treasures of fact, and adorning them with finished and apposite illustration. In the quality of completeness, those articles stand, so far as I know, alone in the records of journalism. For rough and hurrying vigour they might be matched, or more, from the columns of the "Times;" in lightness of wit and smart lucidity of statement they might be surpassed by the happiest performances of French journalists,- -a Prevost Paradol or a St Marc Girardin; and for occasional brilliancies of imagination, and sudden gleams of piercing thought, neither they nor any other newspaper articles have, I think, been comparable with those of S. T. Coleridge. But as complete journalistic essays, symmetrical in plan, finished in execution, and of sustained and splendid ability, the articles of Hugh Miller are unrivalled. For the most part, the topic suggesting them was but the occasion for a display of the writer's thought and imagination,-the fly round which the precious and imperishable amber of Mr Miller's genius was accumulated.

I am not prepared to say that these are the most striking or powerful articles published in the "Witness" by Mr Miller. He conducted that paper for sixteen years; and, on

a moderate computation, he wrote for it a thousand articles. Having surveyed this vast field, I retain the impression of a magnificent expenditure of intellectual energy,—an expenditure of which the world will never estimate the sum. By far the larger portion of what Mr Miller wrote for the "Witness" is gone for ever. Admirable disquisitions on

social and ethical questions, felicitous of humour and sportive though trenchant satire, delicate illustration and racy anecdote from an inexhaustible literary erudition, and crystal jets of the purest poetry,—such things will repay the careful student of the "Witness" file, but can never be known to the general public. Having done my utmost in the way of compression, there still remained about three volumes of articles, between the claims of which to republication I could not decide. This most difficult and delicate task was performed by Mrs Hugh Miller in a way which commanded my entire approval, and which will, I have no doubt, give satisfaction to the public. Should the present volume meet the reception which, in my humble opinion, it deserves, its issue can be followed up by that of others of closely corresponding character and value.

PETER BAYNE.