soon be no such Herculean task to penetrate to the foundations of
our national ecclesiastical history. From publications such as
those of the Woodrow Club, and of the _Letters and Journals_, the
student will be able to acquire in a few weeks what would have
otherwise cost him the painful labour of years. Nor can we point out
a more instructive course of reading. In running over our modern
histories, however able, we almost always find our point of view
fixed down by the historian to the point occupied by himself. We
cannot take up another on our own behalf, unless we differ from him
altogether, nor select for ourselves the various subjects which we
are to survey. We are in leading-strings for the time: the vigour
of our author's thinking militates against the exercise of our own;
his philosophy enters our minds in a too perfect form, and lies
inert there, just as the condensed extract of some nourishing food
often fails to nourish at all, because it gives no employment to
the digestive faculty. A survey of the historian's materials has
often, on the contrary, the effect of setting the mind free. We see
the events of the times which he describes in their own light, and
simply as events,--we select and arrange for ourselves,--they call up
novel traits of character,--they lead us to draw on our experience
of men,--they confirm principles,--they suggest reflections.

Some of our readers will perhaps remember that we noticed at
considerable length the two first volumes of this beautiful edition of
Baillie rather more than a twelvemonth ago. The third and concluding
volume has but lately appeared. It embraces a singularly important
period,--extending from shortly before the rise of the unhappy and
ultimately fatal quarrel between the Resolutioners and Protesters,
till the re-establishment of Episcopacy at the Restoration, when the
curtain closes suddenly over the poor chronicler, evidently sinking
into the grave at the time, the victim of a broken heart. He sees a
stormy night settling dark over the Church,--Presbytery pulled down,
the bishops set up, persecution already commenced; and, longing to be
released from his troubles, he affectingly assures his correspondent,
in the last of his many letters, that 'it was the matter of his daily
grief that had brought his bodily trouble upon him,' and that it would
be 'a favour to him to be gone.' From a very learned, concise, and
well-written Life, the production of the accomplishe