and left her in charge of the guard of the train. His nature was so simple and generous that he did not even then seem to realize that he had done an exceptionally kind action. Though, however, on such occasions as these Mr. Buckland used the language of advanced Tories, he habitually shrank from political discussion. He declared that he did not understand politics, and that he reserved himself for his own im- A volume might perhaps be filled with mediate pursuits. Into these pursuits be an account of Mr. Buckland's eccentricithrew himself with his whole energy; and ties. When he was studying oysters, he his energy was extraordinary. The great- would never allow any one to speak; the est example of it was in the search which oysters, he said, overheard the conversa. he made for John Hunter's coffin in the tion and shut up their shells. More vaults of St. Martin's Church. He lit- inanimate objects than oysters were enerally turned over every coffin in the dowed by him with sense. He had church before he found the one of which almost persuaded himself that inanimate he was in search, spending a whole fort- things could be spiteful; and he used night among the dead. He was ultimately to say that he would write a book on their rewarded by obtaining a grave for his spitefulness. If a railway lamp did not hero's remains in Westminster Abbey. burn properly he would declare it was John Hunter was his typical hero. He sulky, and throw it out of window to had pursued the studies to which Mr. see if it could find a better master. He Buckland also devoted himself. He had punished his portmanteau on one occa founded a great museum. He had almost sion by knocking it down, and the portoriginated a science. Like John Hunter, manteau naturally revenged itself by one of Mr. Buckland's main objects was breaking all the bottles of specimens which to form a collection which would illustrate it contained, and emptying their contents the whole science of fish-culture. The on its master's shirts. To provide himmuseum at South Kensington, which he self against possible disasters, he used to has left to the nation, exists as a proof of carry with him an armory of implements. his success. Inferior, of course, to the On the herring inquiry he went to Scot similar collections in the Smithsonian land with six boxes of cigars, four dozen Museum of the United States, it forms pencils, five knives, and three thermome an unequalled example of what one man ters. On his return, three weeks aftermay accomplish by energy and industry. wards, he produced one solitary pencil, Thousands of persons have interested the remnant of all this property. The themselves in fish-culture from seeing the museum; and the collection has long formed one of the most popular depart ments of the galleries at South Kensing ton. Energy was only one of Mr. Buckland's characteristics. His kindliness was another. Perhaps no man ever lived with a kinder heart. It may be doubted whether he ever willingly said a hard word or did a hard action. He used to say of one gentleman, by whom he thought he had been aggrieved, that he had forgiven him seventy times seven already; so that he was not required to forgive him any more. He could not resist a cry of distress, particularly if it came from a woman. Wom en, he used to say, are such doe-like, timid things that he could not bear to see them unhappy. One night, walking from his office, he found a poor servant girl crying in the street. She had been turned out of her place that morning as unequal to her duties; she had no money, and no friends nearer than Taunton, where her parents lived. Mr. Buckland took her to an eating-house, gave her a dinner, drove her to Paddington, paid for her ticket, knives were lost, the cigars were smoked; one thermometer had lost its temper, and been thrown out of window; another had been drowned in the Pentland Frith, and a third had beaten out its own brains against the bottom of a gunboat. No human being could have told the fate of the pencils. Such were some of the eccentricities of a man who will, it may be hoped, be recol lected by the public for the work which he did, and by his friends for his kindli ness, his humor, and his worth. As he lived, so he died. Throughout a long and painful illness his spirits never failed, and his love of fun never ceased. "I wish to be present at this operation," was his quaint reply at the proposal of his surgeon that he should take chloroform, and his wonderful vitality enabled him to sur vive for months under sufferings which would have crushed other men. He is gone: his work is of the past; and pos terity will coldly examine its merits. But his friends will not patiently wait the ver dict of posterity. When they recollect his rare powers of observation, his capac ity of expressing his ideas, his quaint humor, his kindly heart, and open hand, | The country is always in a better condithey will say with the writer, we shall not soon look on his like again. SPENCER Walpole. From The Pall Mall Gazette. CURLING. FEW people south of the Tweed have witnessed a "bonspeil; " for although numerous golfing clubs have been started in England curling is little known. In the north, when the frost is keen and the ice holding, it is the game of games. Rich and poor enjoy it alike, the peasant claiming an equal footing on the icy board with the peer- everything being forgotten in the enthusiastic enjoyment of this most invigorating of pastimes. Here you may meet the earl playing third hand to the directions, or rather commands, of his own coachman; there a baronet skippit or captained by his own gardener. The one game in the north which is truly orthodox, you will find the village minister yielding to the admonitions of the most unruly and irregular of his flock, for wreck though ye may be as a man, ye may yet be a king among curlers. Just now no other game is thought of in Scotland; indeed, save shooting no other sport can be safely indulged in, as golf, the boast about which is that it can be played all the year round, is impossible in frosty weather, unless there is a coating of snow on the links to save the club heads, which would snap off on coming in contact with the unyielding ground. Lairds, tenants, ministers, masters of hounds, masons (the latter are great pa