Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 5

THE EEV. ALEX. STEWAET, F.S.A. Scot., ITETHER-LOCHABEE.
In a recent issue of the Ohan Times an interesting sketcli of our friend
" N'ether-Lochaber " is given, which we are tempted to abridge for the
benefit of our readers. The author of the sketch describes him truly
as : —
A graceful writer, who, for full twenty years, has poured out an
almost uninterrupted flood of cheerful, and always more or less edifying,
pen-talk from his retreat amid the wilds of Inverness-sliire. We are
obliged to coin a word to express the conversational individuality of his
epistles, that has enabled him to keep them interesting and eminently
readable over a term of years, during which most men would assuredly
have dropped from a galloj? into a canter, thence into a stiff walk, to find
themselves standing stiU some day before the five-barred gate of the
CoKiier's columns, to the delight of a wearied public and a worn-out
editor ! In place of this, the Inverness Courier of the present day is only
looked upon by many as the vehicle for the issue of IsTether-Lochaber's
letters, although the journal in question is undoubtedly one of the best
conducted and ablest in the provinces. " A wonderful man, can write a
couple of interesting columns on a rat peeping round a corner," says a
friend ; and this demands qualities of no ordinary kind. A keen and
a careM observer, he has lived an active, energetic, out-door life, and
evidently enters with all a boy's enthusiasm and freshness into I^ature's
varied moods and endless vagaries, touching them with a sympathetic hand,
and painting them with a loving brush,
Mr Stewart, although, an Islander by birth — having first seen the
light in lonely Benbecula in 1829 — is a Highlander by pride of descent
from the Stewarts of Invernahyle and Glenbuckie ; and still more by a
useful and productive pride in the natural productions, the folk-lore, the
archaeology, and the antiquities of the Highlands. Much of these his
letters have rescued from a rapidly approaching extinction, and the JS'orth
can afi'ord to be most grateful to one Avho has made wise and skilful use
of his opportunities, and endeavoured worthily to repair the negligence of
the many cultivated but careless custodians of the jDcople's thoughts and
feeUngs, who have thought more of the fleeces than of the characteristics
of their surrounding flocks. That the people of his extensive parish have
his symj)athy and aff'ection, may be gathered from his having declined
richer livings, that he might remain in his weU-beloved Nether-Lochaber,
where for nearly thirty years he has been pastor of the parish of Balla-
chidish and Ardgour, to which he was presented by the Crown in 1851,
on the unanimous petition of the people.
Mr Stewart's father, who was in the Inland Eevenue Department of
H.M. Civil Service, removed from Benbecula to Oban, where the son
received his first education ; the little village of Kirkmichael, in the
Higlilands of Perthshire, preparing him for the University of St Andrews.
There he was entered in ISiS, and distinguished himself highly, we be-
lieve, in literature and Belles Lettres. Nothing in this to point to him