Alexander Russel 



Editor of "The Scotsman " 



I REMEMBER, as if it were but yesterday, the shock 

 with which the news " Russel of The Scotsman is 

 dead" came four-and-twenty years ago to every 

 journalist in London. For even down here in the 

 South his name was famous as that of a very King 

 among journalists. But in Scotland "Russel of Tlie 

 Scotsman " was something far more than a great editor. 

 He was the greatest Scottish force of his generation, 

 greater even than Norman Macleod or Thomas Guthrie, 

 because he appealed to the Scottish head as well as 

 to the Scottish heart, and was recognised as the supreme 

 representative of lay independence and common sense 

 in a country which had been long under bondage to 

 clerical tyranny and theological dogma. 



Then he was a humorist and a sportsman of the 

 first class, and there was something inexpressibly re- 

 freshing and inspiriting about his big, breezy, healthy, 

 manly nature. Coarse, some folk, especially the " unco' 

 guid," called him, and I will admit that there was 

 sometimes a Swiftian savagery in his satire, and a 

 Rabelaisian broadness in his wit. But these were only 



532 



