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Cassandra's. Men, who behold afar off the shadows of events not yet coming-predict the questions that will divide cabinets yet unformedname, amongst the adversaries of such questions, the converts by whose aid the questions will be carried-and fix, as if they had read it in the almanac, the very date in which some crotchety motion, the nursling of a minority, will rise into place amongst the laws of the land. Two men have I known, who, in this gift of political prevision, excelled all the chiefs of our senate: the one was a saturnine tailor, the other a meditative saddler.

The truth really seems to be, that the imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina. The imagination is but the faculty of glassing images; and it is with exceeding difficulty, and by the imperative will of the reasoning faculty resolved to mislead it, that it glasses images which have no prototype in truth and nature. I can readily imagine a wombat which I have never seen; but it is only with violent effort, and constrained by the false assurance of some naturalist, whose authority has subjected my reason, which in turn subjects my imagination, that I can imagine a wombat with two heads.

If an Oriental idolater figured to himself a deity in the form of a man, but with the beak of an eagle or the horns of a bull, it was because, by some philosophical abstraction, founded on metaphysical inquiries into the attributes of deity, the eagle's beak was a symbol of superterrestrial majesty-the bull's horns a symbol of superhuman power. This is not the error of simple, childlike imagination, but the deluding subtlety of parables in metaphysical science. Where the imagination is left clear from

disturbing causes- no confusing shadow cast upon its wave from the shores that confine it-there, with an equal fidelity, it reflects the star that is aloof from it by myriads of miles, or the heron that has just soared from the neighbouring reeds.

The clairvoyance of poet or novelist is lucid in proportion as, while intent on forms remote, it is unruffled by the shift and change which are constantly varying the outlines of things familiar. On what immediately affects ourselves in our practical personal existence our perceptions are rarely clear. The ablest lawyer, when threatened by a lawsuit that puts in jeopardy his own estate, will take the advice of another counsel, whose judgment is free from the anxiety that affects his own; the most penetrating physician, when seriously ill himself, summons a fellow-practitioner to examine his symptoms and prescribe his remedy.

Be our business in life howsoever hard and prosaic, we shall not attain any eminent success in its conduct if we despise the clairvoyance which imagination alone bestows. No man can think justly but what he is compelled to imagine—that is, his thoughts must come before him in images. Every thought not distinctly imaged is imperfect and abortive.

Hence, when some lover of the marvellous tells me, gape-mouthed, of the last astounding phenomenon in mesmeric clairvoyance, I somewhat disappoint him by saying, "Is that all?" For I cannot pass half-an-hour in my library—I cannot converse familiarly with any one capable of the simplest invention by which a thing or a thing's uses not discovered yesterday, seen to-day "through other organs than the eyes," will to-morrow be added to the world's practical possessions— but what I find instances of normal clairvoyance immeasurably more wonderful than those erratic gleams of lucidity in magnetic sleep, which one man reveres as divine and another man disdains as incredible.

LEAVES FROM THE CLUB BOOKS.

IN some recent psychological investigations concerning the nature and habits of the book-hunter, it was our function to trace him to his favourite club, and we naturally found it in a species of institution established for the purpose of ministering to his predominating cravings. From the constitution and functions of the club itself we were led by a natural digression to the intellectual nourishment which it imparts to its adherents; and having through lack of space to stop suddenly in the midst of our erratic rambles among the contents of the club books, we now resume where we broke off.

It is difficult to estimate the greatness of the obligations of British history to these institutions. They have dug up, cleansed, and put in order for immediate inspection and use, a multitude of written monuments bearing on the greatest events and the most critical epochs in the progress of the empire. The time thus saved to investigators is great and priceless. In no other department of knowledge is the intellectual labourer so forcibly taught the saying, "Ars longa, vita brevis." In the ordinary sciences the philosopher may and often does content himself with the well-rounded and professedly completed system of the day. No one can grapple with his tory without feeling its inexhaustibleness. Its final boundaries seem only to retreat to a farther distance the more ground we master, as poor Mr Buckle found, when he betook himself, like another Atlas, to grappling with the history of the whole world.

