Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography Part 19

There is, indeed, no end to the curious things observed by Mr. Smith. He seems only to sleep at home, for, with his waterproof handy, he roams about all day in the open air, and comes home at night with a well-filled note-book.... The wealth of interesting matter in this delightful volume is, however, tempting us beyond our s.p.a.ce, and we think we have collated enough to make all who love the country, its sights and sounds, and health-giving breezes read the work itself."--_Dundee Advertiser._

"To those who are familiar with Mr. Anderson Smith's _Benderloch_, no introduction or recommendation will be necessary on behalf of his new book, _Loch Creran_. The work is, in fact, as the preface explains, simply a continuation of the natural history sketches of which _Benderloch_ is composed.... With what a happy combination of vivacity and patience, insight and enthusiasm, Mr. Anderson Smith scans the open pages of that great tome of nature.... Treasure-trove of this kind, along with notes of a more strictly scientific character, is freely scattered through Mr. Anderson Smith's pages; and so it will have a charm for every reader with healthy natural tastes."--_Scottish Leader._

"There are few books in the language more delightful than White's _Selborne_, and in Mr. W. Anderson Smith that earnest Hamps.h.i.+re naturalist has a distinguished successor. His most recent volume is worthy of the author of _Benderloch_, a book which, it may be hoped, is already familiar to our readers.... The variety of his researches on land and water prevent monotony. The author has much to tell, and he explains what he has seen and done without waste of words."--_Ill.u.s.trated London News._

"Mr. Anderson Smith's observations extend over 1881-2, and refer mainly to the natural history of the district, but he deals also with other aspects of Nature, and his book is well worth reading."--_Times._

"There can be no hesitation in a.s.suring lovers of Nature that in _Loch Creran_ they will find a work after their own heart.... The charm of the volume before us is that it is not the hasty outcome of the bookmaker feverishly eager to piece together into a volume odds and ends of information. There is an air of leisureliness about _Loch Creran_. Month by month are given the results of two years' close intercourse with loch and sea, field and wood. The work is one to be enjoyed by those who share the writer's tastes and spirit, and not to be rushed by the heedless."--_Graphic._

"Every page has its charm, something at once to instruct the mind and to tickle and amuse the fancy. It is not a book to be read through at one sitting, but one to dip into occasionally and to ruminate over in pleased contentment. Perhaps its worth will be best appreciated by those taking a holiday in the country, or, above all, at the seaside. And it will serve as a very efficient guide to persons beginning the study of natural history, directing them what and how to observe. Many a capital story he gives ill.u.s.trating the remarkable intelligence of the lower animals. Some of these border upon the marvellous."--_Perths.h.i.+re Const.i.tutional and Journal._

"Chatty and discursive, rather than elaborate, the interest in 'Loch Creran' is well maintained throughout, and the book appeals to the general reader, by whom it will doubtless be perused with greater pleasure than a more highly scientific disquisition."--_Pall Mall Gazette._

"He is a charming companion. His descriptions are vivid and true to nature--whether he makes us s.h.i.+ver and feel glad of the shelter of the house, as he tells us of winter's storms and floods, or whether he fills our hearts with a longing for the freshness and gladness of spring as he notes the signs of its advent on the sh.o.r.es of Loch Creran."--_Glasgow Herald._

_OLD CHURCH LIFE IN SCOTLAND: Lectures on Kirk-Session and Presbytery Records._ _Second Series._ By ANDREW EDGAR, D.D. Demy 8vo, cloth, 7s.

6d. Post free.

"Antiquaries may welcome the minister of Mauchline as an elder brother of their craft. We have not seen the first series of lectures, but certainly these contain much that is queer and quaint. Odd people, these Scotch folks; but there is a homeliness and a reverence about them which we greatly value. Our author is evidently of the Established Church, and knows most about the old customs of that body, of which he writes with a twinkle in his eye which causes our eye to twinkle also. The grim want of humour in some of the proceedings is about the same thing as the presence of humour: you may laugh till you cry, and cry till you laugh; between the tremendously solemn and the ridiculous there is but a step.

