A Memoir of Ebenezer Henderson. By his Niece. (Andrew Elliot,
Edinburgh. 7s. 6d.)—Ebenezer Henderson seems to have been a "character." In his early days he distinguished himself by an outrageous passion for practical jokes and by mechanical ingenuity. These he would combine, as when he contrived to lure a ram into the belfry of Dunfermline Church and tie the bell-ropes to his horns, or fixed a miniature model of a man with windmill-like arms in his father's hat. His serious occupations were astronomy and antiquarianism, out of which he contrived to make a living. His last years he spent in a little Perthshire village, where he had a house appropriately called " Astral " Villa. There is a queer fitness in the fact that when he was to be married he missed the right day by a confusion between solar and lunar months ! Possibly the subject is barely sufficient for the volume ; but there are interesting things in it, and we should be sorry to have missed the story of the Scottish boy who refused to shake hands with Queen Victoria because the Queen of England had cut off the head of the Queen of Scots.
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