house in which a man lives have a vast deal to do with making him what he is." I would subjoin, that when he can choose the scenery and build himself a dwellingplace therein, it is very certain that what the man already is has "a vast deal to do" with his choice of scene and with the nature of the abode which he makes for himself. Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, with his ceaseless craving to increase his property in land, to add field to field in order to be more and more a Scottish laird in localities saturated as it were with the chivalrous associations of Border song and story, the architectural character of the house itself, "the big ha' house," all remind us, only too well, that he has, by unkind critics, been called the poet laureate of the Scottish aristocracy. All praise, however, and everlasting honour to the memory of good Sir Walter, one of the truest of the true. Unfortunately much of the bitter and sweet which we gather and garner in the course of life is the fruit of some little failing in our character, and Sir Walter's ideal

of a home was bigger and grander than he could afford to realise. Hence an Iliad of Woes in the last chapter of the life of one who could so well share in Milton's aspiration

"And may at last my weary age

Find out the peaceful hermitage."

In the year 1887 Arrol had made up his mind to prepare himself a place where in the intervals of work he might enjoy retired leisure, and which might at last be to him "the peaceful hermitage" of Milton's yearning. For the immediate purpose the place needed to be near enough to the Dalmarnock Works to enable him by railway to return and ply his daily task there. But at the same time, for the present as well as for the final object, it was to be far enough away to free him from the smoke and noisy turmoil of that busiest of places, the great city of Glasgow.

The district was well chosen for both ends. A great part of the Ayrshire coast

is said to be entirely free from fogs. From West Kilbride southward to the Heads of Ayr it is sheltered by the mountainous Isle of Arran from the mists of the Atlantic, and screened from storms and the fear of storms in the same quarter. In this favoured region my friend took up his abode. In the year above mentioned he became tenant of a house named Seafield, on the sea-shore, about a mile south of the town of Ayr. Here is the native district of the poet Burns, within sound of the waters of "Bonnie Doon" falling over the weir at its mouth. It is the centre of an imposing semicircle of land and sea-beginning from the left with the green velvet hills of Carrick, in front and twenty miles away over the Firth of Clyde the mountaintops of Arran, purple - grey in summer, snow-white in winter, and so round by the hills of Kintyre and Bute, until on the extreme right the kingly height of Ben Lomond ends the view.

So then, after living here for a year, and

having found the situation fit for his purpose, in March 1888 he purchased the house with about fifty acres of the surrounding grounds and land. The old house had no architectural, much less historical, claims to consideration, so he proceeded to pull it down and to build in its place the present large and handsome mansion. In its general features the new building was devised by Sir William himself. It cannot but appear, even from the outside and at first sight, an evident reflection of a broad, healthy, solid understanding. But inside

It

the house is to be found much that is still more suggestive for a biography which seeks to represent the man as he is-how he lives and moves and has his being. was a saying of Goethe's, as to our mental impressions of the beautiful and perfect, that no man can afford to be entirely without the enjoyment of these. I have not found that Arrol has ever been a student of Goethe, but it is certain that, whether by instinct, by the intuition of a singularly