any continuation of the old race of the _Scoti extra Scotiam agentes_, only such small mercies as a Mure of Rowallan, a Semple of Beltrees, or a Cleland, among the versifiers, or, in prose, a Hume of Godscroft, a Spotswood, a Sir Thomas Urquhart, or a Sir George Mackenzie! What was the cause of this poverty? The loss of the benefits of a resident Scottish kingship, consequent on the removal of the Court to England in 1603, may have had some effect. No chance after that of Napier’s desired agency of a mighty royal Mæcenas in Holyrood for stirring the Scottish “ingines.” A more certain cause, however, is to be found in the agonising intensity with which, through the whole of the century and a quarter from 1580 onwards, the soul and heart of Scotland, in all classes of the community alike, were occupied with the successive phases of the one vexed question of Presbytery-versus-Episcopacy in Church government, and its theological and political concomitants. It was in the nature of this controversy, agitated as it was with such persevering, such life-or-death vehemence, in Scotland, to strangle all the ordinary muses. Here, however, lies the historical compensation. There are other interests in a nation, other duties, than those of art and literature; and he would be but a wretched Scotsman who, while hovering over the history of his country in the seventeenth century and noting her deficiencies then in literary respects in comparison with England, should forget that this very century was the time of the most powerful action ever exerted by Scotland in the general history of the British Islands, and that, when the great British Revolution of that century was over, its accounts balanced, and the residuum of indubitably successful and useful result summed up, no little of that residuum was traceable to Scotland’s obstinate perseverance so long in her own peculiar politico-ecclesiastical controversy, and to what had been argued or done in the course of it, on one side or the other, by such men as Andrew Melville, Alexander Henderson, Argyle, Montrose, Claverhouse, and Carstares. But it is on Scottish Literature that we are now reporting, and for that the report must remain as has been stated. From Dan to Beersheba, from Hawick to Thurso, all through the Scottish century and a quarter under view, very few roses or other flowers, and not much even of happy thistle-bloom!