is in
print, the student of history wastes his time in struggling with
manuscripts. Hence the value of the services of the book clubs in
immensely widening the arena of his immediate materials. To him their
volumes are as new tools to the mechanic, or new machinery to the
manufacturer. They economise, as it is termed, his labour: more
correctly speaking, they increase its productiveness.

These books are fortunately rich in memorials of the great internal
contest of the seventeenth century. The notes, for instance, of the
proceedings of the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited for the
Camden by Mr Bruce, come upon us fresh from that scene of high debate,
carrying with them the very marks of strife. The editor informs us that
the manuscript is written almost entirely in pencil on slips of foolscap
paper, which seem to have been so folded as to be conveniently placed on
the knee, and transferred to the pocket as each was completed. "They
are," he says, "full of abrupt terminations, as if the writer
occasionally gave up the task of following a rapid speaker who had got
beyond him, and began his note afresh. When they relate to resolutions
of the House, they often contain erasures, alterations, or other marks
of the haste with which the notes were jotted down, and of the changes
which took place in the subject-matter during the progress towards
completion. On several important occasions, and especially in the
instance of the debate on the Protestation [as to the impeachment of
Strafford], the confusion and irregularity of the notes give evidence to
the excitement of the House; and when the public discord rose higher,
the notes become more brief and less personal, and speeches are less
frequently assigned to their speakers, either from greater difficulty in
reporting, or from an increased feeling of the danger of the time, and
the possible use that might be made of notes of violent remarks. On
several of the sheets there are marks evidently made by the writer's
pencil having been forced upwards suddenly, as if by some one, in a full
House, pressing hastily against his elbow while he was in the act of
taking his note."

John Spalding.

Looking from the opposite end of the island, and from a totally
different social position, another watchful observer recorded the events
of the great contest. This was John Spalding, commonly supposed to have
been Commissary-Clerk of Aberdeen, but positively known in no other