paragraph which is worth quoting in this connection:--"When languages are formed upon different principles, it is impossible that the same modes of expression should always be elegant in both. While they run on together, the closest translation may be considered the best; but when they divaricate, each must take its natural course. Where correspondence cannot be obtained, it is necessary to be content with something equivalent. 'Translation, therefore,' says Dryden, 'is not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase.'" With all this we entirely concur, more especially when such widely different languages as the English and Gaelic have to be dealt with. We do not know that Professor Blackie ever read the paragraph quoted, or, even if he did read it, that he now remembers it; but to his translations from the Gaelic, to so much of them, at all events, as were submitted to our notice, Dryden's dictum is entirely applicable--they are not so loose as paraphrase, nor so close as metaphrase. They strike a golden mean very difficult of attainment in such efforts; and on the appearance of the volume itself, we shall be disappointed if nine-tenths at least of the many readers it is sure to command do not entirely agree with us. But nous verrons, if we live we shall see. The Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness for 1873-4 and 1874-5, have reached us. The Secretary's paper on "Coinneach Odhar," the Brahan seer, is most interesting, containing as it does the best account that we have met with of that uncanny Ross-shire worthy. That he was an impostor, and a vulgar impostor too, there can be no doubt; but the story of a man--clever, shrewd rascal as he was--in whom the people so thoroughly believed, is worth the telling, and Mr. Mackenzie tells it very well. He should, we think, give us, if possible, a second paper, containing the many other wonderful vaticinations attributed to his hero, who seems to have latterly been too clever by half; for he who could foresee the misfortunes of others--the death even of a cow--couldn't evidently foresee the well-merited fate that awaited himself; for he was hanged, and we have no doubt at all that he richly deserved that species of exaltation. What Thomas the Rhymer--him of Ercildoune--was in the south of Scotland at a much earlier period, this Coinneach Odhar, comparing small things with great, seems to have been in the North-West Highlands during the latter half of the seventeenth century. "True Thomas," however, was a gentleman and a scholar; whereas Coinneach was, of course, utterly illiterate, conducting his scheme of imposture solely by the aid of natural talents, which must have been considerable, and a large and ever-ready stock of impudence and cunning, nicely calculated to impose upon the vulgar. He made his grand mistake when he flew at such high game as Lady Seaforth and her domestic affairs. She was too clever, too intelligent and well-educated to be imposed upon. She ordered