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 dogged resistance to a distended lachrymal duct,—­you will be conscious of bearing away a sweet and subduing impression, like that which a rare friend can sometimes give, which lingers many days.

Let nobody omit to read the “Letter to John Cairns, D.D.,” because he does not care for J.C. or know who he is.  It contains some reminiscences by Dr. Brown of his father, a noted clergyman, of whose life and character Dr. Cairns had prepared a memoir.  In this, and in the Essay upon Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Brown shows his capacity to observe and portray human moods and characteristics.  There are his usual literary excellences, brought to the service of a keen and faithfully reporting eye, and his fine humane qualities, his tenderness, reverence, and humor.

This volume is one of the best ventures of the literary year.

Cecil Dreeme.  By THEODORE WINTHROP.  Boston:  Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.