Of all the British names that the drama of the great French revolutionary war brought into European prominence, after Wellington, few occupy a more proud position than Lord Lynedoch. Descended from the family of the Grahams, who from a very early period had played an important part in Scottish history, born in 1748, Thomas Graham spent his early years in his paternal home of Balgowan, about nine miles east of Crieff, and having at the age of twenty-six united himself in marriage to Mary, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of Baron Cathcart, intended to have spent his life as a lord of the soil in the husbandry of his ancestral acres in Strathearn. But the sad death of his lady, after a happy union of fourteen years, led to a sudden change of purpose. He determined to remove himself from the scene of his domestic sorrow, and seek, like Agricola, as Tacitus has it, a remedy in public occupation for personal sorrow. At forty years of age he became a soldier, and distinguished himself with Moore and Wellington in various fields of the Peninsular war; returned home after the peace, crowned with honours, and was raised into the peerage with the title of Baron Lynedoch-so called from the lovely property, where he latterly lived, on the banks of the Almond water, a few miles north-west from Perth. Here he spent his latter days in the exercise of those important duties and humanities which belong to a high-souled country gentleman, preserving to the last a freshness and a vigour, and an interest in life, the admiration of all who knew him. He died in the year 1843, at the advanced age of ninety-five-a dozen years beyond the span of his great contemporary Goethe, who was born in 1749, and died in 1832. His remains were deposited alongside of his beloved Mary in the parish churchyard of Methven, to which parish Lynedoch belongs.

The materials for this ballad used by the writer, besides personal inspection and local knowledge, were (1) 'Life of Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch,' by Alex. M. Delavoye-London, 1880; (2) 'Perthshire in Bygone Days,' by P. R. Drummond-London, 1879; (3) Historic Scenes in Perthshire,' by Dr W. Marshall-Edinburgh, 1881.

PRAISE me no poets, dreamers, danglers,

Flighty, fancy-fevered crew

I will sing a man, a soldier

Strong to dare and deft to do.

Grahams were ever men high-mettled,
Royal blood was in their veins;
Wallace knew, and Bruce, their temper,
Mightful arms, and thoughtful brains.

By the Earn's clear winding waters,
In the land of branchy trees,
On the slope that fronts the sunshine
In the freshness of the breeze,

In Balgowan's leafy sweetness,
Fruitful fields and flowery meads,
There was bred my boy, my hero,
Full of dreams that grew to deeds.

Full of ramble, full of venture;

Where a line might be to cast, Where was scent of fox or badger, Thomas never was the last.

Books he knew, as schoolboys know them,
Scraps of Greek and Latin lore;
But old Ossian's hero-story

Touched his Celtic heart-strings more.

French and German he could handle,
As a swordsman wields his sword,

But his pride was on the saddle,

When the strong horse knew his lord.

Wind nor weather might not balk him,
Mounted light on snorting steed,
O'er brown moor and sounding causeway,
When he flew with breezy speed

Like a warrior. But no war-trump
Yet might blare sharp call for him,
Born to farm ancestral acres

By the river's peaceful brim,

Not alone but with him Mary,
Lovely Cathcart, bright-souled dame,
In the grace of household duties
Fitly paired with gracious Graham.

At the banquet, in the larder,
In the church, and at the ball,
In the stable, in the garden
Training creepers on the wall,

Shaping, sorting, and arranging,

She was ever at his side;
But a deathful worm was gnawing
At her beauty, and she died.

There no longer might he tarry

Where each turning stirred a tear-
He would feed on riskful chances,
In a soldier's hot career.

France was quick with wild upheaval :
Of all stable things that be
From old bonds of gilded serfage
She would shake the people free.

For such grace of fair redemption

All should thank free-thoughted FranceTo her hymn of liberation,

As she piped it, all must dance.

But no lordship dressed in Freedom's Robes the gallant Graham might own; Off he sailed with British sailors

To Gibraltar, to Toulon.

Thence to Mantua, where the Austrian
Never weary, ever slow,

Backward reeled from where Napoleon
Flashed his lightning on the foe.

Then to Malta, where around him,
In the battle and the breeze,
Nelson's name and Abercromby's
Sounded proudly o'er the seas.

At Corunna, where stout valour
Veiled retreat in robes of glory,
There he stood in faithful tendance,
Praised with Moore in deathless story.

At Barossa, at Barossa,

Sweeping like a thunderstorm,

From the heights he drave the Frenchmen, While apart, with palsied arm,

Stood the Spaniard. From Vittoria's

Field of triumph, on and on,
One in heart and one in doing,
Brothered with great Wellington,

Marched the Graham. At Bidassoa
Faith its full fruition found,
And he stood with England's Arthur
Victor upon Gallic ground.

And the swelling tide of triumph
Stronger still and stronger grew,
Till who strove to scale high heaven,
Kissed the clay at Waterloo.

Lynedoch now might nurse sweet leisure;
But for us the task remained
Him to crown with deathless laurels
In the fiery combat gained;

Him to stamp with titled honour,
That might go from sire to son,
Fraught with fair and fruitful memory
Of the brave deeds he had done.

Where he came loud cheers came with him,—
Lynedoch sounded through the land;

Greeting came from peers and princes,
Kings were proud to shake his hand.

And at Perth they placed him proudly
Pictured in the public hall,

There to stand a type of manhood
In the gaze of great and small.

Wars were ended, breath of praises
Peaceful breezes round him blew;
What remained now for the soldier
With no soldier's work to do?

But the Graham was more than soldier;
O'er red fields of needful slaughter

Calmly smiling, hoe and harrow

Pleased, him more by Almond water.

Where he dwelt all things were speaking

Of the landlord's fostering care; Fruitful fields and flowering meadows,

Leafy verdure rich and rare.

And the old man in a hundred

Battles, blanched and hoary-haired, Scoured the moors and tracked the forest With the lightest youth that dared.

And he gathered round his homestead
Friends of old times, leal and dear,
Who rejoiced as in the sunshine

When they knew his kindly cheer;

When he flung his grand life's story
With light hand in pictured page,
Mingling wise the sport of boyhood
With the sober grace of age.

And they said when they beheld him,
Tall, with stout unbending frame-
Surely, surely age is lovely

When it houses with the Graham!

But the sun must set. For fourscore
Valiant years and more than ten,
Who had served the time so bravely,
He must die like meaner men.

And he died; and good men laid him
As himself had marked the bed,
In the grassy cirque where Methven
Keeps the record of her dead.

JOHN S. BLACKIE.