spare no effort to _deserve_ success.

The HIGHLAND CEILIDH will be commenced in the next number, and continued
from month to month. Under this heading will be given Highland Legends,
Old Unpublished Gaelic Poetry, Riddles, Proverbs, Traditions, and
Folk-lore.

MACAULAY'S TREATMENT OF OSSIAN.

"IT's an ill bird that befouls its own nest." And this is the first
count of the indictment we bring against Lord Macaulay for his treatment
of Ossian. Macpherson was a Highlandman, and Ossian's Poems were the
glory of the Highlands; Macaulay was sprung from a Highland family, and
as a Highlandman, even had his estimate of Ossian been lower than it
was, he should have, in the name of patriotism, kept it to himself. But
great as was Macaulay's enthusiasm, scarce a ray of it was ever
permitted to rest on the Highland hills; and glowing as his eloquence,
it had no colours and no favours to spare for the _natale solum_ of his
sires. Unlike Sir Walter Scott, it can never be said of him that he
shall, after columns and statues have perished,--

A mightier monument command--
The mountains of his native land.

There are scattered sneers at Ossian's Poems throughout Macaulay's
Essays, notably in his papers on Dryden and Dr Johnson. In the latter of
these he says:--"The contempt he (Dr J.) felt for the trash of
Macpherson was indeed just, but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He
despised the Fingal for the very reason which led many men of genius to
admire it. He despised it not because it was essentially common-place,
but because it had a superficial air of originality." And in his History
of England occur the following words:--"The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic
usages, the Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully
neglected during many ages, began to attract the attention of the
learned from the moment when the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began
to disappear. So strong was this impulse that where the Highlands were
concerned men of sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence,
and men of taste gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit.
Epic poems, which any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance
have perceived to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been
published as modern, would have instantly found their proper place in
company with Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were
pronounced to be fifteen hundred years old, and were gravely classed
with