of the girl buying laces, stiff in attitude and hard in color. There is considerable force and expression in the work, but we should be sorry to accept it as a finished specimen of the capabilities of the British school in the department of historical painting. Mr Harvey's landscape of Ferragon is a faithful representation of a bleak, grey, dismal sky, frowning over a wide expanse of moorland, with dark mountains filling up the distance. In the foreground, is a reedy pool, and beyond some upright stones break the level monotony of the scene. There is a want of point and force about the foreground, and, in our cold northern climate, one would wish to look at a brighter and more cheerful picture. The paintings of Mr James Eckford Lauder appear to us to have their principal merit in the height of their aim. In most other respects they are exceedingly deficient. No. 181, "Hagar," is disagreeable in color and defective in drawing; while in 312, "Gethsemane," the great agony of our Redeemer, and the ministry of the comforting angel, are travestied, instead of being worthily represented. Far differently and more nobly, has the same subject been treated by Ary Schoeffer, in No. 286, where the face of the suffering Saviour is wonderfully expressive of resignation and pain, and that of the angel of tender compassion and deep-felt awe. A fervent religious sentiment pervades the whole picture, and the details are most delicately and carefully rendered, evincing a high degree of technical skill. Mr R. S. Lauder's picture of " The Betrayal of Christ," is a large and ambitious work with many figures and a great variety of details. The dark mountains in the background are finely conceived and painted, and there is much good drawing of the figure in various parts; but the coloring is very bad and unequal, and the general effect of the picture unsatisfactory. Mr Kenneth M'Leay's " Catrina M'Lure, the shepherd's daughter, at Ord, Isle of Skye," is easy, natural, and unaffected, a true bit of highland nature; and we may also mention that the numerous small oil-color landscapes by the same accomplished artist, are all distinguished for the vigor and fidelity with which they represent the wild scenery of the highlands of Scotland.

Mr Noel Paton is this season represented by a single picture only. It is entitled "Hesperus," and represents a knight and lady, clad in mediæval costume, met together "under the greenwood tree," and the soft light of the evening star. The lady is seated, and the knight kneeling before her holding her hand, while their faces are in dangerous proximity; but there is no fear of a kiss, as the knight would inevitably lose his balance if he attempted it. His position seems uncomfortable, and would excite the compassion of the veriest prude; he is kneeling on both knees on a very stony bank, and his breeches are evidently exceedingly thin, which may account in some measure for the doleful expression of his countenance. The banks, weeds, wild flowers, mossed branches of the tree, and the dresses of the lovers, are most carefully drawn and delicately finished; but the flesh tints are bad, and the skin entirely wants the texture and appearance of life, the warm glow and transparency, that tells of the blood coursing beneath.

One of the most charming interiors of the Exhibition is entitled "Politicians," by A. H. Burr. Agreeable in color, broad in effect, careful in detail, and skilful in composition, it is almost worthy of Wilkie,

and augurs a brilliant future for this young and rising artist. A group of merry children are gathered round a stool or table, on which is spread the broad sheet of a newspaper; one frolicsome urchin, with spectacles on nose, is attempting to read it sideways, another tries it upside down, a third and younger stands on tiptoe beside it, while a shepherd's dog, standing on his hind legs, with his nose applied to the print, seems as keen a politician as any of them. In the back ground, a child is seen vainly striving to shut the cottage door, and prevent the entrance of an old woman who comes to disturb the amusement of the juvenile party. The homely furniture of the cottage, the children's faces and dresses, all the accessories of this charming picture are most conscientiously and successfully made out.

