“ The romantic side of music appeals to Mackenzie far more strongly than any other, and the cases in which he has conformed to the classical conventions are of the rarest. In the orchestral ballad, La Belle Dame sans Merci, he touches the note of weird pathos, and in the nautical overture Britannia his sense of humour stands revealed. In the two “Scottish Rhapsodies” for orchestra, in the music to The Little Minister, and in a beautiful fantasia for pianoforte and orchestra on Scottish themes, he has seized the essential, not the accidental features of his native music. ”

“ On his return home he won the King’s Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, and remained the usual three years in the institution, after which he established himself as a teacher of the piano, &c., in Edinburgh. ”