CHAPTERXXSIR WALTER SCOTT
More than a century has passed since Walter Scott was born—a poet destined to exercise a profound, far-reaching, permanent influence upon the feelings of the human race, and thus to act a conspicuous part in its moral and spiritual development and guidance. To the greatness of his mind, the nobility of his spirit, and the beauty of his life there is abundant testimony in his voluminous and diversified writings, and in his ample and honest biography. Everybody who reads has read something from the pen of Scott, or something commemorative of him, and in every mind to which his name is known it is known as the synonym of great faculties and wonderful achievement. There must have been enormous vitality of spirit, prodigious power of intellect, irresistible charm of personality, and lovable purity of moral nature in the man whom thousands that never saw him living,—men and women of a later age and different countries,—know and remember and love as Sir Walter Scott. Others have written greatly. Milton, Dryden, Addison, Pope, Cowper, Johnson, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Landor,—theseare only a few of the imperial names that cannot die. But these names live in the world's respect. The name of Scott lives also in its affection. What other name of the past in English literature,—unless it be that of Shakespeare,—arouses such a deep and sweet feeling of affectionate interest, gentle pleasure, gratitude, and reverential love?
Sir Walter Scott.
Sir Walter Scott.
The causes of Sir Walter Scott's ascendency are to be found in the goodness of his heart; the integrity of his conduct; the romantic and picturesque accessories and atmosphere of his life; the fertile brilliancy of his literary execution; the charm that he exercises, both as man and artist, over the imagination; the serene, tranquillising spirit of his works; and, above all, the buoyancy, the happy freedom, of his genius. He was not simply an intellectual power; he was also a human and gentle comforter. He wielded an immense mental force, but he always wielded it for good, and always with tenderness.It is impossible to conceive of his ever having done a wrong act, or of any contact with his influence that would not inspire the wish to be virtuous and noble. The scope of his sympathy was as broad as the weakness and the need are of the human race. He understood the hardship, the dilemma, in the moral condition of mankind: he wished people to be patient and cheerful, and he tried to make them so. His writings are full of sweetness and cheer, and they contain nothing that is morbid,—nothing that tends toward surrender and misery. He did not sequester himself in mental pride, but simply and sturdily, through years of conscientious toil, he employed the faculties of a strong, tender, gracious genius for the good of his fellow-creatures. The world loves him because he is worthy to be loved, and because he has lightened the burden of its care and augmented the sum of its happiness.
Certain differences and confusions of opinion have arisen from the consideration of his well-known views as to the literary art, together with his equally well-known ambition to take and to maintain the rank and estate of a country squire. As an artist he had ideals that he was never able to fulfil. As a man, and one who was influenced by imagination, taste, patriotism, family pride, and a profound belief in established monarchical institutions, it was natural that he should wish to found a grand and beautiful home for himself and his posterity. A poet is not the less a poet because he thinks modestly of his writings and practically knows and admits that there is something else in the world beside literature; or because he happens to want his dinner and a roof to cover him. In trying to comprehend a great man, agood method is to look at his life as a whole, and not to deduce petty inferences from the distorted interpretation of petty details. Sir Walter Scott's conduct of life, like the character out of which it sprang, was simple and natural. In all that he did you may perceive the influence of imagination acting upon the finest reason; the involuntary consciousness of reserve power; habitual deference to the voice of duty; an aspiring and picturesque plan of artistic achievement and personal distinction; and deep knowledge of the world. If ever there was a man who lived to be and not to seem, that man was Sir Walter Scott. He made no pretensions. He claimed nothing, but he simply and earnestly earned all. His means were the oldest and the best; self-respect, hard work, and fidelity to duty. The development of his nature was slow, but it was thorough and it was salutary. He was not hampered by precocity and he was not spoiled by conceit. He acted according to himself, honouring his individuality and obeying the inward monitor of his genius. But, combined with the delicate instinct of a gentleman, he had the wise insight, foresight, and patience of a philosopher; and therefore he respected the individuality of others, the established facts of life, and the settled conventions of society. His mind was neither embittered by revolt nor sickened by delusion. Having had the good fortune to be born in a country in which a right plan of government prevails,—the idea of the family, the idea of the strong central power at the head, with all other powers subordinated to it,—he felt no impulse toward revolution, no desire to regulate all things anew; and he did not suffer perturbation from the feverish sense of being surroundedwith uncertainty and endangered by exposure to popular caprice. During the period of immaturity, and notwithstanding physical weakness and pain, his spirit was kept equable and cheerful, not less by the calm environment of a permanent civilisation than by the clearness of his perceptions and the sweetness of his temperament. In childhood and youth he endeared himself to all who came near him, winning affection by inherent goodness and charm. In riper years that sweetness was reinforced by great sagacity, which took broad views of individual and social life; so that both by knowledge and by impulse he was a serene and happy man.
