announced that a new novel by the Author of Waverley was coming out; to have sat down the moment it could be laid hold of, and have entered through it into another world, full of new objects of admiration, new friends, and new subjects of delight and discussion,-was, in truth, a real privilege. The fame of Scott, before great, now became unbounded. It flew over sea and land. His novels were translated into every language which could boast of a printing-press; and the glory of two such men as himself and Byron made still more proud the renown of that invincible island, which stood against all the assaults of Napoleon, and had now even chained that terrible conqueror, as its captive, on a far sea-rock.

I say the fame of Scott was thus augmented by the Waverley Novels. Yes, they were, long before they were owned to be his, felt by the public to be nobody else's. The question might be, and was agitated, but still there was a tacit feeling that Scott was their author, far and wide diffused. Dense, indeed, must they have been who could doubt it. What were they but prose amplifications of his Lady of the Lake, his Marmion, and his Lord of the Isles? So early as 1820, rambling on foot with Mrs. Howitt in the Highlands, we came to Aberfoil, where the minister, Mr. Graham, who had written Sketches of the Scenery of Perthshire, accompanied us to spots in that neighborhood which are marked ones in the novel of Rob Roy. It was he who had first turned the attention of Scott to the scenery of Lock Katrine and the Trosachs. "Can there be any doubt," we asked, "that Scott is the author of Waverley ?" "Could it possibly be any body else?" he replied. "If the whole spirit and essence of those stories did not show it, his visits here during the writing of Rob Roy would have been decisive enough. He came here, and inquired out all the traditionary haunts of Rob. I accompanied him upon Loch Ard, and at a particular spot I saw his attention fixed; he observed my notice, but desired his daughter to

sing something, to divert it; but I felt assured that before long I should see that spot described—and there, indeed, was Helen Macgregor made to give her celebrated breakfast." Long before the formal acknowledgment was made, few, in fact, were they who were not as fully satisfied of the identity of Walter Scott and the author of Waverley, as was the shrewd Ettrick Shepherd, who, from the first, had had the Waverley Novels bound and labeled, "Scott's Novels." No one could have seen Abbotsford itself without being at once convinced of it, if he had never been so before. Without, the very stones of the old gateway of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh stared the fact in his face; within, it was a perfect collection of testimonies to the fact. The gun of Rob Roy; the pistols of Claverhouse; the thumbikins which had tortured the Covenanters; nay, a whole host of things cried out-" We belong to the author of Waverley."

And never did fame so richly follow the accomplishment of deeds of immortality as in the case of Sir Walter. From the monarch to the meanest reader; from Edinburgh to the farthest wilds of Russia and America, the enthusiastic admiration of " The Great Northern Magician," as he was called, was one universal sentiment. Wherever he went he was made to feel it; and from every quarter streamed crowds on crowds to Abbotsford to see him. He was on the kindliest terms of friendship with almost every known writer; to his most distinguished cotemporaries, especially Byron, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Joanna Baillie, he seemed as though he could not testify sufficient honor; and, on the other hand, the highest nobility, nay, royalty itself, felt the pride of his presence and acquaintance. Never had the glory of any literary man, not even of those who, like Petrarch, had been crowned publicly as the poetic monarchs of the age, reached such a pitch of intense and universal splendor. The field of this glory was not one country,—it was that

H*

of the vast civilized world, in which almost every man was a reader. No evidences more striking of this were ever given than on his tour in Ireland, where the play was not allowed to go on in Dublin till he showed himself to the eager people; and on his return from whence, he declared that his whole journey had been an ovation. It was the same on his last going on the Continent. But the fact mentioned by Lockhart as occurring during his attendance in London at the coronation of George IV., in 1821, is worth a thousand others, as it shows how truly he was held in honor by the common people. He was returning from the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall. He had missed his carriage, and "had to return on foot, between two and three in the morning, when he and a young gentleman, his companion, found themselves locked in the crowd, somewhere near Whitehall; and the bustle and tumult were such, that his friend was afraid some accident might happen to the lame limb. A space for the dignitaries was kept clear, at that point, by the Scots Grays. Sir Walter addressed a sergeant of this celebrated regiment, begging to be allowed to pass by him into the open ground in the middle of the street. The man answered shortly, that his orders were strict-that the thing was impossible. While he was endeavoring to persuade the sergeant to relent, some new wave of turbulence approached from behind, and his young companion exclaimed, in a loud voice- Take care, Sir Walter Scott, take care!" The stalwart dragoon hearing the name, said

