which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows1 with kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar2 of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws to be subdued by manners.

All the pleasing

But now all is to be changed. illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated 5 fashion.

1 fellows, equals, associates, companions.

2 submit this metaphor.

3 drapery. See Webster.

4 estimation. Give a synony

collar. Explain | mous term.

5 antiquated. Explain.

VII. SIR WALTER SCOTT.

LIFE AND WORKS.

THOUGH Scotland is famed for many good and sufficient reasons, that which more than any other single fact has given the little country its renown is that it is Scott's-land, -the native land of that "Wizard of the North," whose magic pen has made Caledonia's landscape, history, and types of character known the world

over.

Walter Scott was the first literary man of a great riding, sporting, and fighting clan. He was the descendant six generations removed of a certain Walter Scott famed in Border legend as auld Wat (old Walter) of Harden. Auld Wat's son William, who was a noted freebooter, was on one occasion captured while on a raid, and was given the choice between being hanged on the private gallows of his captor, Sir Gideon Murray, and marrying the ugliest of Sir Gideon's three ugly daughters, Meikle-mouthed Meg. After three days' deliberation the handsome but prudent William chose life with the large-mouthed lady, who, according to tradition, proved an excellent wife. She transmitted a distinct trace of her characteristic feature to that illustrious descendant who was to use his “meikle” mouth to such good advantage as the spokesman of his race.

Scott's father was an Edinburgh solicitor, a strict Presbyterian, and a dignified and conscientious, though, as appears, a somewhat formal, strait-laced character. The mother was a woman of tender heart, superior

intelligence, and remarkably vivid memory. Scott, writing of her after her death, says: "She had a mind peculiarly well stored with much acquired information and natural talent, and as she had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the least exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able to do any thing in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented me."

The future poet and novelist was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 1771, the ninth of twelve children.

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Walter is described as a sweet-tempered bairn," with light chestnut hair, and laughing but determined eyes. A childish fever left him lame for life; still he was very agile, and had a firm seat on his pony even in galloping over very rough ground. A friend of the family, Mrs. Cockburn, described him as being, at six years of age, the most astonishing genius of a boy she ever saw. "He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made him read on. It was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm. 'There's the mast gone!' says he; 'crash it goes! they will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me, 'That is too melancholy,' says he; ‘I had better read you something more amusing.'" And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Cockburn, for "she was a virtuoso like himself."-"Dear Walter," said his aunt, "what is a virtuoso?"-"Don't ye know? Why, it's one who wishes and will know every thing."

At school Scott's reputation was that of marked but rather irregular ability. Out of school his fame stood

higher. He made up innumerable stories to which his schoolfellows delighted to listen; and, in spite of his lameness, he was always in the thick of the "bickers" or street skirmishes with the boys of the town. As he grew up he entered the classes of the college, and began his legal studies, first as apprentice to his father, and then in the law classes of the university. At this time he was noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic memory, and for the rich stores of romantic material with which it was loaded. His reading was almost all in the direction of military exploit, or romance and medieval legend, and the later Border songs of his own country. He learned Italian, and read Ariosto. Later he learned Spanish, and devoured Cervantes.

It might be supposed that with these romantic tastes, Scott could scarcely have made much of a lawyer; and his father reproached him with being better fitted for a peddler than a lawyer,—so persistently did he trudge over all the neighboring counties in search of the beauties of nature and the historic associations of battle, siege, or legend. But in spite of this adverse paternal view Scott completed his legal studies, and when twentyone (1792) donned the wig and gown of a Scottish advocate. He was a good lawyer, and it is believed he might have become a great one, had not his destined work lain elsewhere. As it was, he continued his connection with the bar for fourteen years, till 1806. He then was made a "clerk of session," a permanent officer of the court at Edinburgh.

At the age of twenty-six (1797) Scott had married a young French lady, Margaret Carpenter, or Charpentier,

the daughter of a French royalist. She is described as a lively beauty, of no great depth of character. "It was," says Scott's biographer, "like a bird-of-paradise . mating with an eagle. Yet the result was happy on the whole, for she had a thoroughly kindly nature and a true heart."

Ever since his earliest college days, Scott had been . collecting, in his frequent excursions into the southern part of Scotland, materials for a book on The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The publication of this work (1802-1803) was his first great literary success. The skill and care which he had devoted to the historical illustration of the ballads, and the force and spirit of his own new ballads written in imitation of the old, gained him at once a very high literary name.

What may be called Scott's poetical period, beginning with 1802, lasted during the twelve years between that date and the year 1814. His first great original poem was The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), a noble picture of wild Scottish Border life, which at once gave its author high rank as a poet. This tale was but the first of a series of picturesque romances, couched in rapid, stirring verse of eight syllables, and colored with the brightest hues of Highland and knightly life, that proceeded during the next ten years from Scott's magic pen. Of these enchanting poems we shall here name only Marmion and The Lady of the Lake.

It is generally agreed among literary critics, that Marmion is Scott's finest poem. It was composed in great part in the saddle, and the stir of a charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core of it. The descrip