The quality that first impresses the student of the character and the writings of Sir Walter Scott is truthfulness. He was genuine. Although a poet, he suffered no torment from vague aspirations. Although once, and miserably, a disappointed lover, he permitted no morbid repining. Although the most successful author of his time, he displayed no egotism. To the end of his days he was frank and simple,—not indeed sacrificing the reticence of a dignified, self-reliant nature, but suffering no blight from success, and wearing illustrious honours with spontaneous, unconscious grace. This truthfulness, the consequence and the sign of integrity and of great breadth of intellectual vision, moulded Sir Walter Scott's ambition and stamped the practical results of his career. A striking illustration of this is seen in his first adventure in literature. The poems originally sprang from the spontaneous action of the poetic impulse and faculty; but they were put forth modestly, in order that the author might guide himself according to the response of the public mind. Heknew that he might fail as an author, but for failure of that sort, although he was intensely ambitious, he had no dread. There would always remain to him the career of private duty and the life of a gentleman. This view of him gives the key to his character and explains his conduct. Neither amid the experimental vicissitudes of his youth, nor amid the labours, achievements, and splendid honours of his manhood, did he ever place the imagination above the conscience, or brilliant writing above virtuous living, or art and fame above morality and religion. "I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day," he said, toward the close of his life; "and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that I have written nothing which, on my deathbed, I should wish blotted." When at last he lay upon that deathbed the same thought animated and sustained him. "My dear," he said, to Lockhart, "be a good man, be virtuous, be religious—be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." The mind which thus habitually dwelt upon goodness as the proper object of human ambition and the chief merit of human life was not likely to vaunt itself on its labours or to indulge any save a modest and chastened pride in its achievements.
Edinburgh Castle.
Edinburgh Castle.
And this view of him explains the affectionate reverence with which the memory of Sir Walter Scott is cherished. He was pre-eminently a type of the greatness that is associated with virtue. But his virtue was not decorum and it was not goodyism. He does not, with Addison, represent elegant austerity; and he does not, with Montgomery, represent amiable tameness. His[271]goodness was not insipid. It does not humiliate; it gladdens. It is ardent with heart and passion. It is brilliant with imagination. It is fragrant with taste and grace. It is alert, active, and triumphant with splendid mental achievements and practical good deeds. And it is the goodness of a great poet,—the poet of natural beauty, of romantic legend, of adventure, of chivalry, of life in its heyday of action and its golden glow of pageantry and pleasure. It found expression, and it wields invincible and immortal power, through an art whereof the charm is the magic of sunrise and sunset, the sombre, holy silence of mountains, the pensive solitude of dusky woods, the pathos of ancient, ivy-mantled ruins, and ocean's solemn, everlasting chant. Great powers have arisen in English literature; but no romance has hushed the voice of the author ofWaverley, and no harp has drowned the music of the Minstrel of the North.
The publication of a new book by Sir Walter Scott is a literary event of great importance. The time has been when the announcement of such a novelty would have roused the reading public as with the sound of a trumpet. That sensation, familiar in the early part of the present century, is possible no more. Yet there are thousands of persons all over the world through whose hearts the thought of it sends a thrill of joy. The illustrious author ofMarmionand ofWaverleypassed away in 1832: and now (1890), at the distance of fifty-eight years, his privateJournalis made a public possession. It is the bestowal of a great privilege and benefit. It is like hearing the voice of a deeply-loved and long-lamented friend, suddenly speaking from beyond the grave.
