Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

THE BEGINNING OF ' MAGA.' Ill
North, describes him as having done better in business
than in literature ; but there is no further information
about him in connection with this episode in his life.
They both come into the famous Chaldee manuscript
with certain personal details which perhaps might
have been better spared ; though the curious fact of
the lameness of both is so quaintly and not unten-
derly described as " skipping on staves," that it sounds
more affectionate and humorously laughable than
unkind.
We feel, with the disappearance of these men and
all the paraphernalia of their feebleness from the
scene, as if everybody concerned must have drawn
deep breaths of satisfaction and freedom. The little
Magazine under their charge was the most curious
jumble of the high-flown and the commonplace—much
serious and even fine criticism, as in the papers on
the Greek Drama (believed to be by Lockhart),
mingled with discussion of the early wonders of
Animal Magnetism, and treatises partly archaeo-
logical upon the symbolical position of the Salt on
ancient tables ; while these again were supplemented
by chronicles of border fairs and markets, records of
village wonders, like the case of the country girl who
slept for six weeks, and even the minutiae of the Reg-
ister, births, deaths, and marriages. Nothing could
be more clear than that it was not in this way that
the ambitious hopes with which the new venture had
been undertaken could be satisfied.
After this curious and clumsy preface, the real
' Blackwood's Magazine ' at last began. It may be
amusing to quote before going further the very char-
acteristic letter from James Ballantyne with which that