there was painted with great skill and delicacy, the full-length portrait of a spirit or demon, with his name inscribed below; and some of them were individuals whom I would by no means willingly have invoked. Beneath each picture was drawn the pentagram or cabalistic sign of the spirit, and the extent and limit of his powers. Some could raise tempests, some cause delusions, some discover hidden treasures; and on the reverse of each board were written the spells for summoning them, and the precautions necessary to be taken. The book was most extraordinary even as a work of art; and I can truly say that in turning it over, I felt almost as much astonished as William of Deloraine might have been when he took the volume from the hand of the Scottish wizard. But what struck me more than anything else was an inscription at the end of the volume to this effect. 'I Johann Faust have made this book, which contains the semblances of the spirits which may be evoked, with their signs, and the spells which can compel them. But thou whoever thou art, who shalt open it, beware, for by doing these things I have lost myself, body and soul. Jo. Faustus.' I cannot vouch for the exact accuracy of these words, for I was not allowed to copy anything."

This might appear a bit of curious mystification, but for the circumstance of its forming a portion of one of Mr. Aytoun's public lectures. His biographer, no more than we ourselves, or any of our literary acquaintances have ever heard of the existence of the book of Aschaffenburg. That there was a certain Johann Faust, known to Melancthon, whose practices of the “Arts inhibited" brought him to a miserable end, is now generally acknowledged. Still, if there be such a relic of Teufelskunst at Aschaffenburg, why do we not hear of pilgrimages annually undertaken by disciples of Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa to that Mecca of the prophet Faust.

From 1835 to 1840, we find our poet learning or doing the business of "Writer to the Signet." In the last named year he was called to the bar, and though poetry has no charm in solicitors' eyes when about to intrust a brief, he got a fair share of employ

ment on the western circuit. Contributions from his muse appeared in Blackwood from time to time, and during the years 1842, 1843, and 1844, he and his biographer jointly and separately produced the delightful Bon Gaultier Ballads in Tait's and Fraser's Magazines.

The first of Aytoun's heart-stirring ballads written to exalt the fame of Jacobite and Cavalier heroes, appeared in Blackwood, April, 1843, under the title of the "Burial March of Dundee." His sympathy with these brave enthusiasts was unaffected and strong, not at all assumed for enhancement of his popularity as a poet.

In 1845, he was appointed to the chair of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in the Edinburgh University, and so well did he discharge his pleasant duties, that his students who numbered only 30 in 1846, amounted to 150 in 1864. This appointment added more to his literary reputation than to his account in the bank. In 1852 his appointment as Sheriff of Orkney was decided on, and as long as his powers endured, he made annual progresses to his little kingdom, and enjoyed the healthy recreations of hunting and fishing which they afforded him. In April, 1849, he married Jane Emily, youngest daughter of Professor Wilson. After ten years enjoyment of domestic happiness he was deprived of his gifted and affectionate partner, her decease occurring on 15th April, 1859. On the 7th November, 1861, he lost his mother, who had then completed her ninetieth ycar. His enjoyment of life may be said to have reached its limit when left a lonely, childless widower. On the 4th of August, 1865, he quitted this troubled scene, dying, as he had lived, a sincere Christian.

If Mr. Aytoun did not attain the very highest rank as a poet or a novelist, it was chiefly owing to the continual claims on his time by his practical avocations, and the occasional character of the greater part of his productions. It seemed as if some strong motive from without was needful to induce his muse to engage in the labour of composition. If the "Iliad" was the composition of ore mind, it never would have been constructed had William Blackwood and Sons

lived in Homer's neighbourhood, and secured, as they undoubtedly would, his services as a contributor. It would be difficult to discover poet or romancer who could so cleverly expose the serious faults of Smith, Dobell, and their brothers of the spasmodic school, or open the eyes of the public to so true and vivid a vision of the results of the railway insanity when it was at its height; or choose a more appropriate seat in the pillory of ridicule for the species-selecting philosophers, than the author of the "Feud of the Phairshon.' But all these subjects were local or temporary, and necessarily communicated a portion of their nature to the vehicle with which they were invested. This objection cannot be made against "Bothwell;" but the leading idea of its framework was so faulty, as to fetter the finest and most vigorous powers of the poet's imagination.

