T

JOHN G. INGRAM,

HE son of the wood forester to the late Lord Glenlee, at Barskinning, in the parish of Mauchline, was brought up on the classic banks of the Ayr, where its scenery is of surpassing beauty. Here the river, broad, and often deep, winds its way through valleys and beneath banks, where the noblest woods wave wide and far, while now and again it bends with a grand majestic sweep round lofty perpendicular rocks. Only a little way above this place it is embraced by and joined to the waters of the equally classic Logan, amid scenery the fairest that the eye may see, while a little farther down the river, and away to the west, is Coilsfield House, "the Castle o' Montgomery," celebrated by Burns, and which he has rendered famous forever by his love for and his parting with Highland Mary. The soul of the future poet could not but be nursed, fired, and filled with lofty aspirations by such scenery and such hallowed and romantic associations.

His education was solid, and as liberal as the excellent parish school of the county could make it; and when it was over, he began to dream of being an artist (having already become a poet), and took lessons in drawing. Latterly he kept a drawing school himself in Kilmarnock, and for a time succeeded well; but his company being much courted on account of his wit and fine conversational powers, he soon began to neglect his business, when, leaving Kilmarnock, he went to Cumnock and took to painting those beautiful wooden snuff-boxes which made that town not a little famous in the past, though the business now has almost entirely left the place and gone to Mauchline, six miles distant, where some hundreds of hands are still employed.

Mr Ingram wrote a good deal of poetry for Tait's

Magazine, and occasionally in the newspapers. In 1847 he published "The Angel of Hope, and other Poems," and shortly after the bard flung aside his lyre, and went back to his native vale, living with strangers (who were kind, however, to the stricken poet) at Haughholm, within a mile of Mauchline. The gentle murmur of a crystal stream in summer, and its wild rush and roar in winter, could be heard at all times by the poet. Here he painted a little, not unskillfully, and always in the sublime and lofty way which was so entirely natural to him. In a manner dead to the world, and too often in a misanthropic mood of mind, he lived till the sere leaves of 1875 were falling from the trees, when he "went his eternal way," having reached the age of three-score years and ten. When we consider the great and original powers of mind which he possessed, we are forced to lament a life in a manner lost; and from his, and that of too many other men of genius, and the sons of song especially, we see how useless the greatest talents are without a steady guiding judgment to control and direct them.

"The Angel of Hope" is a poem of considerable length, and is full of the richness and the gushing beauty of Moore, as its opening lines will show:

From her place, before the Eternal throne,
Hope hath on a mission of mercy gone;
She hath pass'd the angelic guards that wait
For ever around the Elysian gate;

And these bright spirits mark'd her brow
Shine with unwonted glory then,
And they did deem her journey now
Was to the fair abode of men,

That in the cloudless blue afar,

Resplendent shone a new-born star;
Behind her soon the abodes of bliss

Lie far in ether's vast abyss;

She leaves behind those myriad spheres

That have roll'd in the light of countless years,

And still on tireless wings upborne,

She hath reached the portals of the morn.

She sees the sun in glory rise,

On a fair world, unlike her own;

A flow'r-strew'd earth, and cloudless skies,
She deems this lower paradise-

Meet dwelling-place for God's last son.
As lovely in her shadeless sight,
The Wonders of Eden appear in light;
She sees the crystal waters shine,

O'erhung by odour-breathing trees;
She sees them sleep in the light divine,
Unruffled by the balmy breeze,

Which scarcely stirs the leaves that gleam
And tremble o'er the sparkling stream;
She mark'd the flow'rs as they gorgeously shone
On the banks, meet for angels to walk upon,
Or rather gaze, for their shining feet

Might refuse to tread upon things so sweet.
O theirs was a wonderful loveliness;

They might have bloom'd by the River of Bliss,
Whose waters glide by the throne of Him,
Before whose eyes all beauty grows dim.

