to meet the approach of such a prejudice at once, by saying that
the editors of club books are not mere dreary drudges, seeing the works
of others accurately through the press, and attending only to dates and
headings. Around and throughout the large library of volumes issued by
these institutions, there run prolific veins of fresh literature
pregnant with learning and ability. The style of work thus set agoing
has indeed just the other day been incorporated into a sort of
department of state literature since the great collection called The
Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle
Ages, of which the Master of the Rolls accepts the responsibility, is
carried out in the very spirit of the book clubs, in which indeed most
of the editors of the Chronicles have been trained.

Without prejudice to others, let me just name a few of those to whom the
world is under obligation for services in this field of learned labour.
For England, there are James Orchard Halliwell, Sir Frederic Madden,
Beriah Botfield, Sir Henry Ellis, Alexander Dyce, Thomas Stapleton,
William J. Thoms, Crofton Croker, Albert Way, Joseph Hunter, John Bruce,
Thomas Wright, John Gough Nichols, Payne Collier, Joseph Stevenson, and
George Watson Taylor, who edited that curious and melancholy book of
poems, composed by the Duke of Orleans while he was a prisoner in
England after the battle of Agincourt--poems composed, singularly
enough, in the English language, and at a period extremely deficient in
native vernacular literature.

In Scotland, it was in the earlier issues of the Bannatyne that Thomas
Thomson, too indolent or fastidious to commit himself to the writing of
a book, left the most accessible vestiges of that power of practically
grasping historical facts and conditions, which Scott admired so
greatly, and acknowledged so much benefit from. He was followed by
Professor Innes, who found and taught the secret of extracting from
ecclesiastical chartularies, and other early records, the light they
throw upon the social condition of their times, and thus collected
matter for the two pleasant volumes which have become so popular. The
Bannatyne Club, lately finding no more to do, wound up with a graceful
compliment to David Laing--the man to whom, after Scott, it has been
most indebted. And, lastly, it is in the Scotch book clubs that Joseph
Robertson has had the opportunity of exercising those subtle powers of
investigation a