Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/129

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THE PRINCESS LOUISE.
121

chiefs, men of the spear and the battle-axe, have been noted for literary tastes, a love of science, and a devotion to the general intellectual interests of their country. A Duke of Argyll of the last century collected one of the best private libraries in Europe. The present Duke, as just remarked, has written a work of much celebrity called, "The Reign of Law." He has written also an essay upon the ecclesiastical history of Scotland from the time of John Knox. His eldest son, the Marquis of Lorne, is the author of a small book of travels, called "A Trip to the Tropics and Home through America." He also gave the world, a year or two since, a book of poems, which I should judge, from the extracts published in the English papers, to be of a mild and harmless quality, not exactly what we should expect from a descendant of the Scottish Chiefs.

The reader, perhaps, may like to know the name of the Governor-General. He is well supplied with the article of name. It is John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquis of Lorne. He is now thirty-eight years of age. He has served in the House of Commons, and as private secretary to his father, when his father was in the ministry. In 1871 he married the Princess Louise, a princess of whom such good things are spoken that, doubtless, she would have been beloved if she had not been a princess. Lord Dufferin, who began his public life as Lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, an office which brought him into familiar intercourse with the Queen and her children, pronounced a noble eulogium upon her, on taking leave of the people of Canada. He spoke of her "artistic genius," of her devotion to good objects, of her ready sympathy with the poor and lowly. He described her as being not only a princess of what he called "majestic lineage," but a good and noble woman, in whom the humblest settler in Canada would find an intelligent and sympathetic friend.