"The Druid" as a Politician. 301 



blue waves of the Atlantic, and wandered 

 with peace and commerce on his lips amid the 

 infant cities and gigantic lakes and forests of 

 the New World. Still, though he may have 

 lacked the earnest purpose of his ' first-born 

 and his best,' and though he was not snatched 

 by an inscrutable decree ' from the noblest 

 uses of life's prime,' he left no deep blank 

 behind him ; but broken as had been his 

 vigour for years by sickness, he proved in 

 age as in youth, no aristocratic laggard in the 

 onward march of the British people. Thus, 

 the glorious truth applied not to him that, 



" ' The image of a man who died 

 In his hey-day of renown, 

 Hath a fearful power to which the pride 

 Of fiery life bows down.' 



" Nevertheless, when he passed into the 

 unseen world, one of the last great links that 

 bind together the stormy political past and 

 present was for ever broken. He drew his 

 first breath in a century fraught with grand 

 historic remembrances. The fate of the help- 

 less Charles Stuart, and of the gay Scottish 

 chiefs who flocked to his standard when he 

 kept court at Holyrood, was then still fresh in 