We have been so interested with the lectures that we must get the former volume. What times those must have been when guests at a funeral began to meet at ten in the morning, though the body might not be moved till three or four! Five or six hours! How did they spin them out? No marvel that the Kirk-Session had to hear charges of drunkenness. Such books as these are the best of history, leading us indeed into byways and lone paths which the general historian never traces."--=C. H. Spurgeon.=

_MY COLLEGE DAYS: The Autobiography of an Old Student._ Edited by R.

MENZIES FERGUSSON, M.A., Author of "Rambles in the Far North," &c. 8vo, cloth, 5s. Post free.

"Mr. Fergusson, either as author or as editor, has well earned our grat.i.tude by giving us a volume which all may read with enjoyment and pleasure.... s.p.a.ce and its limits will not allow us to dwell on many other points of interest to be found in this entertaining volume; but we cannot pa.s.s without mentioning the worthy dame who said, in praise of her preacher: 'There's ae thing aboot yon man--he's a grand roarer.' Nor must we forget the careful landlady who was always anxious to know if her student-lodger was as yet an unengaged man, or, to use her own graphic phrase, was 'a bund sack set by.'..."--_Literary World._

"We own to a suspicion that in this instance Mr. Fergusson has been his own literary executor. Whether this be the case or not, he has no reason to be ashamed of the bequest. The sketches have a pleasant grace of literary style, and a good deal of power in description of character-sketching, while there is in the writer a subtle under-strain of pawky humour, and he has brought together and put permanently on record a number of traditions of University life in Edinburgh and St.

Andrews that are well worth preservation.... Our old student's reminiscences of St. Andrews, where he took the theological course after graduating in arts at Edinburgh, are not less lively or interesting than those he sets down respecting his Alma Mater; and his book is likely to take a place both on the shelves and in the enduring regard of many readers who have had similar experiences and tasted similar pleasures. A word of praise is due to the excellence of its typography and get-up."--_Scottish Leader._

"We think the verdict will be that Mr. Fergusson has done well in publis.h.i.+ng this thoughtful book. It abounds in vigorous, and, in many cases, eloquent delineations of University life; it is sympathetic in its spirit and catholic in its tone, especially when dealing with such subjects as the stage, so frequently abused. Its author was a student of the Universities of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Oxford, his reminiscences of which are often humorous, and always interesting. Some of the anecdotes recorded in this volume regarding the Edinburgh Professors are exceedingly entertaining.... We venture to predict for this autobiography a wide circulation."--_Dundee Advertiser._

"The book is eminently readable, very quiet for the most part, but not without a few touches of gaiety and sprightly humour; and it betokens no little culture together with a strong poetic tendency. The contents are almost entirely confined to sketches of life at Scottish Universities, with some playful personal satire, of which various Professors, some mentioned by name and others denoted by initials, are the objects in chief, although the peculiarities of certain landladies whose province it is, or was, to let lodgings to students at Edinburgh or elsewhere, come in for their share of more or less satirical delineation. But there is nothing spiteful, nothing bitter, nothing cynical in the mode of treatment. Two chapters are devoted to a sketch, brief but graphic and sympathetic, of academic Oxford, whither the author went to sojourn and to study for two months."--_Ill.u.s.trated London News._

"This is a delightful book, calculated to afford much pleasurable amus.e.m.e.nt of a quiet kind. It is written in a light sparkling style....