Among the Scottish landscape painters Mr M'Culloch asserts his wonted pre-eminence. His principal pictures are "Inverlochy Castle," and "Summer day in Skye,-view of the Coolin mountains." Both are clear, bright paintings, full of freshness and atmosphere, singularly true to nature in color, form, and texture. No artist has ever succeeded more perfectly than M'Culloch in transferring to his canvass the very skies, mountains, streams, vallies, and moorlands of the Highlands. Next to this accomphished artist ranks Mr Edmond Crawford, whose sea-pieces are always among the chief attractions of the Scottish Academy. No. 182," Scene on the beach at Broughty ferry-ebb-tide," is the largest and best of the four pictures contributed by him to this year's Exhibition. The sloping sandy beach, the quay and houses, the craft lying aground beside them with their sails and yards hanging in picturesque confusion, the vessels in the middle distance, and the far off glimpse of the town of Dundee, almost lost in the warm haze of a summer day, are rendered with great precision, truth, and delicacy. Mr D. O. Hill has two very pleasing pieces, a twilight, and a moonlight; but the moment he attempts to meddle with positive color he goes far astray, and his landscapes assume a hard, cold, blue appearance most painful to contemplate. In proof of this we need only refer to his " St Andrews from the maiden rock," and "Mackrahanish bay, Mull of Cantyre," the latter representing a bay with steep shore and lofty headlands, a rough whitening sea, two rainbows, a heron, three cormorants, and a cutter a great deal too close to a lee shore. Mr Waller Paton has several landscapes full of careful drawing and minute and accurate finish, but destroyed by the strange eccentricity of his coloring. One is all bright green, as if no atmosphere intervened between the eye of the artist and the object represented-another has a lemon yellow sky and intensely purple mountains; the best, a very sweet and quiet landscape full of the poetry of repose, is No. 232," Twilight by the shore, Arran." Mr Samuel Bough, has a large and clever piece entitled "The port of London." The drawing and composition are excellent, and the sky is very finely painted, but the coloring in parts is so chalky that we have more than once heard it mistaken for an effect of snow. Among Mr Bough's other landscapes, No. 203, "Moonlight on the Avon," is the best. We have only space to mention Messrs. Fraser, Hargitt, and Wintour, as distinguished contributors to the landscape department, to praise Mr Erskine Nicol for his clever sketches of

Irish peasant life, and Mr Perigal for his truthful delineations of Scottish scenery; and we now pass on to the water color room, always, alas! the weakest and poorest part of the Exhibiton of the Scottish Academy. In spite of the splendid example set them by their English brethren, who have carried painting in water colors to an unrivalled perfection that commands the admiration of Europe, the artists of Scotland seem to look down upon it, to regard it merely as a medium for sketching rapidly from nature, forgetting altogether that it supplies a means of representing with the utmost truth and delicacy, and with a softness and purity otherwise unattainable, all those atmospherical effects upon which the beauty of landscape so much depends. The only good drawings in the water color room, are those furnished by the facile and skilful pencil of Mr. W. L. Leitch, and the masterly portraits in which Mr Kenneth Macleay has no superior. Mr William Crawford, however, has several clever portraits in crayons, one of which, No. 628," Study of a head," is exceedingly free and spirited. In sculpture, the bust of Lord Cockburn, by Mr Steell, is clever and characteristic, and those of the Lord Advocate and of Alexander Cowan, Esq., by Mr Brodie, are also very successful. Mr Brodie's full length model for a statue entitled " The Thunder Storm," represents a frightened and shrinking female figure, instinct with the sentiment of astonishment and awe; and another design for a statue by Mr W. Calder Marshall," The Mother's Prayer," is finely modelled, and marked by deep and tender feeling.

PRECURSORS OF KNOX.1

WHILE the friends of Episcopacy-especially of the High Church or Tramontane School-are busy in disinterring the remains, and reviving the memorials of the men whom they are pleased, with more or less truth, to rank among their patriarchs, and seeking to perpetuate much trash as well as a scantling of goodly matter, through their Spotswood and Spalding Club publications, &c., we are glad to witness something like a corresponding energy in the opposite direction of doing justice to what we at least, regard as holier memories, and more edifying works. The son of Dr M'Crie as an extensive editor of Presbyterian remains, and as the recent restorer of his father's admirable works, has in this way being doing the whole Presbyterian Church good service. And a gentleman who seems to be his colleague in the English Presbyterian College, has here given in a monograph on the subject of a popular Reformer, which we pronounce, with pleasure, to be a work of great, and in some points, original merit. No tribute of this kind shall ever be witheld by us whereever and to whomsoever due, and be what may our imputed Erastianism, we shall give every good man, and every good book, the meet award of what belongs to them. To drop, for the quotation's sake, the critical plural

"His saltem acumulem donis."

1 Memoirs of Patrick Hamilton. By Rev. Peter Lorimer. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co. 1857.

Hitherto the Biography of Patrick Hamilton has been contained within brief bounds. We were not aware that there was much "story to tell." All that the world knew before might nearly have been summed up in a slight alteration of the lines that Cowper had dedicated to another subject

"All poets wept him-and the page

Of narrative sincere,

That tells his name-his death-his age

Is wet with Fox's tear."

The old martyrologist had indeed told so much of what was known, that even Scotsmen have added nothing to the tale which he relates with his usual honesty and pathos.