The more an investigator finds his materials printed for him, the farther he can go. No doubt it is sometimes desirable, even necessary, to look to some manuscript authority for the clearing-up of a special point; but too often the profession of having perused a great VOL. XCI.-NO. DLVII.

mass of manuscript authorities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who searches for and finds the truth in any considerable portion of history, performs too great an achievement to care for the praise of deciphering a few specimens of difficult handwriting, and revealing the sense hidden in certain words couched in obsolete spelling. If casual discoveries of this kind do really help him to great truths, it is well; but it too often happens that he exaggerates their value, because they are his own game, shot on his own manor. Until he has exhausted all that 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. Take, for instance, the notes of the proceedings of the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney, edited for the Camden by Mr Bruce. They 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

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the haste with which the notes were jotted down, and of the changes which took place in the subjectmatter 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."

The great crisis in our history was at the same time watched and recorded by a narrator, in a totally different sphere, at the other end of the island-John Spalding, commonly supposed to have been Commissary-Clerk of Aberdeen, but positively known in no other capacity than as author of the book aptly entitled "The Troubles," or, more fully, "Memorials of the Troubles in Scotland and in England, from 1624 to 1645." Little, probably, did the Commissary-Clerk imagine, when he entered on his snug little office, where he recorded probates of wills and the proceedings in questions of marriage law, that he was to witness and record one of the most momentous conflicts that the world ever beheld-that contest which has been the prototype of all later European convulsions. Less still could he have imagined that fame would arise for him after two hundred years that vehement though vain efforts should be made to endow the simple name of John Spalding with the antecedents and subsequents of a biographical exist

ence, and that the far-off descendants of many of those lairds and barons, whose warlike deeds he noticed at humble distance, should raise a monument to his memory in an institution called by his name. He was evidently a thoroughly retiring man, for he has left no vestige whatever of his individuality. Some specimens of his formal official work might have been found in the archives of his office-these would have been especially valuable for the identification of his handwriting and the settlement of disputed questions about the originality of manuscripts; but these documents, as it happens, were all burnt early in last century with the building containing them. So ardent and hot has been the chase after vestiges of this man, that the fact was once discovered that with his own hand he had written a certain deed concerning a feu-duty or rentcharge of £25, 7s. 4d., bearing date 31st January 1663; but in spite of the most resolute efforts, this interesting document has not been found.

It is probably to this same unobtrusive reserve, which has shrouded his very identity, that we owe the valuable peculiarities of the Commissary-Clerk's chronicle. He sought no public distinctions, took no ostensible side, and must have kept his own thoughts to himself, otherwise he would have had to bear record of his own share of troubles. In this calm serenity, folding the arms of resignation on the bosom of patience, as the Persians say, he took his notes of the wild contest that raged around him, setting down each event, great or small, with systematic deliberation, as if he were an experimental philosopher watching the phenomena of an eclipse or an eruption. Hence nowhere, perhaps, has it been permitted to a mere reader to have so good a peep behind the scenes of the mighty drama of war. We have plenty of chroniclers of that epoch-marching us with swinging historic stride on from battle

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unto battle great in describing in long sentences the musterings, the conflicts, and the retreats. In Spalding, however, we will find the numbers and character of the combatants, their arms, their dresses, the persons who paid for these, and the prices paid-the amount they obtained in pay, and the amount they were cheated out of their banners, distinguishing badges, watchwords, and all other like particulars, set down with the minuteness of a bailiff making an inventory of goods on which he has taken execution. He is rather specific in what we shall term the negative side of the characteristics of war-the misery and desolation it spreads around. The losses of this gudeman " and that lone widow are stated as if he were their law agent, making up an account to go to a jury for damages for the spulzie of outside and inside plenishing, nolt, horse, sheep, cocks and hens, hay, corn, peats, and fodder. He specifies all the items of mansions and farmhouses attacked and looted, or "harried," as he calls it -the doors staved in-the wainscoting pulled down-the windows smashed-the furniture made firewood of the pleasant plantations cut down to build sleeping-hutsthe linen, plate, and other valuables carried off he will even, perchance, tell how they were distributedwho it was that managed to feather his nest with the plunder, and who it was that was disappointed and cheated.