In literary history the position of Scott is unique. A few other authors, indeed, might be named toward whom the general feeling was once exceedingly cordial, but in no other case has the feeling entirely lasted. In the case of Scott it endures in undiminished fervour. There are, of course, persons to whom his works are not interesting and to whom his personality is not significant. Those persons are the votaries of the photograph, who wish to see upon the printed page the same sights that greet their vision in the streets and in the houses to which they are accustomed. But those prosy persons constitute only a single class of the public. People in general are impressible through the romantic instinct that is a part of human nature. To that instinct Scott's writings were addressed, and also to the heart that commonly goes with it. The spirit that responds to his genius is universal and perennial. Caprices of taste will reveal themselves and will vanish; fashions will rise and will fall; but these mutations touch nothing that is elemental and they will no more displace Scott than they will displace Shakespeare.
TheJournalof Sir Walter Scott, valuable for its copious variety of thought, humour, anecdote, and chronicle, is precious, most of all, for the confirmatory light that it casts upon the character of its writer. It has long been known that Scott's nature was exceptionally noble, that his patience was beautiful, that his endurance was heroic. These pages disclose to his votaries that he surpassed even the highest ideal of him that their affectionate partiality has formed. The period that it covers was that of his adversity and decline. He began it on November 20, 1825, in his town house, No. 39Castle street, Edinburgh, and he continued it, with almost daily entries,—except for various sadly significant breaks, after July 1830,—until April 16, 1832. Five months later, on September 21, he was dead. He opened it with the expression of a regret that he had not kept a regular journal during the whole of his life. He had just seen some chapters of Byron's vigorous, breezy, off-hand memoranda, and the perusal of those inspiriting pages had revived in his mind the long-cherished, often-deferred plan of keeping a diary. "I have myself lost recollection," he says, "of much that was interesting, and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information by not carrying this resolution into effect." Having once begun the work he steadily persevered in it, and evidently he found a comfort in its companionship. He wrote directly, and therefore fluently, setting down exactly what was in his mind, from day to day; but, as he had a well-stored and well-ordered mind, he wrote with reason and taste, seldom about petty matters, and never in the strain of insipid babble that egotistical scribblers mistake for the spontaneous flow of nature. The facts that he recorded were mostly material facts, and the reflections that he added, whether serious or humorous, were important. Sometimes a bit of history would glide into the current of the chronicle; sometimes a fragment of a ballad; sometimes an analytic sketch of character, subtle, terse, clear, and obviously true; sometimes a memory of the past; sometimes a portraiture of incidents in the present; sometimes a glimpse of political life, a word about painting, a reference to music or the stage, an anecdote, a tale of travel, a trait of social manners, a precept uponconduct, or a thought upon religion and the destiny of mankind. There was no pretence of order and there was no consciousness of an audience; yet theJournalunconsciously assumed a symmetrical form; and largely because of the spontaneous operation of its author's fine literary instinct it became a composition worthy of the best readers. It is one of the saddest and one of the strongest books ever written.
The original manuscript of this remarkable work is contained in two volumes, bound in vellum, each volume being furnished with a steel clasp that can be fastened. The covers are slightly tarnished by time. The paper is yellow with age. The handwriting is fine, cramped, and often obscure. "This hand of mine," writes Scott (vol.i. page 386), "gets to be like a kitten's scratch, and will require much deciphering, or, what may be as well for the writer, cannot be deciphered at all. I am sure I cannot read it myself." The first volume is full of writing; the second about half full. Toward the end the record is almost illegible. Scott was then at Rome, on that melancholy, mistaken journey whereby it had been hoped, but hoped in vain, that he would recover his health. The last entry that he made is this unfinished sentence: "We slept reasonably, but on the next morning——." It is not known that he ever wrote a word after that time. Lockhart, who had access to his papers, made some use of theJournal, in hisLife of Scott, which is one of the best biographies in our language; but the greater part of it was withheld from publication till a more auspicious time for its perfect candour of speech. To hold those volumes and to look upon their pages,—so eloquent of the great author's industry,so significant of his character, so expressive of his inmost soul,—was almost to touch the hand of the Minstrel himself, to see his smile, and to hear his voice. Now that they have fulfilled their purpose, and imparted their inestimable treasure to the world, they are restored to the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, there to be treasured among the most precious relics of the past. "It is the saddest house in Scotland," their editor, David Douglas, said to me, when we were walking together upon the Braid Hills, "for to my fancy every stone in it is cemented with tears." Sad or glad, it is a shrine to which reverent pilgrims find their way from every quarter of the earth, and it will be honoured and cherished forever.
