BAILLIE'S LETTERS AND JOURNALS.
This is at once the handsomest and one of the best editions of the
curious and very interesting class of works to which it belongs, that
has yet been given to the public. It is scarce possible to appreciate
too highly the tact, judgment, and research displayed by the editor;
and rarely indeed, so far as externals are concerned, has the
typography of Scotland appeared to better advantage. It is a book
decked out for the drawing-room in a suit of the newest pattern,--a
tall, modish, well-built book, that has to be fairly set a-talking ere
we discover from its tongue and style that it is a production not of
our own times, but of the times of Charles and the Commonwealth. The
good, simple minister of Kilwinning would fail to recognise himself in
its fair open pages, that more than rival those of his old _Elzevirs_.
For his old-fashioned suit of home-spun grey, we find him sporting
here a modern dress-coat of Saxony broadcloth, and a pair of
unexceptionable cashmere trousers; and it is not until we step forward
and address the worthy man, and he turns upon us his broad, honest
face, that we see the grizzled moustache and peaked beard, and
discover that his fears are still actively engaged regarding the
prelatic leanings of Charles II., 'now at Breda;' though perchance not
quite without hope that the counsel of the 'wise and godly youth'
James Sharpe may have the effect of setting all right again in the
royal mind. We address what we take, from the garb, to be a
contemporary, and find that we have stumbled on one of the seven
sleepers.