The book itself is an enjoyable one, and perhaps none will read it with greater relish than the old fogies who see in it much of what they themselves pa.s.sed through, and who, by the perusal are led to recall, with mingled feelings, the aspirations, the freshness, and the frolic of their own College days."--_Perths.h.i.+re Const.i.tutional._

"By those who have pa.s.sed through the Universities it will be read with considerable pleasure, affording as it does such happy reminiscences of 'College days,' with their grave, plodding seriousness, or that more boisterous playfulness which is supposed to be the characteristic of students as a cla.s.s. Those, again, who are simply outsiders, and have had no College days whatever, will be charmed by the recital here given of the doings of the students, and the customs a.s.sociated with the respective Universities, the pen-portraits of the several professors, the opinions expressed regarding men and things, the poetry, original and selected, and the hundred and one subjects here treated of by a man of observant nature possessing facility of expression, besides a keen sense and appreciation of the humorous...."--_Stirling Observer._

"Many a 'varsity man, who has won his decree in the modest 'little city, worn and grey,' will welcome the appearance of Mr. R. M. Fergusson's _College Days_. Redolent every page of it, of the cla.s.s-room, and the wild Bohemianism of student life, and bristling with the 'cla.s.sic'

ditties which have so often made the halls of St. Salvator's resound, here is material for a mental revel in the past."--_Northern Chronicle._

"This series of autobiographical notes deserve recognition, if only because the style is perfectly natural and perfectly good-natured....

The book contains several capital anecdotes and some excellent verse."--_London Figaro._

"But after all the charm of the volume lies in the whole life of a student which is presented to us, for his joys and his troubles, his amus.e.m.e.nts and his hard reading, are here written of by one who has evidently experienced all. Scattered throughout these pages are numerous verses, some original, some well-known students' songs. The original verses are very good...."--_Stirling Journal._

"The volume contains some very excellent poems which are worthy of finding, and doubtless will find, a place as verses to future songs.

There is not a chapter in the book which is not thoroughly entertaining."--_The Tribune._

"The 'Old Student' has to speak of Scotch Universities, Edinburgh, to wit, and St. Andrews, while he gives some impressions, gained as an outsider, of Oxford.... There is much that is interesting and entertaining, some good stories, and generally a pleasant picture of a happy and busy life."--_Spectator._

"The writer is always entertaining and kindly, is wise in season, and also _desipit in loco_, and tells some good stories--professors being naturally his chief subjects."--_Pall Mall Gazette._

"It is, to say the least, eminently probable that Mr. Fergusson relates his own experiences in Edinburgh and St. Andrews. He does so in a sufficiently lively and 'freshman' style.... _My College Days_ is, on the whole, as readable as any book of the kind that has recently been published."--_The Academy._

"Mr. R. Menzies Fergusson paints life as he thinks he saw it as a young man at St. Andrews and Edinburgh, in _My College Days_. This 'autobiography of an old student' contains much interesting reminiscence, and Mr. Fergusson has perhaps not erred in introducing into his text specimens of the verse into which some of his Caledonian student contemporaries were in the habit of dropping occasionally. Mr.

Fergusson's little book should find many a sympathetic reader among former _alumni_ of the Scottish Universities, for he writes without affectation."--_Graphic._

'Seldom have we had more pleasure than in the perusal of these reminiscences of College days. No one who has gone through the curriculum of a Scotch University can fail to attest the fidelity with which his experience here finds expression.... 'An Old Student' was privileged to have more than one _alma mater_. He could boast the fostering care of Edinburgh, of St. Andrews, and of Oxford, and of all these he has most pleasant reminiscences. Our author's experiences at Oxford will repay perusal. The whole book, written in a most happy, though thoughtful and affectionate strain, must incite the most cordial sympathy of all whose student days have not been forgotten, while the general public will peruse it with responsive hearts and a regretful feeling that they have missed the experiences of which it treats.'--_Brechin Advertiser._

'The minister of Logie, who made a decided hit with _Rambles in the Far North_, has attempted a very difficult bit of work in _My College Days_.

