years the hardships of his life and the long periods of solitude he
passed through seemed to mellow the natural demonstrativeness of his
nature, and he appeared to me to have suffered that chastening which
all men derive as their blessed portion from communion with Nature in
her loving and silent moods; the very ruggedness of mountain solitudes
speaking to the heart of man with a solemnity no tongue can reach. A
subtle writer in the London _Spectator_ of the 14th September last, in
the course of an article on "Clouds," has attempted to describe the
idealising lesson of her works to the spirit of man as "the tranquil
rhythm of this fair Nature, the hurrying throb of the human interests
it measures, there is the eternal poem of human life." In this wise, a
subdued sweetness in William McNair's nature remained, which was a
transfiguration of his ardent, buoyant, somewhat impulsive early
manhood.

On the cricket-field he was in his heartiest element. Men would make a
scratch team at the sound of his voice, just to be led by him as
captain. No mean field or batsman, he excelled in bowling. His resource
in taking wickets was only equalled by the good temper with which
adversaries walked away from the field with their bats after that
terrible McNair had done for their score, or their hopes of one. I have
seen him demoralise a whole team by the way in which he would take
wicket after wicket, within an hour, by the artful way in which he
adapted the style of his bowling to the character of the man who fenced
him at the wicket. Boys were simply enamoured of him, for, by that
instinct which never fails the young, he won their heartfelt devotion
by his quick discernment of the weaknesses and proclivities of all the
young with whom he ever came in contact. I have seen my youngest son--a
lad of eleven--after years of separation from him, when the boy met him
in London, in 1884, nestle on his knee quite spontaneously, to listen