, roused all their
Saxon prejudices, and they cut the knot of difficulties by declining to
convict. A point was supposed to have been made, when the counsel for
the defence asked the ghost-seer what language the ghost, who was
English when in the flesh, spoke to the Highlander, who knew not that
language; and the witness answered, through his interpreter, that the
spectre spoke as good Gaelic as ever was heard in Lochaber. Sir Walter
Scott, however, remarks that there was no incongruity in this, if we
once get over the first step of the ghost's existence. It is curious
that Scott does not seem to have woven the particulars of this affair
into any one of his novels.

Among those who contributed to place the stamp of a higher character on
the labours of the book clubs, one of the most remarkable was Sir
Alexander Boswell. A time there was, unfortunately, when his name could
not easily be dissociated from exasperating political events; but now
that the generation concerned in them has nearly passed away, it becomes
practicable, even from the side of his political opponents, to glance at
his literary abilities and accomplishments without recalling exciting
recollections. He was a member of the Roxburghe, and though he did not
live to see the improvement in the issues of that institution, or the
others which kept pace with it, he, alone and single-handed, set the
example of printing the kind of books which it was afterwards the merit
of the book clubs to promulgate. He gave them, in fact, their tone. He
had at his paternal home of Auchinleck a remarkable collection of rare
books and manuscripts; one of these afforded the text from which the
romance of Sir Tristrem was printed. He reprinted from the one remaining
copy in his own possession the disputation between John Knox and Quentin
Kennedy, a priest who came forward against the great Reformer as the
champion of the old religion. From the Auchinleck press came also
reprints of Lodge's Fig for Momus, Churchyard's Mirrour of Man, the Book
of the Chess, Sir James Dier's Remembrancer of the Life of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, the Dialogus inter Deum et Evam, and others.

The possession of a private printing-press is, no doubt, a very
appalling type of bibliomania. Much as has been told us of the awful
scale on which drunkards consume their favoured poison, one is not
accustomed to hear of their setting up private stills for their own
individual consumption. There is a Sardanapalitan e