natural.  One was biography.  They would be surprised if they were to know how many biographies there might be along the course of Scottish history, say from the Reformation.  If they fastened on a single individual, and told the story of his life, they not only told the story of his community in a very interesting manner, but they got straight to some of those faults which they were apt to be impressed by if they gazed vaguely at the community.  Dr. Hume Brown had written an admirable summary of the history of Scotland, but he had contributed to the history of Scotland in another way by his two biographies of Buchanan and Knox, and especially by his biography of Buchanan.  Another corrective was literature.  There had been no sufficient perception of how literature might illustrate history; and why should it not if their aim was to recover the past mind of Scotland?  Every song, every fiction—­was not that a transmitted piece of the very mind that they wanted to investigate?  Here was matter already at their hand.  Then, in a similar way, if a noble thought, if a fine feeling, was in any way expressed in verse or in prose, that came out of some moment or moments in the mind of some individual, and it must have corresponded and been in sympathy with the community in which it was expressed.  Nothing noble had come out of any man at any one time, but that man, in the way of expression of literature, must have had a constituency of people who felt as he felt.  Unfortunately there was a long gap in what we called the finer history of Scotland from the time of the Reformation to Allan Ramsay—­in literature of certain kinds.  There were muses in those days, but they were muses of ecclesiastical and political controversy—­very grim muses, but still they were muses.  But from Allan Ramsay’s time to this, to study the history of the literature was to know more of the history of the country than we would otherwise.  David Hume, Adam Smith, Burns, Scott—­all these men were born and bred in Scotland so poor and so squalid that we should say we would not belong to it now.  Nobody was asking us to belong to it.  But these men, their roots were in a soil capable of sustaining their genius and of pouring into their works those things in the way of thought and feeling that delighted us now, and that were our pride throughout the world.

  Mr. D.W.  KEMP seconded the adoption of the Report, which was agreed to.

  The vacancies in the Council were filled by the re-election of Dr. Hume
  Brown and Mr. Balfour Paul, and the election of Mr. John Scott, C.B., in
  room of Mr. G.W.  Prothero.

In reply to Mr. James Bruce, W.S., Dr. LAW said that the death of Dr. Mitchell had caused some delay in the preparation of the third volume of the Records of the General Assembly, but it had already been transcribed for the printer.

  A vote of thanks to Professor Masson concluded the proceedings.

ABSTRACT OF THE HONORARY TREASURER’S ACCOUNTS