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The man himself was one of the most lovable of poets or romancers. It is not often that the memory of so many charming, brilliant, and even great qualities, as were united in Professor Aytoun, is so early preserved in a narrative so adequate, so amusing, and in all that constitutes good biography, so masterly, as that which his early companion, and distinguished collaborateur, in the renowned columns of Blackwood, has consecrated, with a just but most affectionate admiration, to the memory of his friend.

Among many papers written in the same spirit, we are well pleased at lighting on this tribute to his many delightful and amiable qualities by his tenderly attached brother-poet and humorist.

A more delightful companion at this period (1843 et circa), it would be difficult to imagine. Full of health and vigour, and with a flow of spirits which would seem inexhaustible, his society acted like a tonic on men of a more sensitive temperament, and a constitution less robust. With a quaint phrase, an unexpected epithet,

or an apt illustration, he would give a novel aspect to things the most familiar. Out of men or things the most commonplace he would extract materials for pleasantry and hearteasing mirth; and whether his imagination was running riot in a series of grotesque images, or his judgment insinuating its conclusions in a quiet stroke of irony, he was equally happy.

His vivid imagination warmed the stream of his conversation with a kind of poetical underglow. He was of too kindly and sympathetic a nature to shine as a wit. Not only was his friend dearer to him than his jest, but he had that fine instinct of pain, which suspends many a flash of humour or of wit that might dazzle many, but must wound one. There was a charm about his talk which it would be hard to define. It was compounded mainly of pleasant exaggeration, playful allusion, unlooked for turns of phrase, and strong motherwit. It was always the humour of a gentleman, without cynicism and without irreverence. Irresistible while you were under its influence, it rose so entirely out of the occasion, and was so coloured by the mood of the moment-it was so much in short a part of the man, that it would be as impossible to fix it upon paper as to perpetuate the gradations of light and colour,

'When rapt through many a rosy change

The twilight dies into the dark.' Under this bubbling joyousness of spirit was a well of gentleness and tender heart, of strong feeling and chivalrous enthusiasm, which found its way to the surface on just occasion, and on just occasion only. . . To women he was always tenderly courteous, and with children he was always happy, and they with him."

For the posthumous fame of Aytoun, no better wish could have been conceived, than the possession of a biographer so affectionate, so discriminating, and so accomplished, as the writer of this delightful volume.

In these days of historical rationalism we are apt to wander to that extreme where scepticism loses its philosophical meaning—a looking narrowly into and examining matters and acquires a meaning peculiarly theological, that of doubting everything not verified. The difference between the religious and the historical sceptic is that the religious sceptic has no consciousness of the necessity of revelation upon the inscrutable matter of religion, and the historical sceptic is inspired with a clear consciousness that history, more especially that of remote ages, is charged with myth and legend.

In the theological use of the term its true meaning is perverted-the word sceptic can only mean a surveyor that is a looker into things; so that through the perverted meaning which this word has acquired theologically from custom, it would not be inapt to say that every inquirer into the Holy Scriptures is a sceptic, yet philosophically he is not. Therefore the scepticism of investigation is laudable, for we are told by Peter that not only did the prophets inquire and search diligently into some things, but even the angels desire to look into them (1 Pet. i. 10 and 12).

But our historical scepticism is apt

to lead us to the extreme, especially as regards what may be called mythical history. To overlook and cast aside the mythical history of a nation is to despise one great phase in the development of humanity as a society, the childhood of humanity, the age of primeval simplicity; in fact, to overlook the very foundation of history and philosophy. It was a grand thought of Heyne, that "a mythis omnis priscorum hominum cum historia tum philosophia procedit.'

We therefore propose, first of all, to investigate the mythical history of this great institution, which for three centuries stood in the van of religion and philosophy in England, and which has had a greater influence, and still exerts a greater influence upon the intellectual life of England than any other body or institution on her soil. And although we may not succeed in finding, amid the deluge of her mythology, any rest for the sole of our foot, yet we hope to show that the realities of her history make up for all defects in her claims upon remote antiquity. An institution which has had the greatest share in conducting the English race through the period of its consolidation, through its transition out of the darkness of semi-barbarism into the glorious light of modern

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