the English reading world by storm, and provoked in Scotland a curious fever of excitement, indignation, and applause. The most vigorous protest against its laxity came from Thomas MacCrie, one of the numerous biographers of John Knox, "who considered the representation of the Covenanters in the story of Old Mortality as so unfair as to demand, at his hands, a very serious rebuke." This rebuke was administered at some length in a series of papers published in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor. Scott, the "Black Hussar of Literature," replied with much zest and spirit in the Quarterly Review; cudgels were taken up on both sides, and the war went briskly on, until Jeffrey the Great in some measure silenced the controversy by giving it as his ultimatum that the treatment of an historical character in a work of pure fiction was a matter of very trifling significance. It is not without interest that we see the same querulous virtue that winced under Sir Walter's frank enthusiasm for Claverhouse uttering its protest to-day against the more chilly and scrupulous vindications of Mr. Morris's biography. "An apology for the crimes of a hired