This purports to be the MS. legacy of a College friend who died young after some experience of student life in Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Oxford. The fiction will impose upon n.o.body, although it may s.h.i.+eld the editor from some blame, for while there is mirth and vigour and kindly reminiscence, there is also some very sharp criticism, and much reference to Academic dignitaries who are still in the flesh, and may be sensitive and inclined to sting when they find some of their cla.s.s jokes not merely in print but bound in a book.... If certain Edinburgh divines beguile a leisure hour over these pages, they will for once see themselves as the keen-witted see them, and be amazed at the impudence of the rising generation. Everybody who knows Edinburgh will recognise the portrait of the preacher who is likened to Dr. Andrew Thomson in one thing--'There's ae thing about yon man, he's a grand roarer.' The St.

Andrews part is full and cleverly done, and will have a charm for most _alumni_ of the 'College of the scarlet gown,' because it contains a large number of the songs, original and selected, with which the lobby of the Natural Philosophy cla.s.s-room was wont to resound."--_Elgin Courant._

"The style is lively, and the descriptions of scenes of student life are graphic. The account of the election of Rector at Edinburgh will doubtless interest many, and the chapter dealing with landladies, their varieties and idiosyncracies, is humorous."--_Morning Post._

"To recent students of our two greatest Scottish Universities--Edinburgh and St. Andrews--_My College Days_ is charged with intense interest, though its racy humour and chatty discursiveness will render it attractive reading to those uninitiated in academic mysteries and innocent of student frivolities. The life of an Edinburgh student, in college and out of college, in the cla.s.s-room, the debating society, the theatre, and the church, is described with untiring vivacity.... Whether author or merely editor, Mr. Menzies Fergusson is to be sincerely congratulated upon his success. Reminiscence is a species of literature not always instructive, not always even entertaining; in Mr. Fergusson's hands it becomes both."--_Fifes.h.i.+re Journal._

"We think the verdict of every impartial reader will be that Mr.

Ferguson has done well in publis.h.i.+ng this book. It abounds in vigorous, and, in many instances, impressive descriptions of University life; it is enlivened at judicious intervals with original verses, which evince lyrical power; its style is admirably condensed and clear; it is sympathetic in its spirit and catholic in its tone, especially when dealing with such subjects as the stage and its modern exponents by narrow-minded writers so frequently abused."--_Ayr Observer._

"It is pleasantly written, is full of the fun of student life, full, too, of its hards.h.i.+ps, abounds with excellent stories, is very discriminating in professional criticism, while scattered throughout the racy pages are many s.n.a.t.c.hes of jovial college songs recorded nowhere else.... Altogether the volume is very readable, and no student, at all events, can find a dull page in it."--_Kelso Chronicle._

_THE TRAGEDY OF GOWRIE HOUSE._ An Historical Study. By LOUIS A. BARBe.

Fcap. 4to, 6s.

In this new work on the interesting and mysterious episode of Scottish History, usually known as the Gowrie Conspiracy, the author has not only submitted the old materials to a close examination, but also thrown new light on the subject by the help of letters to be found in the Record Office, but overlooked or suppressed by former historians, of doc.u.ments recently discovered by the Commission on Historical MSS., and also of important papers preserved in the French Archives.

"_A treasure of almost priceless thought and criticism._"--_Contemporary Review._

In the press. Second Edition, Thoroughly Revised. Cr. 8vo, 338 pp., 7s.

6d.

WIT, WISDOM, AND PATHOS,

FROM THE PROSE OF HEINRICH HEINE.

_WITH A FEW PIECES FROM THE "BOOK OF SONGS."_

SELECTED AND TRANSLATED BY J. SNODGRa.s.s.

"Mr. Snodgra.s.s has produced a book in which lazy people will find a great deal to please them. They can take it up at any moment, and open it on any page with the certainty of finding some bright epigram; they need not turn down the page on shutting up the volume, as it matters little where they resume. There is nothing jarring in the whole book."--_Athenaeum, April 19, 1877._

"No Englishman of culture who is unacquainted with Heine can fail to derive a new intellectual pleasure from Mr. Snodgra.s.s's pages."--_Contemporary Review, September 1880._