He had opportunities of bestowing his descriptive powers to good purpose. Besides its ordinary share in the vicissitudes and calamities of the war, his town of Aberdeen was twice pillaged by Montrose, with laudable impartiality-once for the Covenanters and once for the Royalists. Here is his first triumphant entry :

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Upon the morne, being Saturday, they came in order of battle, being well armed both on horse and foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the least, whereof he had

ane carbine in his hand, two pistols by his sides, and other two at his saddle-torr; the pikemen in their ranks with pike and sword; the musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket - staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match. Ilk company, both horse and foot, had their captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other officers and commanders, all for the most part in buff coats and goodly order. They had five colours or ensigns, whereof the Earl of Montrose had one having this motto drawn in letters, 'For Religion, the Covenant, and the Countrie.' The Earl Marechal had one, the Earl of Kinghorn had one, and the town of Dundee had two. They had trumpeters to ilk company of horsemen, and drummers to ilk company of footmen. They had their meat, drink, and other provisions, bag and baggage, carried with them, done all by advice of his Excellency Field-Marshal Leslie, whose counsel General Montrose followed in this business. Then, in seemly order and good array, this army came forward and entered the burgh of Aberdeen, about ten hours in the morning, at the Over Kirk gate-port, syne came down through the Broadgate, through the Castlegate, over at the Justice Port to the Queen's Links directly. Here it is to be noted that few or none of this haill army wanted ane blue ribbon hung about his craig [viz., neck] under his left arm, whilk they called 'the Covenanters' ribbon,' because the Lord Gordon and some other of the Marquis's bairns had ane ribbon, when he was dwelling in the toun, of ane red flesh colour, which they wore in their hats, and called it 'the royal ribbon,' as a sign of their love and loyalty to the King. In dispite or dirision whereof this blue ribbon was worn and called 'the Covenanters' ribbon' by the haill soldiers of this army."

He briefly describes the method of manoeuvring dragoons, having witnessed the phenomenon, as "dragooneries, whereupon ane soldier

rides, alights, and fights on foot; " a peculiarity not known to every reader, nor yet to every writer who fills his narrative with the set phraseology of warfare.

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The well-ordered army passed through, levying a fine on the Malignants, and all seemed well; but because the citizens had not resisted Montrose, the loyal barons in the neighbourhood fell on them and plundered them; and because they had submitted to be so plundered, the Covenanting army came back and plundered them also. Many of this company went and brack up the Bishop's yetts, set on good fires of his peats standing within the close they masterfully broke up the haill doors and windows of this stately house; they brake down beds, boards, aumries, glassen windows, took out the iron stauncheons, brake in the locks, and such as they could carry had with them, and sold for little or nothing; but they got none of the Bishop's plenishing to speak of, because it was all conveyed away before their coming." On Sunday, Montrose and the other leaders duly attended the devotional services of the eminent Covenanting divines they had brought with them. "But," says Spalding, "the renegate soldiers, in time of both preachings, is abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully, without regard to God or man;' and he goes on in his specific way, describing the plundering until he reaches this climax: "No foul-cock or hen-left unkilled. The haill house - dogs, messens, and whelps within Aberdeen felled and slain upon the gate, so that neither hound nor messen or other dog was left that they could see." But there was a special reason for this. The ladies of Aberdeen, on the retiring of Montrose's army, had decorated all the vagabond street-dogs with the blue ribbon of the Covenant.

This was in 1639. Five years afterwards Montrose came back on them in more terrible guise still, to punish the town for having yielded

to the Covenant. In Aberdeen Cavalier principles generally predominated; but after being overrun and plundered successively by either party, the Covenanters, having the acting government of the country at their back, succeeded in establishing a predominance in the councils of the exhausted community. Spalding had no respect for the civic and rural forces they attempted to embody, and speaks of a petty bailie "who brought in ane drillmaster to learn our poor bodies to handle their arms, who had more need to handle the plough and win their livings." Montrose had now with him his celebrated army of Highlanders or Irish, as Spalding calls them-who broke at a rush through the feeble force sent out of the town to meet them. Montrose "follows the chase to Aberdeen, his men hewing and cutting down all manner of men they could overtake within the town, upon the streets, or in their houses, and round about the town, as our men were fleeing, with broadswords, but mercy or remeid. These cruel Irish, seeing a man well clad, would first tyr [i. e., strip] him and save the clothes unspoyled, then kill the man. Nothing heard but pitiful howling, crying, weeping, mourning, through all the streets. It is lamentable to hear how thir Irishes, who had gotten the spoil of the town, did abuse the samin. The men that they killed they would not suffer to be buried, but tirled them of their clothes, syne left their naked bodies lying above the ground. The wife durst not cry nor weep at her husband's slaughter before her eyes, nor the mother for her son-which if they were heard, then they were presently slain also ; and none durst bury the dead. Yea, and I saw two corpses carried to the burial through the old town with women only, and not ane man amongst them, so that the naked corpses lay unburied so long as these limmers were ungone to the camp."

The Commissary - Clerk was on

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