The Canongate Tolbooth.
The Canongate Tolbooth.
The great fame of Scott had been acquired by the time he began to write hisJournal, and it rested upon a broad foundation of solid achievement. He was fifty-four years old, having been born August 15, 1771, the same year in which Smollett died. He had been an author for about thirty years,—his first publication, a translation of Bürger'sLenore, having appeared in 1796, the same year that was darkened by the death of Robert Burns. His social eminence also had been established. He had been sheriff of Selkirk for twenty-five years. He had been for twenty years a clerk of the Court of Session. He had been for five years a baronet, having received that rank from King George the Fourth, who always loved and admired him, in 1820. He had been for fourteen years the owner of Abbotsford, which he bought in 1811, occupied in 1812, and completed in 1824. He was yet to writeWoodstock, the six tales calledThe Chronicles of the Canongate,The Fair Maid[277]of Perth,Anne of Geierstein,Count Robert of Paris,Castle Dangerous, theLife of Napoleon, and the lovelyStories from the History of Scotland. All those works, together with many essays and reviews, were produced by him between 1825 and 1832, while also he was maintaining a considerable correspondence, doing his official duties, writing hisJournal, and carrying a suddenly imposed load of debt,—which finally his herculean labours paid,—amounting to £130,000. But between 1805 and 1817 he had writtenThe Lay of the Last Minstrel,Ballads and Lyrical Pieces,Marmion,The Lady of the Lake,The Vision of Don Roderick,Rokeby,The Lord of the Isles,The Field of Waterloo, andHarold the Dauntless,—thus creating a great and diversified body of poetry, then in a new school and a new style, in which, although he has often been imitated, he never has been equalled. Between 1814 and 1825 he had likewise producedWaverley,Guy Mannering,The Antiquary,Old Mortality,The Black Dwarf,Rob Roy,The Heart of Midlothian,A Legend of Montrose,The Bride of Lammermoor,Ivanhoe,The Monastery,The Abbot,Kenilworth,The Pirate,The Fortunes of Nigel,Peveril of the Peak,Quentin Durward,St. Ronan's Well,Redgauntlet,The Betrothed, andThe Talisman. This vast body of fiction was also a new creation in literature, for the English novel prior to Scott's time was the novel of manners, as chiefly represented by the works of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. That admirable author, Miss Jane Porter, had, indeed, written theScottish Chiefs(1809), in which the note of imagination, as applied to the treatment of historical fact and character, rings true and clear; and probably that excellent bookshould be remembered as the beginning of English historical romance. Scott himself said that it was the parent, in his mind, of the Waverley Novels. But he surpassed it. Another and perhaps a deeper impulse to the composition of those novels was the consciousness, when Lord Byron, by the publication ofChilde Harold(the first and second cantos, in 1812), suddenly checked or eclipsed his immediate popularity as a poet, that it would be necessary for him to strike out a new path. He had begunWaverleyin 1805 and thrown the fragment aside. He took it up again in 1814, wrought upon it for three weeks and finished it, and so began the career of "the Great Unknown." The history of literature presents scarce a comparable example of such splendid industry sustained upon such a high level of endeavour, animated by such glorious genius, and resultant in such a noble and beneficent fruition. The life of Balzac, whom his example inspired, and who may be accounted the greatest of French writers since Voltaire, is perhaps the only life that drifts suggestively into the scholar's memory, as he thinks of the prodigious labours of Sir Walter Scott.
