as not the least interesting part of her very interesting volumes. It is the principle of introducing them in the _text_ that we wish her to reconsider. Unity of composition is not less essential to the higher productions of art, in history or biography, than in painting or the drama; and Miss Strickland writes so powerfully, and paints so beautifully, that we cannot but often regret when we lose the thread of her flowing narrative, to make way for extracts from a quaint annalist, or entries from the accounts of a long-forgotten exchequer. FOOTNOTES: [9] _Lives of the Queens of Scotland._ By AGNES STRICKLAND. Vol. I. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London. [10] Mr Aytoun's noble _Lyrical Ballads_, and Mr Grant's admirable _History of the Castle of Edinburgh_. [11] Falkirk, Torwood, Bannockburn, Stirling Bridge. [12] Schiller, in his noble drama of _Maria Stuart_. [13] "Ach! nicht durch hass allein, durch sund' ge Liebe Noch mehr hab' Ich hochste Gott beleidigt. Das Eitle herz ward zudern Mann gezogen, Der treulos mich verlassen und betrogen." "Ah! not through hatred only, but still more through sinful love, have I offended Almighty God! My tender heart was too strongly drawn to man, by whose faithlessness I have been forsaken and betrayed."--_Maria Stuart_, Act v. scene 7. THE LAY OF THE NIEBELUNGEN.[14] Wolf, the learned German, was certainly very far wrong--as Germans in their endless speculations are apt to be--when he set himself to explain the _Iliad_ without Homer; an attempt which, to our British ears, generally sounded pretty much as profane as to explain the world without God, or, according to Cicero's simile against the Epicureans, to explain the existence of a book by the mere accidental out-tumbling of alphabetic counters on the ground. The _Iliad_ could not have existed without Homer--so the rude instinct of the most unlearned and most unmetaphysical English Bull declared against the cloud-woven theories and the deep-sunk lexicographical excavations of the famous Berlin professor; and the rude instinct, after much philological sapping and mining, stands ground. But Wolf did not labour in vain. Though he did not take the citadel, he made breaches into many parts of our classical circumvallation, formerly deemed most strong, and made us change, in great measure, the fashion of our fortifications. In the same manner Niebuhr, with his knotty club, made sad havoc among the waxen images of the old Romans, which the piety of Livy--taking them for genuine granite statues--had set forth with such a wealth of fine patriotic elocution; but after all this work of destruction, Rome still remains with its Tiber, and, in the minds of most sane persons, Romulus also, we imagine; while the great Julius shines a kingly star every inch, as much after Niebuhr's strong brush as before. What, then, was the great truth by virtue of which--as stupid sermons are redeemed