strictly theological direction, to work in new ways. While Dr. Samuel Brown, a younger cousin of our Dr. John, had been astonishing Edinburgh by his brilliant speculations in Chemistry, Dr. John himself, in the midst of what medical practice came in his way, had been toying with Literature. Toying only it had been at first, and continued to be for a while; but, by degrees,—and especially after 1847, when the editorship of the _North British Review_, which had been founded in 1844, passed into the hands of his friend Dr. Hanna,—his contributions to periodical literature became more various and frequent. At length, in 1858, when he was forty-eight years of age, and had contributed pretty largely to the periodical named and to others, he came forth openly as an author, by publishing a volume of what he called his _Horæ Subsecivæ_, consisting mainly of medical biographies and other medico-literary papers collected from the said periodicals, but including also his immortal little Scottish idyll called “Rab and His Friends.” His father had died in that year, so that thenceforward, if people chose, the designation “Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh” could descend to the son without ambiguity. And it did so descend. For eleven years before that appearance of the first collection of his _Horæ Subsecivæ_, with “Rab and His Friends” included in it, I had been resident in London, and I remained there for seven years more. During all those eighteen years, therefore, my direct opportunities of cultivating his acquaintance had ceased; and, while I could take note through the press of the growth of his literary reputation, it was only by hearsay at a distance, or by a letter or two that passed between us, or by a glimpse of him now and then when I came north on a visit, that I was kept aware of his Edinburgh doings and circumstances. Not till the end of 1865, when I resumed residence in Edinburgh, were we brought again into close neighbourhood and intercourse. Then, certainly, I found him, at the age of five-and-fifty, as completely and popularly our “Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh” in the new sense as ever his father had been in the old one. His pen had been still busy in newspapers and periodicals, the subjects ranging away more and more from the medical; another volume of his _Horæ Subsecivæ_, or collected articles, had been published; and some of his papers, selected from that volume or its predecessor, or taken more directly from the manuscript, had been brought out separately, in various forms, under the discerning care of his friend and publisher, Mr. David Douglas, and had been in circulation almost with the rapidity of one of the serial parts of a novel by Dickens. Of both his _Minchmoor_ and his _Jeems the Doorkeeper_ more than 10,000 copies had been sold; his _Pet Marjorie_ had passed the sale of 15,000 copies; and _Rab and His Friends_ was already in its 50th thousand.