A DISTINGUISHED London editor said not long ago that the correspondence he received at his office convinced him that the one thing in English political life which the public really cares about is the future of Lord Rosebery. It is a great national interest, independent of party. Since Lord Rosebery's

retirement from party politics, his influence, far from diminishing, has steadily increased. His speeches have become rarer, and the country has learned to watch for them. Every word and act of his is closely scrutinized, and as his own character is many-sided, the phases of opinion with regard to him often succeed each other as rapidly as ripples on a pool. Anger, admiration, bewilderment, gratitude-each of these has been, in the course of a few brief months, the prevailing mood of the moment, but indifference-never. strong is the interest in his personality that it is reflected on his family, and even on his remotest predecessors. The Mayor of Carlisle wrote last autumn that the controversy about the grave of the Jacobite Sir Archibald Primrose had brought him many letters. No apology is therefore needed, I hope, for a glance at some of his ancestors, for there is hardly one of whom we know anything whose character does not throw light upon his

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In the museum of the Hawick Archæological Society there was preserved, until recently, a bronze mortar, bearing the inscription, "Gilbert Primros, Chirvrgien, 1569." This mortar belonged to ancestor who was a well-known physician in France in the middle of the sixteenth century, and wrote several books on medicine. As Lord Rosebery possesses nothing connected with his family of so early a date, he was naturally anxious to acquire the mortar by purchase or exchange. The Hawick Archæological Society met in October, 1899, and decided to present it to his lordship, retaining a cast in the museum. They put it on record that this action was exceptional, and was not to be taken as a precedent.

If we wonder why Gilbert Primrose practised in France instead of in Scotland, we must remember not only the close relations that existed between the two countries in his time, and for a century afterwards, but also the fact that the French school of medicine was then at the head of the world. Ambroise Paré, the father of modern surgery, was a contemporary of Gilbert Primrose.

The founder of the family was Duncan Primrose, of Culross, in Perthshire, who lived in the reign of Queen Mary. He had two sons-Gilbert, who became

principal surgeon to James I., and Archibald, who distinguished himself by his clever management of the revenues of Culross Abbey. The grandson of Archibald was the first baronet, and a halfsister of Sir Archibald married George Heriot, the famous jeweller.

The name of Gilbert Primrose (sometimes spelt Gillebert Primerosse) was distinguished in the clerical, as well as in the medical profession. In the reign. of James I., a Gilbert Primrose was pastor of the French Church in London. He was a courtly preacher, and in 1623 published a Panégyrique à très-grand et très-puissant Prince Charles, Prince de Galles." This was dedicated to the "trèshaut et très-puissant monarque, Jaques I.," in a style of eulogy which recalls the dedication in the authorized version of the Bible. The address to the King occupies twelve pages, and is full of Scriptural and classical allusions; the panegyric of the Prince fills seventeen chapters. No English monarchs ever received such. elaborate compliments as the early Stuarts. If an able and excellent clergyman like Dr. Gilbert Primrose exhausted the language of flattery in addressing his king and his prince, the courtiers must indeed have taxed their wits to find every day fresh incense. Dr. Primrose published at Sedan, in the following year (1624), a volume of sermons, entitled Six Sermons de la Réconciliation de l'Homme avec Dieu. are dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham, whose name is spelt "Bouquingam." The sermons are well worth reading, even in the dim and faded type of a seventeenth-century French printingpress. The first has for its text," For it pleased the Father that in Him should.

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all fulness dwell"; and this thought is worked out through the entire course. In three sermons he expounds Col. i. 20: "Having made peace through the blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself." Deeply interesting are the medical and scientific allusions, and the illustrations drawn from the procedure of the French Courts of Justice and the Inquisition. Dr. Primrose was as familiar with English as with French, although he preferred the French language for his own chief works. His son, David Primrose, went to Oxford, and decided to enter his father's profession. He became minister of the French Protestant Church of Rouen. In 1633 he wrote a treatise on the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, which his father translated into English, and which was published in 1636, at Richard Badger's shop, " The sign of the Glove in Corne-hill.' The book aimed at refuting the very severe and narrow Sab

batarianism which the Puritans of the time inculcated, and the line taken was not very different from that of Dr. Dale, in his book on the Ten Commandments. Mr. Primrose argued that the Christian Sunday was not the Jewish Sabbath, but that Christians should use the Lord's Day for religious exercises in public and private, making it a delight, as well as a means of spiritual profit. The tone throughout was courageous, frank, and independent; and Dr. Primrose evidently thought his son's boldness might offend some of the narrower Puritans, for in his preface he urges Christians to "put off anger, wrath, and malice, and put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."

It is worth while to linger over these