obstacle, or interruption, we began to eye our gradually rising situation in life--and looking over our shoulder, the sight of city and sea was indeed magnificent. There in the distance rose North Berwick Law--but though we have plenty of time now for description, we had scant time then for beholding perhaps the noblest scenery in Scotland. Up with us--up with us into the clouds--and just as St. Giles's bells ceased to jingle, and both girths broke, we crowned the summit, and sat on horseback like king Arthur himself, eight hundred feet above the level of the sea! _Blackwood's Magazine_. * * * * * Select Biography * * * * * No. LVIII. * * * * * LELAND. John Leland, the father of the English antiquaries, was born in London, about the end of the reign of Henry VII. He was a pupil to William Lily, the celebrated grammarian--the first head master of St. Paul's school; and by the kindness and liberality of a Mr. Myles, he was sent to Christ's college. Cambridge. From this university he removed to All Souls, Oxford, where he paid particular attention to the Greek language. He afterwards went to Paris, where he cultivated the acquaintance of the principal scholars of the age, and could probably number among his correspondents the illustrious names of Buddoeus, Erasmus, the Stephani, Faber, and Turnebus; in this city he perfected himself in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues, to which he afterwards added that of several modern languages. On his return to England he took orders, and was appointed one of the chaplains to Henry VIII., who gave him the rectory of Popelay, in the marshes of Calais, appointed him his library keeper, and conferred on him the title of Royal Antiquary, which no other person in this kingdom, before, or after possessed. In this character his majesty in 1533 granted him a commission, empowering him to search after England's antiquities, and peruse the libraries of all cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges, &c., as also all the places wherein records, writings, and whatever else was lodged that related to antiquity. "Before Leland's time," says Hearne, in his preface to the _Itinerary_, "all the literary monuments of antiquity were totally disregarded; and the students of Germany apprised of this culpable indifference, were suffered to enter our libraries unmolested, and to cut out of the books deposited there whatever passages they thought proper, which they afterwards published as relics of the ancient literature of their own country."