ham, Robert Blair, Sir Alexander Boswell, Joanna Baillie, The Ettrick Shepherd, Rev. John Home (author of "Douglas "), Allan Ramsay, Robert Southey, Thomas Campbell, James Macpherson (of "Ossian" fame), Thomas Moore, James Montgomery, William Wordsworth, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, E. L. Landon, Lord Houghton, D. M. Moir ("Delta"), William Morris, Ebenezer Elliot, Sheridan Knowles, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, Robert Gilfillan, W. E. Aytoun, Victor Hugo, Beranger, Eliza Cook, William Thom (of Inverurie), Sergeant Talfourd, Alaric A. Watts, William Motherwell, Barry Cornwall, Rev. George Crabbe, and Isa Craig.

Among the novelists are Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Thackeray, W. Harrison Ainsworth, Theodore Hook, Thomas Hardy, William Black, Thomas Hughes, Mrs. Gore, John Galt, G. P. R. James, Charles Kingsley, Henry Kingsley, Charles James Lever, Samuel Lover, Charles Reade, Horace Smith, Maria Edgeworth, Alexander Dumas, Jane Porter, Amelia Opie, Mrs. Oliphant, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Henry Mackenzie, Captain Marryat, Lord Lytton, Charlotte M. Yonge, William Beckford ("Vathek "), and Mrs. Henry Wood.

The writers on other subjects from whom epistles find a place here are many. Some of the best known are Tom Hood (father and son), Charles Lamb, Harriet Martineau, Mary Russell Mitford, Lady Morgan, Horace Mann, Lord Macaulay, Niebuhr, Macvey Napier, John Wilson Croker, Lord Cockburn, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Darwin, Thomas de Quincey, Hepworth Dixon, Isaac D'Israeli, James Anthony Froude, John Forster, Mary Somerville, Sir William Stirling Maxwell, Sydney Smith, Agnes Strickland, St. Beuve, Baron Von Humboldt, John Ruskin, William Roscoe, John Gibson Lockhart, George Henry Lewis, Charles Knight, William Jesse, William Jerdan, William Henry Ireland (Shakespeare forger),

Michael Faraday, Professor Huxley, William Godwin, Francis Grose, Guizot, James O. Halliwell, J. Payne Collier, Sir Arthur Helps, William and Mary Howit, David Hume, Leigh Hunt, Sir Archibald Alison, Lucy Aikin, Sir John Bowring, Dr. John Brown, Sir David Brewster, Thomas Carlyle, William Combe, Horace Walpole, Patrick Fraser Tytler, A. F. Tytler, William Cobbett, Sir John Lubbock, Professor Seeley, Henry Rogers, Captain Parry, Alexander Dyce, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, John Pinkerton, John Stuart Mill, Lord Holland, Lord Mahon, J. Herman Merivale, Chateaubriand, and Henry Home, Lord Kames.

One of the portfolios contains a packet of very important letters addressed by the beautiful Jane, Duchess of Gordon, to Francis Farquharson of Inveray and others in reference to her separation from her husband. Mr. Guild had these letters printed privately in a handsome quarto volume in 1864.

Other autographs of interest are those of Sir John Soane, Duncan Forbes, President of the Court of Session; Anna, Countess of Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, who was executed at Edinburgh; Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire; Simon, Lord Lovat, executed in 1746 for complicity in the rebellion; John Sobieski Stuart, the Countess Guiccioli, Count d'Orsay, John Howard, Harry Erskine, Dr. Jenner, Sir Rowland Hill, Florence Nightingale, Father Mathew, Lord Chancellor Eldon, Miss Berry, and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

It has given us no uncommon pleasure to visit and write of this magnificent collection of books, or rather collection of collections, tempered even though that pleasure was by the fear of being unable to give such an account of it as its size, wealth, and beauty demanded at our hands. In appearance it is beautiful; in literary treasure surpassing rich.

CHAPTER XV.

LIBRARY OF GEORGE WINGATE HILL, ESQ., CASHIER, UNION BANK OF SCOTLAND; RESIDENCE, PRINCES TERRACE, DOWANHILL.

Character of Mr. Hill's Library-Poetry and the Drama-Scottish Poetry-Scottish Biography, History, and Topography-Ruskin's Works--Other Fine Art Books-Fiction-Bibliography, &c.

