such! They are the avoidable kind!-Had Johnson left nothing but his Dictionary, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.

One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaching in such awestruck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for Excellence; a worship for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's: that his soul, namely, is a mean valet-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a Grand-Monarque to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there is left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved;-admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of Hero to do that;-and one of the world's wants, in this as in other senses, is for the most part want of such.

On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration was well bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson too, that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely; led it well, like a right-valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and lifepractice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have with his eye set on that, he would change his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. "To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag." Brave old Samuel: ultimus Romanorum!

From OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES

The Battle of Dunbar

AND SO the soldiers stand to their arms, or lie within instant reach of their arms, all night; being upon an engagement very difficult indeed. The night is wild and wet;—2nd of September means 12th by our calendar: the Harvest Moon wades deep among clouds of sleet and hail. Whoever has a heart for prayer, let him pray now, for the wrestle of death is at hand. Pray,-and withal keep his powder dry! And be ready for extremities, and quit himself like a man!-Thus they pass the night; making that Dunbar Peninsula and Brock Rivulet long memorable to me. We English have some tents; the Scots have none. The hoarse sea moans bodeful, swinging low and heavy against these whinstone bays; the sea and the tempests are abroad, all else asleep but we,-and there is One that rides on the wings of the wind.

Towards three in the morning the Scotch foot, by order of a MajorGeneral say some, extinguish their matches, all but two in a company; cower under the corn-shocks, seeking some imperfect shelter and sleep. Be wakeful, ye English; watch, and pray, and keep your powder dry. About four o'clock comes order to my puddingheaded Yorkshire friend, that his regiment must mount and march straightway; his and various other regiments march, pouring swiftly to the left to Brocksmouth House, to the Pass over the Brock. With overpowering force let us storm the Scots' right wing there; beat that, and all is beaten. Major Hodgson riding along, heard, he says “a Cornet praying in the night"; a company of poor men, I think, making worship there, under the void Heaven, before battle joined: Major Hodgson, giving his charge to a brother Officer, turned aside to listen for a minute, and worship and pray along with them; haply his last prayer on this Earth, as it might prove to be. But no: this Cornet prayed with such effusion as was wonderful; and imparted strength to my Yorkshire friend, who strengthened his men by telling them of it. And the Heavens, in their mercy, I think, have opened us a way of deliverance!-The Moon gleams out, hard and blue, riding among hail-clouds; and over St. Abb's Head, a streak of dawn is rising.

And now is the hour when the attack should be, and no Lambert is yet here, he is ordering the line far to the right yet; and Oliver occasionally, in Hodgson's hearing, is impatient for him. The Scots too, on this wing, are awake thinking to surprise us; there is their trumpet sounding, we heard it once; and Lambert, who was to lead the attack, is not here. The Lord General is impatient;-behold Lambert at last! The trumpets

peal, shattering with fierce clangour Night's silence; the cannons awaken along all the Line: "The Lord of Hosts! The Lord of Hosts!" On, my brave ones, on!

The dispute "on this right wing was hot and stiff, for three quarters of an hour." Plenty of fire, from fieldpieces, snaphances, matchlocks, entertains the Scotch main-battle across the Brock;-poor stiffened men, roused from the corn-shocks with their matches all out! But here on the right, their horse, "with lancers in the front rank," charge desperately; drive us back across the hollow of the Rivulet;-back a little; but the Lord gives us courage, and we storm home again, horse and foot, upon them, with a shock like tornado tempests; break them, beat them, drive them all adrift. "Some fled towards Copperspath, but most across their own foot." Their own poor foot, whose matches were hardly well alight yet! Poor men, it was a terrible awakening for them: fieldpieces and charge of foot across the Brocksburn; and now here is their own horse in mad panic trampling them to death. Above Threethousand killed upon the place: "I never saw such a charge of foot and horse," says one; nor did I. Oliver was still near to Yorkshire Hodgson when the shock succeeded; Hodgson heard him say, "They run! I profess they run!" And over St. Abb's Head and the German Ocean, just then, bursts the first gleam of the level Sun upon us, “and I heard Nol say, in the words of the Psalmist, 'Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered.'" -or in Rous's metre,

Let God arise, and scattered

Let all his enemies be;

And let all those that do him hate
Before his presence flee!

