serve the Scottish historian. Imperfectly as these treasures have yet been turned to account, medieval history is no longer obscure. Many fallacies are already exploded, and many more must speedily follow. The legends of the old chroniclers must be tried by the tests of documents written sometimes by the same authors, but with no thought that history would ever question them for the truth. Yet ample as is the field thus open to the literary antiquary, these will only partially satisfy earnest longings after a knowledge of the past, and a clue to the old ancestral chain whereof they are but the middle links. Ritson has already carried back the supposed limits of authentic Caledonian history fully a thousand years before the _obscurity_ that daunted Lord Hailes. Chalmers, Gregory, Skene, and other zealous investigators, have followed or emulated him in the same bold inquiry. But neither do they reach the BEGINNING which we still desiderate. Much obscurity indeed vanishes. We begin to discover that the Northern and Southern Picts, so long the subject of mystery and fable, were no other than the aboriginal Celtæ; while the Scots who founded the kingdom of Dalriada, in Argyleshire, and ultimately conferred their name on the whole races occupying ancient Caledonia, were probably, if not indeed certainly, only another branch of the same Celtic race, who so readily amalgamated with the older occupants of Caledonia, that the change which is known as the "Scottish Conquest" long puzzled the historian, from the absence of any defined traces of a progress at all commensurate with its results. This is somewhat gained on the medieval _beginning_ which could alone be previously held tenable. But this also begins in the wake of much progression, and glances at a period which likewise had its old history full of no less interest to us, could its annals be recovered. In one of the few records of Sir Isaac Newton's reflections which he has left for the help of others, the following comprehensive thought occurs:--"It is clearly apparent that the inhabitants of this world are of a short date, seeing that all arts, as letters, ships, printing, needle, &c., were discovered within the memory of history." The reflection is surely a very pregnant one. The data it suggests to us as the landmarks of time are well worth extending and turning to account, if so be that with their aid we can arrive at some trustworthy system of chronology, whereby to travel back towards that date which we reckon to be the beginning of things.