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BOOKS AND MEN.

commonplaces about foreign gold and Highland honor. On the other hand, the verdict of the disaffected may be summed up in the extraordinary lines with which Macaulay closes his account of Killiecrankie, and of Dundee's brief, glorious struggle for his king: "During the last three months of his life he had proved himself a great warrior and politician, and his name is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of persons who think that there is no excess of wickedness for which courage and ability do not atone." No excess of wickedness! One wonders what more could be said if we were discussing Tiberius or Caligula, or if colder words were ever used to chill a soldier's fame. Mr. Mowbray Morris, the latest historian in the field, seems divided between a natural desire to sift the evidence for all this wickedness and a polite disinclination to say anything rude during the process, "a common impertinence of the day," in which he declares he has no wish to join. This is exceedingly pleasant and courteous, though hardly of primary importance; for a biographer's sole duty is, after all, to the subject of his biography, and not