How truly Byron-like are these two stanzas from a powerful poem, entitled "A Dream of Another World":

Now God's dread thunders rais'd their voice afar,
And fearful lightnings glar'd athwart the gloom;
The deep, with all its terrors, join'd the war
Of upper air, as if the day of doom-

The hour which should lay Nature in her tomb
Were come, and storms were uttering her knell
In all the majesty they might assume

In the wild utterance of their dread farewell,

Which with its voice sublime, shook earth, and utmost hell.
Yea earth to its foundations seem'd to reel,
The eternal hills were heaving to and fro;
While the great ocean, moaning, seem'd to feel
And mourn o'er Nature's final overthrow;
While in the bowels of the earth below

Dire earthquake wrought in terror and in fire-
Creation trembled at the coming woe,

Feeling throughout her frame that terror dire
That told her God approach'd to light her funeral pyre.
HYMN TO THE MOON.

All hail! to thee, Queen of the radiant brow,
Bright traveller of the starry reals on high,
Fair, even as at thy birth, thou journeyest now,
Though countless years have pass'd before thine eye.

The eternal mountains lift their heads to thee,
As their stern summits with thy glory gleam;
Thy mystic light falls soft on tow'r and tree,
Sleeps on the lake, and trembles on the stream.

At thy approach the shrinking stars grow pale,
Before thy face their trembling lights decline;
"Thy robe of beams" is spread o'er hill and dale;
E'en the stern rocks joy in thy light divine.

To thee the boundless, everlasting deep

Lifts up its voice around a thousand isles; Or like an infant in its dreamless sleep,

Calmed by thy presence, slumbers in thy smiles.

To thee the bard, enraptur'd, lifts his voice,
For thou inspirest oft his noblest strain ;
Thy presence makes the love-lorn youth rejoice,
While beauty blesses thy soft, silent reign.

And the green earth reposes in thy sight,

And thou dost clothe her in the hue of dreams; Thy glory brightens the dark brow of night, And thy fair face is mirror'd in earth's streams.

THE DAYS OF OTHER YEARS.

Oh, the days of other years!

When the heart, the heart was young,
Ere the eye has dimmed with sorrow's tears,
Or grief flow'd from the tongue.

How lovely seemed creation then,
By mountain, stream, and plain;
O might I see as once I saw,
And be a child again!

Where are the glowing visions
I had in life's fair spring?
The radiant dreams of childhood,
All, all have taken wing.

Does the stream glide on as softly,
By my father's dwelling lone?
Yes, Nature's beauty still remains,
But the child's pure heart is gone.

Once more I see the river

Gliding on its gladsome way;
Do the branches o'er it quiver,
As they did in life's young day?

Where are the happy faces

That oft beside the stream

I met, ere care had shaded

The light of life's young dream?

Alas! they're all departed;
And that once joyful scene
I should gaze on broken-hearted

With the thoughts of what hath been.

And where, where is the maiden,
The light of whose dark eyes,
Caus'd dreams of blessful Eden
In my young heart to arise?

Why thus doth retrospection
Wake thoughts of fearful pain?
God!-what is our affection?
Would I were a child again!

WILLIAM LAING

AS born at Guildhall, in the parish of Kirkconnel, in Upper Nithsdale, in 1829, near the birthplace of James Hislop, author of that sublime and widely-known poem, "The Cameronian's Dream." His father was a most intelligent farmer, and had much of the poetic faculty about him. Our poet having received a good education at the parish schools of Kirkconnell and Sanquhar, which latter is four miles down the Nith from the former, he was placed in a writer's office in Glasgow, but, within a year, failing health sent him home to his native hills. On recovering he went for two years as tutor to Mr Beattie's family of Newbie House, near to the border town of Annan. This place he left to study at the University of Edinburgh, and while there he gained prizes in both the mathematical and humanity classes -the latter for a fine poetical translation of a portion of one of the Latin poets.

After leaving the University he went for a short time as tutor to the family of a gentleman near Bir