And so we leave Robert Nicoll, with the parting remark, that if the
"Poems illustrative of the feelings of the intelligent and religious
among the working-classes of Scotland" be fair samples of that which
they profess to be, Scotland may thank God, that in spite of
temporary manufacturing rot-heaps, she is still whole at heart; and
that the influence of her great peasant poet, though it may seem at
first likely to be adverse to Christianity, has helped, as we have
already hinted, to purify and not to taint; to destroy the fungus,
but not to touch the heart, of the grand old Covenant-kirk life-tree.

Still sweeter, and, alas! still sadder, is the story of the two
Bethunes. If Nicoll's life, as we have said, be a solitary melody,
and short though triumphant strain of work-music, theirs is a harmony
and true concert of fellow-joys, fellow-sorrows, fellow-drudgery,
fellow-authorship, mutual throughout, lovely in their joint-life, and
in their deaths not far divided. Alexander survives his brother John
only long enough to write his "Memoirs," and then follows; and we
have his story given us by Mr. M'Combie, in a simple unassuming
little volume--not to be read without many thoughts, perhaps not
rightly without tears. Mr. M'Combie has been wise enough not to
attempt panegyric. He is all but prolix in details, filling up some
half of his volume with letters of preternatural length from
Alexander to his publishers and critics, and from the said publishers
and critics to Alexander, altogether of an unromantic and business-
like cast, but entirely successful in doing that which a book should
do--namely, in showing the world that here was a man of like passions
with ourselves, who bore from boyhood to the grave hunger, cold, wet,
rags, brutalising and health-destroying toil, and all the storms of
the world, the flesh, and the devil, and conquered them every one.

Alexander is set at fourteen to throw earth out of a ditch so deep,
that it requires the full strength of a grown man, and loses flesh
and health under the exertion; he is twice blown up with his own
blast in quarrying, and left for dead, recovers slowly, maimed and
scarred, with the loss of an eye. John, when not thirteen, is set to
stone-breaking on the roads during intense cold, and has to keep
himself from being frostbitten and heart-broken by monkey gambols;
takes to the weaving trade, and having helped his family by the most
desperate economy to save ten po