ommon sense. They betray only occasionally, in a technical way,
that the author is a disciple, as well as admirer, of Sydenham, and his
own countryman, Cullen. But they overflow with the best specifics of the
healing art, shrewdness, independence, nice observation; they have a
woman's kindness and a man's sturdiness. They honor human nature not the
less because the writer knows how to manage it, to raise a smile at its
absurdities, to rally, pique, and guide it into health and good-humor.
He is very clever with the edge-tools in his surgeon's-case; he whips
you out an excrescence before you are quite aware that he meditated
an operation, and you find that he had chloroformed you with a shrewd
writer's best anaesthetic, a humorous and genial temper.

There is a great deal of nice writing here. Happy words come at a call
and occupy their inevitable places. Now and then a Scotch word, with a
real terrier phiz and the best qualities of "black and tan," gives the
page a local flavor which we should not like to miss. But the writing
is not provincial. There is Scotch character everywhere: the keenness,
intensity, reverence, shaggy humor, sly fun, and just a touch of the
intolerance. The somewhat literal regard for Scripture, the awe, and the
unquestioning, childlike way of being religious, with the independence
of Kirk and Sessions and National Establishments, all belong to the best
intelligence of Edinburgh. But the literary felicity, the scholarship,
the various reading, the cultivated appreciation of books, men, and
systems, while they make us admire--as a good many bright volumes
printed in Edinburgh have done before--the mental power and refinement
which that most picturesque of Northern cities nourishes, do still
belong to the great commonwealth of letters, remind us not of wynds and
closes, and run away from the littleness of time and place.

If the reader would understand the difference between the sentimental
and the pathetic treatment of a subject, let him see in "Rab and his
Friends" how the pen of Dr. Brown follows the essential lines of that
most pure and tender of all stories. In doing so he has given us a new
creation in Ailie Noble. Not a line can be effectively added to that
ideal narrative of a true history, not a word can be pushed from its
place. The whole treatment is at once delicate, incisive, tender,
reserved, and dramatic. And after reading it,--with or without tears,
according to your capacity for do