ize-fighters, are so many steaks cut warm from the living world, and
are good, substantial food for thought. But he seldom forgets himself
long, and is natural only by fits and starts. After he has been striding
along for a short time with a free, manly gait, he suddenly bethinks
himself that he is writing a book. The malign influences of Cambridge
University begin to work upon him. The loose stride is contracted; the
swing of the vigorous shoulders is restrained, and, instead of an honest
fellow tramping sturdily after his own fashion through the paths of
literature, we are treated to an imitation of Dr. Johnson, done by an
illiterate butcher's son. We are afraid that the Cantabs have been at
the bottom of John Brown's fine writing. How valuable, for instance, are
the following philosophical reflections upon Napoleon, which John Brown
makes when he beholds the dethroned Emperor standing sadly upon the poop
of the Bellerophon!

"Here, then," remarks John, "had ended his dream of universal conquest;
here he lay prostrate at the foot of the altar," (we are informed a few
lines before this that he had taken his stand on the poop,) "on which he
sacrificed, not hecatombs, but pyramids, of human victims." (Beautiful
antithesis!) "As his ambition was boundless, posterity will not weep at
his fall. But that he insinuated himself into the hearts of a generous
people is too true; they worshipped him as a demi-god, until," etc.
Farther on, we learn the startling intelligence, that "for a time his
adopted country was enriched by the spoils and plunder of other lands."
(Did Alison know this?) "He formed the bulk of the population into an
organized banditti, and led them forth in martial pomp to do the unholy
work of bloodshed and robbery.... All the independent states of Europe
leagued together to put down this infamous system of national plunder."
(Russia among the rest of the independent states, we suppose.)... "Had
he been desirous of establishing just principles on earth, and crushing
despotism, the sympathies of the entire human race would have been
enlisted on his side." Certainly, John. Two and two make four, and
things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.

After having in a street-fight pommelled an unhappy Cambridge student
into jelly, and reduced him to a state which he picturesquely describes
as resembling that of "a dog in a coal-box," he picks him up and
philosophically informs him that "all the different