During the days of his prosperity Scott maintained his manor at Abbotsford and his town-house in Edinburgh, and he frequently migrated from one to the other, dispensing a liberal hospitality at both. He was not one of those authors who think that there is nothing in the world but pen and ink. He esteemed living to be more important than writing about it, and the development of the soul to be a grander result than the production of a book. "I hate an author that's all author," said Byron; and in this virtuous sentimentScott participated. His character and conduct, his unaffected modesty as to his own works, his desire to found a great house and to maintain a stately rank among the land-owners of his country, and as a son of chivalry, have, for this reason, been greatly misunderstood by dull people. They never, indeed, would have found the least fault with him if he had not become a bankrupt; for the mouth of every dunce is stopped by practical success. When he got into debt, though, it was discovered that he ought to have had a higher ambition than the wish to maintain a place among the landed gentry of Scotland; and even though he ultimately paid his debts,—literally working himself to death to do it,—he was not forgiven by that class of censors; and to some extent their chatter of paltry disparagement still survives. While he was rich, however, his halls were thronged with fashion, rank, and renown. Edinburgh, still the stateliest city on which the sun looks down, must have been, in the last days of George the Third, a place of peculiar beauty, opulence, and social brilliancy. Scott, whose father was a Writer to the Signet, and who derived his descent from a good old Border family, the Scotts of Harden, had, from his youth, been accustomed to refined society and elegant surroundings. He was born and reared a gentleman, and a gentleman he never ceased to be. His father's house was No. 25 George Square, then an aristocratic quarter, now somewhat fallen into the sere and yellow. In that house, as a boy, he saw some of the most distinguished men of the age. In after years, when his fortunes were ripe and his fame as a poet had been established, he drew around himself a kindred class ofassociates. The record of his life blazes with splendid names. As a lad of fifteen, in 1786, he saw Burns, then twenty-seven, and in the heyday of fame; and he also saw Dugald Stewart, seventeen years his senior. Lord Jeffrey was his contemporary and friend, only two years younger than himself. With Henry Mackenzie, "the Addison of Scotland,"—born in the first year of the last Jacobite rebellion, and therefore twenty-six years his senior,—he lived on terms of cordial friendship. David Hume, who died when Scott was but five years old, was one of the great celebrities of his early days; and doubtless Scott saw the Calton Hill when it was, as Jane Porter remembered it, "a vast green slope, with no other buildings breaking the line of its smooth and magnificent brow but Hume's monument on one part and the astronomical observatory on the other." He knew John Home, the author ofDouglas, who was his senior by forty-seven years; and among his miscellaneous prose writings there is an effective review of Home's works, which was written for theQuarterly, in March 1827. Among the actors his especial friends were John Philip Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, the elder Charles Mathews, John Bannister, and Daniel Terry. He knew Yates also, and he saw Miss Foote, Fanny Kemble, and the Mathews of our day as "a clever, rather forward lad." Goethe was his correspondent. Byron was his friend and fervent admirer. Wordsworth and Moore were among his visitors and especial favourites. The aged Dr. Adam Ferguson was one of his intimates. Hogg, when in trouble, always sought him, and always was helped and comforted. He was the literary sponsor for Thomas Campbell. Hemet Madame D'Arblay, who was nineteen years his senior, when she was seventy-eight years old; and the author ofEvelinatalked with him, in the presence of old Samuel Rogers, then sixty-three, about her father, Dr. Burney, and the days of Dr. Johnson. He was honoured with the cordial regard of the great Duke of Wellington, a contemporary, being only two years his senior. He knew Croker, Haydon, Chantrey, Landseer, Sydney Smith, and Theodore Hook. He readVivian Greyas a new publication and saw Disraeli as a beginner. Coleridge he met and marvelled at. Mrs. Coutts, who had been Harriet Mellon, the singer, and who became the Duchess of St. Albans, was a favourite with him. He knew and liked that caustic critic William Gifford. His relations with Sir Humphry Davy, seven years his senior, were those of kindness. He had a great regard for Lord Castlereagh and Lord Melville. He liked Robert Southey, and he cherished a deep affection for the poet Crabbe, who was twenty-three years older than himself, and who died in the same year. Of Sir George Beaumont, the fond friend and wise patron of Wordsworth, who died in February 1827, Scott wrote that he was "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew." Amid a society such as is indicated by those names Scott passed his life. The brilliant days of the Canongate indeed were gone, when all those wynds and closes that fringe the historic avenue from the Castle to Holyrood were as clean as wax, and when the loveliest ladies of Scotland dwelt amongst them, and were borne in their chairs from one house of festivity to another. But New street, once the home of LordKames, still retained some touch of its ancient finery. St. John street, where once lived Lord Monboddo and his beautiful daughter, Miss Burnet (immortalised by Burns), and where (at No. 10) Ballantyne often convoked admirers of the unknown author ofWaverley, was still a cleanly place. Alison Square, George Square, Buccleuch Place, and kindred quarters were still tenanted by the polished classes of the stately, old-time society of Edinburgh. The movement northward had begun, but as yet it was inconsiderable. In those old drawing-rooms Scott was an habitual visitor, as also he was in many of the contiguous county manors,—in Seton House, Pinkie House, Blackford, Ravelstone, Craigcrook, and Caroline Park, and wherever else the intellect, beauty, rank, and fashion of the Scottish capital assembled; and it is certain that after his marriage, in December 1797, with Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, the scenes of hospitality and of elegant festival were numerous and gay, and were peopled with all that was brightest in the ancient city, at first beneath his roof-tree in Castle street and later beneath his turrets of Abbotsford.
