eas the work itself, full of curious miscellaneous
information, is eminently readable; and that the "Vestiges of
Creation,"--a treatise as entertaining as the "Arabian Nights,"--bids
fair, not from the amount of error which it contains, but from the
amount of fresh and interestingly told truth with which the error is
mingled, to live and do mischief when the various solidly-scientific
replies which it has called forth are laid upon the shelf. Both the
"Constitution" and the "Vestiges" had the advantage, so essential to the
basilisk, of taking the first glance of the public on their respective
subjects; whereas their confutators have been able to render them back
but mere _return_ glances. The only efficiently counteractive mode of
looking down the danger, in cases of this kind, is the mode adopted by
Mr. Longmuir.

There was a smart frost next morning; and, for a few hours, my seat on
the top of the Banff coach, by which I travelled across the country to
where the Gamrie and Banff roads part company, was considerably more
cool than agreeable. But the keen morning improved into a brilliant day,
with an atmosphere transparent as if there had been no atmosphere at
all, through which the distant objects looked out as sharp of outline,
and in as well-defined light and shadow, as if they had occupied the
background, not of a Scotch, but of an Italian landscape. A few
speck-like sails, far away on the intensely blue sea, which opened upon
us in a stretch of many leagues, as we surmounted the moory ridge over
Macduff, gleamed to the sun with a radiance bright as that of the sparks
of a furnace blown to a white heat. The land, uneven of surface, and
open, and abutting in bold promontories on the frith, still bore the
sunny hue of harvest, and seemed as if stippled over with shocks from
the ridgy hill summits, to where ranges of giddy cliffs flung their
shadows across the beach. I struck off for Gamrie by a path that runs
eastward, nearly parallel to the shore,--which at one or two points it
overlooks from dark-colored cliffs of grauwacke slate,--to the fishing
village of Gardenstone. My dress was the usual fatigue suit of russet,
in which I find I can work amid the soil of ravines and quarries with
not only the best effect, but with even the least possible sacrifice of
appearance: the shabbiest of all suits is a good suit spoiled. My
hammer-shaft projected from my pocket; a knapsack, with a few changes of
linen, slung suspended