That our readers may know what they are to expect here, however, it is but fair to the labours of Mr Lorimer to quote an extract from his preface:

"Nearly three years ago, when the author of the following work was collecting materials for a life of Alexander Alesius, the earliest and one of the most distinguished of the Scottish exiles who were driven out from their country for their attachment to the principles of the Reformation, he came unexpectedly upon the traces of a work in which Alesius had inserted some account of Patrick Hamilton. Following up these traces, he found that Rabus, a German author of the sixteenth century, had introduced a translation of that account into his History of the Martyrs; on perusing which, he discovered that Alesius had noticed several important particulars of Hamilton's character and life, and of his own connection with him, which were perfectly new to history as well as extremely interesting and valuable. The author then became anxious to see the original work, which was referred to as a Latin Commentary on the first book of the Psalms; but no copy of it could be found in the library of the British Museum, the Bodleian, Sion College, or any of the other great libraries of this country to which he had access. It was not till he had travelled in quest of it as far as the old library of Wolfenbuttel in the Grand Duchy of Brunswick, that he got his first sight of a copy.”—P. 7.

Hamilton's birth and pedigree, subjects on which the biographer bestows all the partial pains that are usual in such cases, are chiefly curious from the complicated illegitimacy through which he derived the streams of noble and even royal blood which flowed in his veins. It is rather hard however that we are left in hopeless ignorance of the year or place of his birth, or the scene or means of his education. This opens up the Life rather awkwardly, although we suppose there was no help for it. The latter desideratum is attempted to be thus supplied.

"With such connections he could be at no loss for as good an elementary education as the country could then afford; and we are left at liberty to imagine the young scholar imbibing his first lessons of sacred and secular learning either under the eye of the poet-bishop, among the silent mountains of Dunkeld, or in the solitary cloisters of Inchaffray in Stratherne, or in the remote valley of Glenluce-the valley of light.”—P. 6.

We remember a Life of Chaucer, in two volumes 4to, that was made up, from colon to colophon, of such conjectures, and a somewhat similar poetic

commentary. By the way, the flourish at the end is founded on a mistake, Glenluce is no more Glen of Light than lucus is the genuine offspring of non luceo. It means Glen of herbs or rather of weeds.

"Sed hae sunt nugae."

We proceed to more goodly matter. Hamilton's very early illumination, so unaccounted for while he was believed to owe his instruction to the College of St Andrews, is thus accounted for, by the careful researches of the new biographer.

"As early," says Dr M'Crie, "as the year 1526, and previous to the breach of Henry VIII. with the Romish See, a gleam of light was, by some unknown means, imparted to his mind amidst the darkness which brooded around him! But this difficulty is at once removed and a flood of suggestive light thrown upon the history of his mental preparation for his future work, by the fact which has only now been ascertained, that he took his master's degree in Paris in the year 1520, and must have left Scotland to enter upon his philosophical course in that university as early as 1517, if not a year earlier.

"The evidence of this interesting fact is of the amplest kind. In 1527 Hamilton entered his name in the album of the University of Marburg, as a Master of Arts of Paris, and among the debris of the records of the University of Paris, the volume of Acta Rectoria before referred to, beginning with the year 1520, bears that Hamilton was admitted among the Magistri Jurati in that very year, under the rectorate of Nicolas Maillard, who was nominated to that office on the 8th day of August. But even if these documentary proofs of the point had not been forthcoming, the fact that he studied at Paris is sufficiently attested by the authority of Alexander Alesius, who was personally acquainted with Hamilton, and was indeed his convert and first biographer, and who tells us distinctly that Hamilton prosecuted his studies both in Paris and Louvaine. It was the fortunate discovery of this earliest account of the Reformer which has been buried for three centuries in the heart of a neglected Latin commentary on the Psalms-which afterwards led to the further discovery of the above documentary proofs at Marburg and Paris." Pp. 27, 28.

But how does his institution at Paris lead to his indoctrination into reformation principles so early as 1520? Let the biographer answer.

"The Erasmuses, Reuchlins, and Colets of the age, were every day gathering new force and influence in Paris, and taking possession of all young and ingenuous minds. The obscurants were indeed to be found there in considerable numbers, as in all the other ancient seats of learning-men too old to learn, too arrogant to condescend to new teachers, and too deeply pledged to the maintenance of old ideas and forms to concede a hair's-breadth to what they looked upon as conceited and dangerous innovations. But these were not in general the men whom the young student came in contact with, on his arrival at the university. The fresh men' fell into the hands of the regents or tutors of colleges, who were for the most part warm sympathisers with the literary enthusiasm of young Europe.' Under such teachers the young scholar soon learned to laugh at the venerable lovers of darkness and stagnation who were still the nominal heads. The real heads and rectors of the university were Budaeus and Erasmus-the acknowledged masters of the intellectual world."-Pp. 32-3.

The young Erasmian (for Lutheran he was not as yet) returns to Scotland, and in 1523 transfers his lights and prepossessions to the uni

VOL. XXIII.

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