There came a time, however, when the fabric of Scott's fortunes was to be shattered and his imperial genius bowed into the dust. He had long been a business associate with Constable, his publisher, and also with Ballantyne, his printer. The publishing business failed and they were ruined together. It has long been customary to place the blame for that catastrophe on Constable alone. Mr. Douglas, who has edited theJournalwith characteristic discretion and taste, records his opinion that "the three parties, printer, publisher,and author, were equal sharers in the imprudences that led to the disaster;" and he directs attention to the fact that the charge that Constable ruined Scott was not made during the lifetime of either. It matters little now in what way the ruin was induced. Mismanagement caused it, and not misdeed. There was a blunder, but there was no fraud. The honour of all the men concerned stands vindicated before the world. Moreover, the loss was retrieved and the debt was paid,—Scott's share of it in full: the other shares in part. It is to the period of this ordeal that Scott'sJournalmainly relates. Great though he had been in prosperity, he was to show himself greater amid the storms of disaster and affliction. The earlier pages of the diary are cheerful, vigorous, and confident. The mind of the writer is in no alarm. Presently the sky changes and the tempest breaks; and from that time onward the reader beholds a spectacle, of indomitable will, calm resolution, inflexible purpose, patient endurance, steadfast industry, and productive genius, that is sublime. Many facts of living interest and many gems of subtle thought and happy phrase are found in his daily record. The observations on immortality are in a fine strain. The remarks on music, on dramatic poetry, on the operation of the mental faculties, on painting, and on national characteristics, are freighted with suggestive thought. But the noble presence of the man overshadows even his best words. He lost his fortune in December 1825. His wife died in May 1826. On the pages that immediately follow his note of this bereavement Scott has written occasional words that no one can read unmoved, and that no one who has suffered can read without a pang that is deeper than tears.
But his spirit was slow to break. "Duty to God and to my children," he said, "must teach me patience." Once he speaks of "the loneliness of these watches of the night." Not until his debts were paid and his duties fulfilled would that great soul yield. "I may be bringing on some serious disease," he remarks, "by working thus hard; if I had once justice done to other folks, I do not much care, only I would not like to suffer long pain." A little later the old spirit shows itself: "I do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be beaten.... Let us use the time and faculties which God has left us, and trust futurity to His guidance.... I want to finish my task, and then good-night. I will never relax my labour in these affairs either for fear of pain or love of life. I will die a free man, if hard working will do it.... My spirits are neither low nor high—grave, I think, and quiet—a complete twilight of the mind.... God help—but rather God bless—man must help himself.... The best is, the long halt will arrive at last and cure all.... It is my dogged humour to yield little to external circumstances.... I shall never see the three-score and ten, and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter either." In the mood of mingled submission and resolve denoted by these sentences (which occur at long intervals in the story), he wrought at his task until it was finished. ByWoodstockhe earned £8000; by theLife of Napoleon£18,000; by other writings still other sums. The details of his toil appear day by day in these simple pages, tragic through all their simplicity. He was a heart-broken man from the hour when his wife died, buthe sustained himself by force of will and sense of honour, and he endured and worked till the last, without a murmur; and when he had done his task he laid down his pen and so ended.
The lesson of Scott'sJournalis the most important lesson that experience can teach. It is taught in two words: honour and duty. Nothing is more obvious, from the nature and environment and the consequent condition of the human race, than the fact that this world is not, and was not intended to be, a place of settled happiness. All human beings have troubles, and as the years pass away those troubles become more numerous, more heavy, and more hard to bear. The ordeal through which humanity is passing is an ordeal of discipline for spiritual development. To live in honour, to labour with steadfast industry, and to endure with cheerful patience is to be victorious. Whatever in literature will illustrate this doctrine, and whatever in human example will commend and enforce it, is of transcendent value; and that value is inherent in the example of Sir Walter Scott.