John Leech and other papers

THE DUKE OF ATHOLE.
SOME men have character, — more or less, —
others have none, — and some few are charac-
ters ; it is of their essence and what they are made
of. Such was the late Duke of Athole ; he was a
character, inscribed and graven by the cunning,
inimitable, and unrepeating hand of Nature, — as
original and as unmistakeable as his own Ben-y-Gloe.
He was a living, a strenuous protest, in perpetual
kilt, against the civilisation, the taming, the softening
of mankind. He was essentially wild. His virtues
were those of human nature in the rough and
unreclaimed, open and unsubdued as the Moor of
Rannoch. He was a true autochthon, terrigena, — a
son of the soil, — as rich in local colour, as rough in
the legs, and as hot at the heart, as prompt and
hardy, as heathery as a gorcock. 1 Courage, endur-
ance, staunchness, fidelity and warmth of heart,
simplicity, and downrightness were his staples ; and
with them he attained to a power in his own region
and among his own people quite singular. The
1 The cock grouse.