Even so. The Scotch Army is shivered to utter ruin; rushes in tumultuous wreck, hither, thither; to Belhaven, or, in their distraction, even to Dunbar, the chase goes as far as Haddington; led by Hacker. "The Lord General made a halt," says Hodgson, "and sang the Hundredand-seventeenth Psalm," till our horse could gather for the chase. Hundred-and-seventeenth Psalm, at the foot of the Doon Hill; there we uplift it, to the tune of Bangor, or some still higher score, and roll it strong and great against the sky:

O give ye praise unto the Lord,

All nati-ons that be;

Likewise ye people all, accord

His name to magnify!

For great to-us-ward ever are
His lovingkindnesses;

His truth endures forevermore:
The Lord O do ye bless!

And now, to the chase again.

Many

The Prisoners are Ten-thousand,-all the foot in a mass. Dignitaries are taken; not a few are slain; of whom see Printed Lists,full of blunders. Provost Jaffray of Aberdeen, Member of the Scots Parliament, one of the Committee of Estates, was very nearly slain: a trooper's sword was in the air to sever him, but one cried, He is a man of consequence; he can ransom himself!-and the trooper kept him prisoner. The first of the Scots Quakers, by and by; and an official person much reconciled to Oliver. Ministers also of the Kirk Committee were slain; two Ministers I find taken, poor Carstairs of Glasgow, poor Waugh of some other place, of whom we shall transiently hear again.

General David Lesley, vigorous for flight as for other things, got to Edinburgh by nine o'clock; poor old Leven, not so light of movement, did not get till two. Tragical enough. What a change since January 1644, when we marched out of this same Dunbar up to the knees in snow! It was to help and save these very men that we then marched; with the Covenant in all our hearts. We have stood by the Letter of the Covenant; fought for our Covenanted Stuart King as we could:—they again, they stand by the substance of it, and have trampled us and the letter of it into this ruinous state!-Yes, my poor friends;-and now be wise, be taught! The Letter of your Covenant, in fact, will never rally again in this world. The spirit and substance of it, please God, will never die in this or in any world!

Such is Dunbar Battle; which might also be called Dunbar Drove, for it was a frightful rout. Brought on by miscalculation; misunderstanding of the difference between substances and semblances;—by mismanagement, and the chance of war. My Lord General's next Seven Letters, all written on the morrow, will now be intelligible to the reader. First, however, take the following

PROCLAMATION

FORASMUCH as I understand there are several Soldiers of the Enemy's Army yet abiding in the Field, who by reason of their wounds could not march from thence:

These are therefore to give notice to the Inhabitants of this Nation That they may and hereby have free liberty to repair to the Field afore

said, and, with their carts or "in" any other peaceable way, to carry away the said Soldiers to such places as they shall think fit:-provided they meddle not with, or take away, any the Arms there. And all Officers and Soldiers are to take notice that the same is permitted.

Given under my hand, at Dunbar, 4th September 1650.
OLIVER CROMWELL.

To be proclaimed by beat of drum.

From REMINISCENCES

Frank Dickson

FRANK was a notable kind of man, and one of the memorabilities, to Irving as well as me; a most quizzing, merry, entertaining, guileless, and unmalicious man; with very considerable logic, reading, contemptuous observation and intelligence, much real tenderness too, when not obstructed, and a mournful true affection especially for the friends he had lost by death! No mean impediment there any more (that was it), for Frank was very sensitive, easily moved to something of envy, and as if surprised when contempt was not possible; easy banter was what he habitually dwelt in; for the rest an honourable, bright, amiable man; alas, and his end was very tragic! I have hardly seen man with more opulence of conversation, wit, fantastic bantering, ingenuity, and genial human sense of the ridiculous in men and things. Charles Buller, perhaps, but he was of far more refined, delicately managed, and less copious tone; finer by nature, I should say, as well as by culture, and had nothing of the fine Annandale Rabelais turn which had grown up, partly of will and at length by industry as well, in poor Frank Dickson in the valley of Dryfe amid his little stock of books and rustic phenomena. A slightly built man, nimble-looking and yet lazy-looking, our Annandale Rabelais; thin, neatly expressive aquiline face, grey genially laughing eyes, something sternly serious and resolute in the squarish fine brow, nose specially aquiline, thin and rather small. I well remember the play of point and nostrils there, while his wild home-grown Gargantuisms went on. He rocked rather, and negligently wriggled in walking or standing, something slightly twisted in the spine, I think; but he made so much small involuntary tossing and gesticulating while he spoke or listened, you never noticed the twist. What a childlike and yet half imp-like volume of laughter lay in Frank; how he would fling back his fire head, left cheek up, not himself laughing much or loud even, but showing you such continents of inward gleesome mirth and victorious mockery of the dear