CURRENT LITERATURE.
St. Andrews in 1645-46. By D. R. Kerr. (William Blackwood and Sons.)—Nowadays an extraordinary amount of interest is taken in old St. Andrews, and not by Scotchmen alone. It is nowise surprising, therefore, that we should have here a reprint of a historical essay which was fortunate enough to win the prize offered by the rector of the University. Its author, Mr. Kerr, explains that his essay was based on authorities dating not later than a hundred years subsequent to 1646; but, in preparing his work for publication, he has added one or two facts from more recent authorities. The period of which he treats was important in the history both of Scotland and of the City of St. Andrews. It was the time of the struggle between Presbyterian rebels and
Royalists, who, in Scotland, had flocked to the standard of Charles I., when Montrose's brilliant career of victory was brought to a calamitous close by the disaster of Philiphaugh. This was a crowning mercy of a kind ; and so the Scots Parlia- ment met in St. Andrews for a few months in 1645, discussed terms with the English Parliament, and arranged for the adequate punishment of the most " malignant " of the Royalists. As Mr. Kerr puts it,—" In the winter of 1645-46, the refluent tide of national life was turned, as by chance, once more into the city which had but a few years since ceased to be the ecclasiastical capital of Scotland. But the occasion was accidental. The work of Reformation was drawing to completion, and the nation, spurn- ing the old, was shaping new traditions. With the overthrow of Scottish Medirevalism, neglect and decay were to fall upon St. Andrews." Apart from politics, Mr. Kerr's volume is valuable for the light it throws upon the history of the city and University during this period of tradition. It shows, among other things, that the Reformed Ministers really were the leaders of the commonalty, or what Chalmers subsequently styled himself and his Evangelical colleagues, "the tribunes of the people." Altogether, this is a lucid, impartial, and valuable contribution to Scottish history.
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