War, the military operations of Garibaldi, and the Polish insurrection, and served as private sec. to Lord Elgin in Washington, Canada, and China, and as Sec. of Legation in Japan.  In 1865 he entered Parliament, and gave promise of political eminence, when in 1867 he came under the influence of Thomas L. Harris, an American mystic of questionable character, went with him to America, and joined the Brotherhood of the New Life.  In 1870-71 he was correspondent for the Times in the Franco-German War.  Ultimately he broke away from the influence of Harris and went to Palestine, where he founded a community of Jewish immigrants at Haifa.  After revisiting America he returned to England, but immediately fell ill and d. at Twickenham.  O. was a voluminous and versatile author, publishing books of travel, novels, and works on mysticism.  The most important are as follows:  The Russian Shores of the Black Sea (1853), Minnesota and the Far West (1855), The Transcaucasian Campaign (1856), Patriots and Fillibusters (adventures in Southern States) (1860), Narrative of a Mission to China and Japan (1857-59), The Land of Gilead (1880), Piccadilly (1870), and Altiora Peto (1883) (novels), and Scientific Religion.

OLIPHANT, MRS. MARGARET OLIPHANT (WILSON) (1828-1897).—­Novelist and miscellaneous writer, was b. near Musselburgh.  Her literary output began when she was little more than a girl, and was continued almost up to the end of her life.  Her first novel, Mrs. Margaret Maitland, appeared in 1849, and its humour, pathos, and insight into character gave the author an immediate position in literature.  It was followed by an endless succession, of which the best were the series of The Chronicles of Carlingford (1861-65), including Salem Chapel, The Perpetual Curate, and Miss Marjoribanks, all of which, as well as much of her other work, appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, with which she had a lifelong connection.  Others of some note were The Primrose Path, Madonna Mary (1866), The Wizard’s Son, and A Beleaguered City.  She did not, however, confine herself to fiction, but wrote many books of history and biography, including Sketches of the Reign of George II. (1869), The Makers of Florence (1876), Literary History of England 1790-1825, Royal Edinburgh (1890), and Lives of St. Francis of Assisi, Edward Irving, and Principal Tulloch.  Her generosity in supporting and educating the family of a brother as well as her own two sons rendered necessary a rate of production which was fatal to the permanence of her work.  She was negligent as to style, and often wrote on subjects to which her intellectual equipment and knowledge did not enable her to do proper justice.  She had, however, considerable power of painting character, and a vein of humour, and showed untiring industry in getting up her subjects.