowned with pines or firs, narrowed in. In the midst was a long stretch of smooth green sward, and the head of the Den is shaded, almost enveloped, by trees. Just here on your left is the famous Cuttie Well, now covered in and dry; "It is toom now," remarked a native. The mistress of the house asks you at tea, "Is your cup toom?" (empty). This was formerly a magic well to the lovers of Thrums; here their fate was often spelled out. Mounting the brae by the steps, you are soon