In the Olden Times. By the Rev. kirkwocd Etewat. (Alexander
Gardner.)—To Scots, and more pascicularly natives of Ayrshire, this book is likely to afford pleasant reading ; oven Englishmen will be interested by many of the subjects discussed, among them the account of the Castle of Dundonald, the home of the founders of the Stewart race and Robert II. and Robert III. Here Mr. Hewat relates a fact perhaps not generally known, — that Robert III. was not considered the legal heir by a large section. The chapter on " The Gladstones " will be read with pleasure by admirers of Mr. Gladstone. The chapter on " The Smugglers" and the information about Burns are particularly interesting. " Clerical Life in Bygone Days " we consider the " tit-bit " of the volume; in this we hear much of the ministers of Ayrshire, so often the object of Burns's satire, who were lazy and given to the reading of a few sermons not their own com- position in regular order. A propos of this is the story of the old lady troubled with sleeplessness, who said to her doctor : " Oh, if I could only get to the kirk I would sleep fine." The Rev. Hamilton Paul, a witty minister, on being presented to a living, advertised a sermon to the young ladies of Ayr ; his text was, "And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him." With one more quotation from a book which is good reading all through, we will close this notice. In the memoir of Robert Boyd of Trochoig, a great scholar of the eighteenth century, mention is made of a cousin of his, Zachary Boyd, who, in an attempt to versify parts of the Scriptures, produced the following lines about Jonah :- " What house is this where's neither coal nor candle, Where I nothing but guts of fishes handle 2"
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