Messrs. Seeley and Co. have published a new, handsomely, and
bountifully as well as beautifully illustrated edition of Edinburgh : Picturesque Notes, by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was one of the earliest of the efforts of the now classic author of " Catriona and "Weir of Hermiston," and is, indeed, a sort of inspired guide- book. In it we find the future master of style preparing for hie greatest efforts. Occasionally he is commonplace, as when he talks of "Burns in one of his happiest moments." At other times,. on the other hand, he is the reverse of commonplace, as when be gives us Edinburgh, both of the present and of the historic past, thus :—" Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and still wears in parody, her metropolitan happiness. Half a capital, and half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence ; it has long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble." Again, in supporting his contention, that the" Scotch stand highest among nations in the matter of grimly illustrating death," be says, "Every mason was a pedestrian Holbein ; he had a deep consciousness of death, and loved to put its terrors pithily before the churchyard loiterer." In this book, too, we have hints— and something more—of that peculiarly pathetic patriotism which grew into something like an absorbing passion with Steven- son when he was in exile, such as, "There is no Edinburgh emigrant far or near, from China to Peru, but he or she carries some lively, picture of the mind, some sunset behind the Castle cliffs, some snow scene, some maze of city lamps, indelible in the- memory and delightful to study in the intervals of toil." But this is a notable book in respect of performance as well as of promise. It is beyond question the most picturesque record that any city in the Kingdom has been honoured with ; while it is quite unnecessary to say that Stevenson would not have been himself, or for that matter a Scotchman, if he had not been able- to find a sermon in every one of the stones of his beloved—yet detested—Edinburgh. The illustrations by Mr. T. Hamilton. Crawford, which are numerous, striking, and realistic, without being too impressionist, add greatly to the value of this edition.
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