one accumulating marvel and joy. There seemed no bounds to his powers, or the field of his operations. From Scotland he descended into England, stepped over into France, Germany, Switzerland, nay, even into Palestine and India; and people asked, as volumes, any one of which would have established a first-rate reputation, were poured out, year after year, with the rapid prodigality of a mountain stream,--is there no limit to the wondrous powers of this man's imagination and creative faculty? There really seemed none. Fresh stories, of totally novel construction, fresh characters, of the most startling originality, were continually coming forward, as from an inexhaustible world of soul. Not only did the loftiest and most marked characters of our history, either the Scotch or English, again move before us in all their vitality of passions and of crimes, of virtue and of heroism as--Bruce, James V. and VI., Richard Coeur de Lion, Elizabeth, Mary of Scots, Leicester, James I. of England, Montrose, Claverhouse, Cumberland the butcher; not only did the covenanters preach and fight anew, and the highland clans rise in aid of the Stuart, but new personages, of the rarest beauty, the haughtiest command, or the most curious humor, swarmed out upon the stage of life, thick, as if their creation had cost no effort. Flora M'Ivor, Rose Bradwardine, Rebecca, the high-souled Jewess, the unhappy Lucy Ashton and Amy Robsart, the lowly Effie Deans, and her homely yet glorious sister Jenny, the bewitching Di Vernon, and Brenda Troil of the northern isles, stand radiant amid a host of lesser beauties; while Rob Roy, the Robin Hood of the hills, treads in manly dignity his native heather; Balfour of Burley issues a stalwart apparition from his hiding-places; and for infinitude of humor, and strangeness of aspect and mood, where are the pages that can present a troop like these: the Baron of Bradwardine, Dominie Sampson, Meg Merrilies, Monkbarns, Edie Ochiltree, Dugald Dalgetty, Old Mortality, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Andrew Fairservice, Caleb Balderstone, Flibbertigibbet, Norna of the Fitful Head, and that fine fellow, the farmer of Liddesdale, with whom every one feels a desire to shake hands, honest Dandie Dinmont, with all his Peppers and Mustards yaffling at his heels?