primitive manner, is shown at Hourie's studio on the housetop without any shelter or glasshouse, in the north view. Nobody ever helped me with them; they were drawn to give pleasure to my dear father. I never touched them apart from the gallery of the Scott Monument." Hugh Miller's death.Hugh Miller in the columns of The Witness, a Free Kirk newspaper, gave a glowing account of having found the "young artist" making these drawings. Ebsworth, in a letter to me of the 14th of July, 1907, says: "It was generously written. I was saddened by his violent death, and knew all the particulars from Thompson, the gunsmith who sold the revolver with which Miller shot himself. He lost his own chief workman, who incautiously handled the pistol, which was still loaded, when placed in his hand by the police constable, to identify the weapon." Thompson's son was an intimate friend of Ebsworth's.
The only one Ebsworth engraved was the north view, but it has never been published, only a few copies having been presented to friends. The one given to me happened to be in my private room at The Athenaeum office when F. G. Stephens's criticism.F. G. Stephens, then our art critic, came in. He thought the plate had been sent for notice. I told him that it was a present from the artist, but Stephens was so delighted with it that he wrote the following notice, which appeared in The Athenaeum of April 4th, 1891. With this exception, so far as I am aware, no criticism of it has appeared in the public press.:—
"Lovers of old ballads and antiquaries in general, who owe a debt they gladly acknowledge to the Rev. J. W. Ebsworth, have, most of them, no idea what an excellent draughtsman he is in water colours, or that he is an engraver on metal of exemplary patience and well-tried skill, being a quondam pupil of the Trustees' School, Edinburgh, where he won several prizes, and had for fellow-pupils some of the most eminent Scottish painters of our time. Many years ago hellip; he executed from the Scott Monument four drawings from the cardinal points of the site, giving as many views of the city as it then appeared hellip; Of that looking northwards an impression hangs before us, and proves not only the marvellous patience of the artist—a quality all who know his literary work will give him credit for—but his remarkable skill with the brush and graver, a sort of skill far more difficult of attainment than that which has charmed us all in his capital facsimiles of the old woodcuts in the 'Roxburghe Ballads.' He draws with precision, engraves as crisply, has a rare sense of the effect of light and shade, and of light reflected into shadow he is a past master. In topographical respects this print should be a treasure citizens of 'Auld Reekie,' which he patriotically represents on a clear day, must needs be grateful for. They ought to insist on his publishing the whole of the views, although as yet that before us alone has been permitted to see the light, and this only in an extremely limited number of impressions."
In the year following the exhibition of these views he had a picture on the line. This was intended to illustrate Tennyson's 'Locksley Hall': "Like a dog, he hunts in dreams Then a hand shall pass before thee." Ebsworth told me that Prof. John