according to the new reformed
service-book, first began in September, 1559, the bell beginning to ring
at five, when a psalm was sung after the Geneva fashion, all the
congregation, men, women, and boys, singing together. It is much to be
regretted that these registers do not extend so far back as this year,
as we might have found in them entries of interest to the Church
historian; but as "W.C." tells us the volumes are kept regularly up to
the year 1708, I cannot but hope he may be able to produce some notices
of what Mr. P. Cunningham calls, "the Puritanical fervour" of this
little parish. "St. Antling's bell," and "St. Antling's preachers," were
proverbial for shrillness and prolixity, and the name is a familiar one
to the students of our old dramatists. Let "W.C." bear in mind, that the
chaplains of the Commissioners of the Church of Scotland, with Alexander
Henderson at their head, preached here in 1640, commanding crowded
audiences, and that a passage was formed from the house where they
lodged into a gallery of this church; and that the pulpit of St.
Antholin's seems, for many years, to have been the focus of schism,
faction, and sedition, and he may be able to bring forward from these
happily preserved registers much interesting and valuable information.

D.S.

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS.

NOTES ON BOOKS, CATALOGUES, SALES, &C.

No one can have visited Edinburgh, and gazed upon

"The height
Where the huge Castle holds its state,"

without having felt a strong desire to learn the history of that
venerable pile, and the stirring tales which its grey walls could tell.
What so many must have wished done, has at length been accomplished by
Mr. James Grant, the biographer of Kirkaldy of Grange, the gallant
governor of that castle, who was so treacherously executed by the Regent
Morton. His work, just published under the title of _Memorials of the
Castle of Edinburgh_, contains its varied history, ably and pleasantly
narrated, and intermixed with so much illustrative anecdote as to render
it an indispensable companion to all who may hereafter visit one of the
most interesting, as well as most remarkable monuments of the metropolis
of Scotland.

The lovers of fine engravings and exquisite drawings will have a rare
opportunity of enriching their portfolios in the course of the next and
following week, as Messrs. Leigh Sotheby and Co., of Wellington St