THIS is an excellent library, leisurely and judiciously chosen. Mr. Hill has ranged over the whole field of literature, and culled with fine discrimination choice flowers here and there. His marked liking for the domain of the heather and the thistle has not dulled his appreciation of the products of other lands, and his library, while having strongly marked Scottish features, is well-balanced and comprehensive. It is a gathering of friends deliberately chosen, with whom there are none but the happiest associations. The dominant feeling with Mr. Hill being generally, we fancy, not so much to possess a rarity as a desirable book, there are few of extreme rarity to chronicle. In our first class, we will only mention a large paper copy of the "Immaculate" Bible, printed by Sir James Hunter Blair and Coy.; Dunlop's Confession of Faith, etc.; and the edition of the Psalms, with music, printed by the heirs of Andro Hart, at Edinburgh, in 1635, commonly known as Knox's Liturgy or Psalter. This was the edition from which the admirable reprint edited by the Rev. Neil Livingstone was taken. The leading editions of the Scottish Psalter are those of 1595, 1615, and 1635. Its first official appearance was

in 1564, and it was discarded for the present metrical version in 1650. Between these dates about forty editions appeared. David Laing's copy of the 1635 edition sold at £15 15s.

Mr. Hill was a subscriber to Mr. J. Payne Collier's edition of Shakespeare with the "purest text and the briefest notes," and among other editions of the great dramatist's works has Pickering's beautiful diamond edition, that edited by Dyce, and that known as the Cambridge Shakespeare. The dates and publishers of the editions of the works of Spenser, Marlowe, Peele, Green, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Chaucer, Otway, Middleton, Ford, Shirley, Foote, Butler, Dryden, Chatterton, Cowper, Shelley, Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, and other poets need not be detailed; sufficient to say that they are all editions of high repute. Ritson's works, Dodsley's Old Plays, the Aldine series of Poets, Child's Ballads, Utterson's Early Popular Poetry, the publications of the Percy Society, with suppressed parts, the Percy Folio MS., Rogers' Poems and Italy (1830-34, beautiful copies), and an edition of Goethe's Faust, published at London in 1838, in 2 volumes (50 copies printed, 40 for sale), occupy places in this division, a division characterized by high all-round excellence.

We might dismiss the sections containing Scottish poetry in a sentence, by saying that they contain the works of every Scottish poet whose fame has been more than national, and many more of lesser merit; but such summary procedure would neither be fair to the authors or to Mr. Hill, nor respectful treatment of that failing for verse-making which moved some one to say that if a gun were fired at random in any of our streets it would be sure to bring down a poet.

Of Burns, Mr. Hill has the second and third editions issued in Edinburgh and London respectively in 1787. an uncut copy of that published at Edinburgh in 1811, 2 volumes; Hogg and Motherwell's edition, 5 volumes.

Macpherson's edition of Wyntoun's Chronicle of Scotland is bound in pigskin, a material not susceptible of a very fine polish. Mr. Hill's copy of Leyden's edition of the Complaynt of Scotland is a large paper one, and he has a large as well as a small paper copy of Ancient Scottish Poems from the MS. of George Bannatyne. The Tea-Table Miscellany, 3 volumes, 12mo, 1733, is worthy of notice as an edition not mentioned by Lowndes, and one rarely seen for sale. Mr. Hill has the original edition of Herd's Ancient Scottish Ballads, Ramsay's Evergreen, Chambers's Songs of Scotland, Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, Peter Buchan's Ballads, Jamieson's Scottish Songs (with a portion of the manuscript), Kinloch's Scottish Ballads, Scotish Poems of the Sixteenth Century, Sibbald's Chronicle of Ancient Scottish Poetry, Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Gilchrist's Scottish Ballads, the collection of songs and ballads edited by John Pinkerton, Finlay's Ballads, Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. He has also Chalmers's fine edition of Sir David Lyndsay's works, 3 volumes, 1806; Laing's Select Remains of Ancient Popular Poetry, uncut, 1822; his Fugitive Poetry, 2 volumes, uncut, first and second series, 18251853; and Early Metrical Tales, 1826; his editions of Dunbar, Henryson, and Lyndsay, and many other of his publications, and likewise those of James Maidment; the well-known but scarce biographies of the families of Douglas and Angus, the Bruces and Comyns, the Somervilles, and other prominent houses are present, supplementing a capital array of the best and most authoritative works on the general history and topography of Scotland. Of these we need only single out for separate mention a beautiful large paper copy of Billings' Baronial Antiquities, a copy of similar amplitude of margin of Sir Walter Scott's Border Antiquities, and fine copies of Innes's Critical Essay upon the Inhabitants of Scotland, White's Kintyre, Bellenden's translation of Boece's Chronicle, Pennant's Tour in