trons of the game, owing to their being frozen out of employment and their ability to shape and polish their own curlingstones) are every day just now to be found mixed up together on the ice in friendly rivalry, it may be for parish jugs or kettles and medals presented by the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, meal and coals for the poor, or perhaps happiest matches of all —" beef and greens" dinners for the players themselves. The amount of good which is done to the people by curling in the removal of parochial disputes and bickerings may be said to correspond with the benefit which is said to be derived by the soil from the frost in destroying numerous insects which are lying dormant below the surface, ready to spring into life and annoy the farmer under the first rays of the summer sun. tion after a good old-fashioned winter; and nothing removes, too, the effects of a keenly contested political campaign so speedily as a week's good play on the ice, where Whig and Tory agree, on the same or on opposite sides. The game is difficult to describe without the aid of diagrams, but if the reader wishes to have a good idea of it let him go to a "bonspeil"-not the great one between the curlers of the north and south of the Forth at Carsebreck or Lochwinnoch, but what is known as a provincial bonspeil - a struggle between certain parishes for the medals of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. It is a bitterly cold morning, and the sun is just indicating his wished-for arrival by a bright glow, which shows the black line of trees on the hills to the east. With icicles on your beard, your frozen breath, and silver, icy threads, your frozen perspiration, hanging like gossamer from your rough, homespun trousers, you make your way to the appointed rendezvous, the village inn. Already there are many keen curlers gathered at the door waiting for the vehicle, their curling-stone handles suspended round their necks, their besoms in the hollows of their elbows, and their hands seeking warmth in the bottoms of their pockets. Soon you are all huddled together in the rude waggonette used by tourists and fishers in summer time, and funerals, wedding parties, and curlingmatches in the winter. Joke follows joke and story follows story, and laughter and merriment is only broken at times by the remarks of anxious skips as to the condition in which the ice will be, with upward glances, to see if any clouds are about to indicate a thaw. Arrived at the loch-side, generally some lonely moorland sheet little known save to the wild duck and the grouse cock, you find the carts which have been sent on ere daylight with the curling-stones all drawn up on the bank, and the secretary busily engaged in taking the entries from the various skips. The draw follows, and as the papers are taken from the hat, parish and skip are called out thus: "Wanlockhead, Davidson, against New Cumnock, Ivie Campbell." As the names are announced away fly the curlers four aside to the pond, where soon all are busily engaged in sweeping and scraping the ice and forming a rink. First a ring of seven feet diameter is drawn. This is generally known as "the hoose." An inner ring, four feet in diameter, next is made for the purpose of letting the as if taking fresh life, it sails out across the tee, and inch by inch yielding to the invitations of the besoms of the opposing "sweepers" goes out on the other side amidst roars of laughter and loud cries of players know at any time what stones are Throughout the bonspeil, which generally consists of twenty-one heads, the hills resound with shouts of "Weel played!" "Weel laid doon, sir," from the skip to the player; then cries to the knights of the besom to "soop him up," followed as often by the command to "Let him alone, he will be here soon eneuch." Then there are anxiously spoken requests to "clap a gaird" or "chip a winner" - i.e., remove the stone nearest the tee by passing through a port among the guarding stones, and striking out by hitting all that is visible, sometimes only a couple of inches, the shot nearest the pot-lid. Now and then the player is requested to "wick and curl in," that is, cannon off an outlying shot, and, by means of a twist applied to the stone in delivery, which brings about the same effect as "side" or "screw" at billiards, work into the centre, which cannot be directly reached, owing to the shots which lie in front. It is from this "curl" or twist that the name of the pastime is derived, though it is sometimes known as "the roaring game," from the peculiar reverberating sound which a particularly hard played or "roaring" stone makes among the hills on its passage along the ice. Sometimes, too, it is designated "the channel stane," which is also the name of a well-known song written upon it by the Ettrick Shepherd, the stones being shaped out of huge blocks cut from the channels of certain noted burns, notably that of Burnockwater in Ayrshire, and Crawfordjohn in the upper ward of Lanarkshire. Of late, however, beautiful curling stones have been cut from Ailsa Craig, which when polished up are exceedingly pretty to look at, and have the reputation of being very keen on the ice. Curling altogether, indeed, is a most exhilarating sport, and has been played with equal zest by peer and peasant, while its praises have been sung by nearly every Scottish poet of eminence. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. Poor friend and sport of man, like him unwise, Lead the free chase, leap, plunge into the mere, Herd with thy fellows, stay no longer here, Seeking thy law and gospel in man's eyes. He cannot go; love holds him fast to thee; Spectator. Nor did I come on that unhappy day To me thou art not dead, but gone an hour Where thou shalt by some undiscovered power Thus I can feel that any given day, I could rejoin thee, gone awhile before To foreign climes, to pass dull weeks away By wandering on the broad Atlantic shore ; Where each long wave that breaks upon the sand Bears thee a message from me waiting here, And every breath spring breathes across the land Seems as a sign that thou art lingering near. So I will think of thee as living there, E'er thou departed from our English gloom. We shall not know that we have ever died. All The Year Round. |