part,) the best resting place of the spirit amidst the tumults. and vicissitudes of life. It was from a deficiency of support of this kind that his spirit once quailed: that once, that will never cease to be mourned, when multitudes, far his inferiors in all besides, were enabled to rejoice while he suffered, trembled, supplicated, all the more keenly, all the more urgently, from the might of the heart within him. The fear of change perplexed him, and he warned and petitioned against it ineffectually, and to his own great injury; when, if he could but have seen that change was inevitable, and might be directed to the most magnificent achievements, he might have been one of the adored leaders of a heroic nation, instead of being made a spectacle to the people while offering his affecting farewell "Moriturus vos salutat." He had

vigor to support his own misfortunes, and to set about repairing them with unflinching heroism. But he had not faith in man collectively as he had in individual man, and could not resist the sadness with which political change inspired him, and which, more than any private sorrows, was thought to accelerate his decline. From the hopefulness which springs out of faith in man's progression, he was cut off. It was a great misfortune. Far be it from us to taunt his memory with it, or to ascribe it to any thing but the outward circumstances of his training. If the world lost something by it, he lost more, and moreover suffered by infliction as well as deprivation and all this makes the depth and continuity of his cheerfulness the more remarkable. This cheerfulness, this tendency to put a kindly construction on all which has been and is, accounts for his popularity notwithstanding his Toryism, and is, in its turn, partly accounted for by his industry, another test of the healthiness of his genius.

On this industry little can be said. Its achievements are before every one's eyes, and are, we suppose, nearly as unaccountable to most people as to ourselves. We give up the

We

attempt to settle how he did all, and when he did it. have his own word for his works (except during an interval of two years) being all written by his own hand; and if we had not had this unquestionable word, we should have dissented from Göthe's supposition, that he sketched and touched up, and left it to inferior hands to compose the bulk of his works. There is such a character of unity amidst all the diversity; the dullest scenes are so evidently enjoyed by the author, however little they may be so by the reader; there is such gusto, such an absence of all sense of drudgery throughout, that we could (as we said at the time) have staked our character for penetration upon the fact, before the disclosure was made, that every chapter in this library of novels was written by the same hand. How it was done is another matter. How he wrote for years together, sixteen pages of print per diem, on an average, while discharging his official duties in town, or before beginning his daily occupations. and pleasures of hospitality in the country, sixteen pages of historical, as well as fictitious, narrative, including all the research which either required, is to us matter of pure astonishment. We must be content with it as a fact; and taking it thus, we can understand how so perpetual a flow of fresh ideas, so animating a consciousness of power, so ever-present an evidence of achievement must have fed the springs of his cheerfulness, and have given that character of luxury to his intellectual refreshments which bodily toil gives to the meal and the couch of the laborer. There is a delight appertaining to earned pleasures which is common to all classes in the intellectual and social world; and herein was Sir Walter least of all aristocratic. His example of this truth is so valuable, his sanction so impressive, that we must be excused the triteness of our morality. If there be any in whose eyes Industry has not hitherto been majestic, they may now perhaps be led to appreciate her dignity. All others will dwell

thankfully on every new testimony to her congeniality with genius.

It is not easy to see how it can ever be tolerable to genius to be idle. To conceive achievements, and not attempt them; to discriminate beauty, and not reach after it; to discern that action is necessary to further contemplation, and not to act; these things seem, if not contradictory, unnatural; and the impulses arising from them are quite sufficient, without any help from the ambition of which Sir Walter had a very small share, to account for any degree of exertion that physical and mental energy can sustain. They are enough to render the spirit willing; and where the spirit is willing, the might is strong; and this willingness and might together constitute industry; an indispensable grace of the lofty, (whatever some who are great in their own eyes may think,) as well as the most ennobling virtue of the humble. implies toil, both as its cause and its consequence; and the example of Walter Scott (unnecessary as a proof, though welcome as a sanction to some) will open the eyes of many as to a new truth. And herein we recognise another of his mighty services as a vindicator of genius.

Genius

The practical character of his conduct and conversation was another of his valuable characteristics, implied in his industry, indeed, but remarkable apart from that. Good sense is as remarkable a feature of his most imaginative writings as illustration and humor were of his homeliest conversation. He had a considerable degree of worldly sagacity; not only of that which, being worked out in the study, makes a good show upon paper, but of that shrewdness which is ready for use in all the rapid turns of life, and sudden occasions of daily business. This is evident, not only in his portrait, and in his exposition of the system of Scotch banking, but in his most delicate delineations of his fairest heroines; in his records of the conversation of the glorious Die

Vernon, in the tête-à-têtes of Minna and Brenda, and conspicuously in the interview between Rebecca and Rowena. It is the practical character, i. e. the reality which pervades his loftiest scenes, that gives to them their permanent charm : in the same manner as the writer himself was respected as a man of superior rationality, and beloved as an endearing companion, instead of being regarded as a wayward dreamer, merely tolerated on account of supposed genius.

Here we must stop for the present. In pursuing this inquiry into the education and characteristics of his genius, we seem to have done little towards expressing the emotions which his name awakens, exalted as it is amidst the coronach of a nation. We shall hereafter attempt some estimate of his achievements, and of his services to his race - services of whose extent he was himself nearly as unconscious as his contemporaries are proud.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GENIUS OF SCOTT.

HAVING already tendered our homage to the memory of Scott in his capacity of vindicator of the character of Genius, we proceed to discuss his other claims to the veneration and gratitude of society.

In doing this, we shall not enter into any elaborate criticism of his compositions as works of art. This has been done a hundred times before, and will be done a hundred times again, to the great benefit of literature and the fine arts, and to the exalted entertainment of both those who lead and those who follow in the discrimination of the manifold beauties and graces with which Scott has adorned the realms of taste. We apply ourselves to the contemplation of the

works of Scott, in their effects as influences, rather than to an analysis of their constitution as specimens of art. If we include in our inquiry the services which he rendered to society negatively as well as positively, unconsciously as well as designedly, it may appear that the gratitude of one age and one empire is but a sample of the reward which his achievements deserve and will obtain.

There is little reason to question that Scott has done more for the morals of society, taking the expression in its largest sense, than all the divines, and other express moral teachers, of a century past. When we consider that all moral sciences are best taught by exemplification, and that these exemplifications produce tenfold effect when exhibited unprofessionally, it appears that dramatists and novelists of a high order have usually the advantage, as moralists, over those whose office it is to present morals in an abstract form. The latter are needed to systematize the science, and to prevent its being lost sight of as the highest of the sciences; but the advantage of practical influence rests with the former. When we, moreover, consider the extent of Scott's practical influence, and multiply this extent by its force, there will be little need of argument to prove that the whole living phalanx of clergy, orthodox and dissenting, of moral philosophers, of all moral teachers, except statesmen and authors of a high order, must yield the sceptre of moral sway to Scott. If they are wise, they will immediately acknowledge this, estimate hist achievements, adopt, to a certain extent, his methods, and step forward to the vantage ground he has gained for them. If they be disposed to question the fact of the superiority of his influence, let them measure it for an instant against their own. Let them look to our universities, and declare whether they have, within a century, done much for the advancement of morals at home, or to bring morals into respect abroad. Let them look to the weight of the established clergy, and