What! Sir Walter Scott? He shall get through, anyhow.' He then addressed the soldiers near him- Make room, men, for Sir Walter Scott, our illustrious countrymen!' The men answered-'Sir Walter Scott! God bless him!' and he was in a moment within the guarded line of safety."

This is beautiful. Sir Walter had won a proud immortality, and lived now in the very noon of its living radiance.

But the romance is still behind. When about six-andtwenty, at the pleasant little watering-place of Gilsland, in Cumberland, he fell in love with a young French lady, Charlotte Margaret Charpentier. The meeting was like one of those in his own novels. He was riding with his friend, Adam Fergusson-the joyous, genial friend of his whole life-one day in that neighborhood, when they met a young lady taking an airing on horseback, whom neither of them had before seen. They were so much struck with her appearance, as to keep her in view till they were sure that she was a visitor at the wells. The same evening they met her at a ball, and so much was Scott charmed with her that he soon made her a proposal, and she became his wife. All who knew her in her youth speak of her as a very charming person; though I confess that her portrait at Abbotsford does not give me much idea of her personal charms. But, says Mr. Lockhart, who had the best opportunity of knowing, "Without the features of a regular beauty, she was rich in personal attractions; a form that was fashioned as light as a fairy's;' a complexion of the clearest and the brightest olive; eyes large, deep-set and dazzling, of the finest Italian brown; and a profusion of silken tresses, black as the raven's wing: her address hovering between the reserve of a pretty Englishwoman who has not mingled largely in general society, and a certain natural archness and gayety that suited well with the accompaniment of a French accent. › A lovelier vision, as all who remember her in the bloom of her days have assured me, could hardly have been imagined."

With his charming young wife, Scott settled at Lasswade, about seven miles from Edinburgh. Here he had a lonely and retired cottage, in a most beautiful neighborhood; and was within an easy distance of Edinburgh and his practice there as an advocate. Here he busied himself in his literary pursuits, and made those excursions into Liddesdale, and Ettrick forest, and other parts of the border country, in

quest of materials for his Border Minstrelsy, in which he found such exquisite delight. Here he found Shortreed, Hogg, Laidlaw, men all enthusiastic in the same pursuits and tastes. At this time, too, he became acquainted, in Edinburgh, with Leyden, also a border man, full of ballad and poetry, and with powers as gigantic as Scott himself, though uncouth as a colt from the moors. There is nothing in any biography which strikes me so full of the enjoyment of life as Scott's raids, as he called them, into Liddesdale, and other border wildernesses, at that period. He found everywhere a new country, untrodden by tourists, unknown to fame, but richly deserving of it. There was a new land discovered, full, from end to end, of wild scenery, and strange, rude, but original character, rich in native wit, humor, and fun. Down Liddesdale there was no road; in it there was no inn. Scott's gig, on the last of seven years' raids, was the first wheel-carriage that ever entered it. "The travelers passed from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse; and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse, to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead." "To these rambles," says Lockhart, "Scott owed much of the material of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of those unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose works.” "He was makin' himsel' a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed; "but he did na ken, may be, what he was about till years had passed. At first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun." That overflowing enjoyment of life which so much distinguished Scott at all periods, except the short melancholy one of his decline, now exhibited itself in all its exuberance. "Eh me!" says Mr. Shortreed, "sic an endless fund o' humor and drollery as he then had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing, or roaring, and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to every body! He