We had no previous idea that the fumes generated by cabbage produced an effect so nearly resembling that which is consequent on the inhalation of chloroform. Crossthwaite, however, is a learned man in his way, and can quote Ariosto when he pleases--indeed, most of the workmen who figure in these volumes seem to be adepts in foreign tongues and literature. From Crossthwaite, Alton Locke derives his first lesson as regards the rights of man, and becomes conscious, as he tells us, that "society had not given him his rights." From another character, Sandy Mackaye, a queer old Scotsman, who keeps a book-stall, he receives his first introduction to actual literature. Sandy is a good sketch--perhaps the best in the book. He is a Radical of course, and, like the Glasgow shoemaker, whom the late Dr Chalmers once visited, "a wee bit in the deistical line;" but he has a fine heart, warm sympathies, and, withal, some shrewdness and common sense, which latter quality very few indeed of the other characters exhibit. We are left in some obscurity as to Sandy's early career, but from occasional hints we are led to believe that he must have been honoured with the intimacy of Messrs Muir and Palmer, and not improbably got into some scrape about pike-heads, which rendered it convenient for him to remove beyond the jurisdiction of the High Court of Justiciary. On one occasion he seems to have averred that he was even older, alluding to a conversation he had with "Rab Burns ance, sitting up a' canty at Tibbie Shiels' in Meggot Vale." This is a monstrous libel against our excellent friend Tibbie, at whose well-known hostelry of the Lochs it was our good fortune, as usual, to pass a pleasant week no later than the bygone spring; the necessary inference being that she has pursued her present vocation for nearly three quarters of a century! The author might have stated, with equal propriety, that he had the honour of an interview with Ben Jonson, in a drawing-room of Douglas's hotel! But Sandy's age is quite immaterial to the story. He may have been out in the Forty-five for anything we care. It is enough to know that he takes a particular fancy to the young tailor; lends him books; puts him in the way of learning Latin, as we have already hinted, in three months; and, finally, receives him under his own roof when he is ejected from that of his mother on account of his having proclaimed himself, in her presence, a rank and open unbeliever.