at the Viceregal Lodge. The tour, says Scott in his Journal, cost him a good £500.

On the whole Scott was much pleased with Ireland, which he thought wanted only quiet to become nigh the richest portion of the empire. Lockhart was of opinion that everything was shown him at its best to influence his mind in favour of Catholic emancipation, on which he had already adopted the position which circumstances soon forced upon Wellington and Peel. He communicated to a friend his view that the country was settling fast, notwithstanding the exertions of factious men. He had passed in absolute safety through parts of it where eighteen months since a mail-coach could not travel without a military escort. However, he had heard some queer stories of these disturbances, and was fain to conclude: "They are certainly a very odd people, and but for that ugly humour of murdering, which is in full decline, they would be the most amusing and easy to live with in the world."

Passing through North Wales, on their way to the English lakes, Scott and his companions called upon those oddities "the Ladies of Llangollen," two Irishwomen of noble birth who for nearly half a century had "lived their own life" in a lonely cottage. "Imagine two women," writes Lockhart to his wife, "one apparently seventy, the other sixty-five, dressed in heavy blue riding-habits, enormous shoes, large men's hats (more for show than use), a world of brooches,

rings, etc. . . . and to crown all, crop-heads, shaggy, rough, bushy, and as white as snow."

After a few days' journeying, our travellers appear upon a new scene-the banks of Lake Windermere. Received by Professor Wilson ("Christopher North "), they next day went on to the country house at Storrs that Scott might meet his old friend the witty statesman Canning, then Foreign Secretary. He was much broken by his labours, yet Scott took occasion to write to his daughter-in-law in Ireland: "When you see the Attorney-General, or Blake, you may assure them of Mr. Canning's good health. It is always knowing to have the last news of a Minister of State"; adding the good-natured caution: "But then people must not fall into the error of talking of such folks too long or too often."

Lockhart remarks that the author quite unconsciously "took command" of the statesman, but that Wordsworth, who was of the company, behaved as though he thought the two great men together "not worth his thumb." Scott himself judged the poet "much the worse for wear." He looked so old that he began to think that he himself must be getting old too. The two had much pleasant discourse on Poetry and Poets, while they dined at Storrs, breakfasted at Mount Rydal, Wordsworth's own house, or went together to visit Southey at Keswick; but the Lake poet had the lion's share, "the Unknown continually quoting Wordsworth's poetry and Wordsworth ditto," "the great Laker" saying

nothing from which a stranger could have guessed that Scott had ever written a line either of verse or prose since he was born. However, Sir Walter was the last man in the world to mind this. Before Sir Walter left Windermere a grand regatta was held on the lake in his honour under the superintendence of Christopher North. Even the sarcastic Lockhart admits that the procession of boats was a beautiful sight, though he speaks of "two execrable bands of music" which accompanied. The Professor himself led off with some forty boats from the bay of Bowness, Scott and Canning coming into the pageant at Storrs. As the procession moved round the islands it was received with cheers at various points; and throughout the three hours little cannons pluffed and the bands played-" different tunes." Two days with Lord Lonsdale and his poet, and then ho for Abbotsford!

Scott lost no time in settling down to work again, Napoleon and a new Waverley being both upon the stocks. Once more he was busy with his axe among his woods and with the guests in his halls. The most interesting of those whom he entertained this autumn was Tom Moore, the Irish poet and biographer of Byron. Moore's memoranda of his visit show his host as a man beginning to grow old, but scarce yet past his prime. The two men took to each other very kindly, the memory of Byron forming a connecting link. "We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our dignity as

lions," says the Scotchman; and, curiously enough, the phrase used by the Irishman to sum up the virtues of the other is very similar: "He is a thorough good fellow." Not only did Scott, when Moore affirmed that the verses which appeared in the periodicals of the day would have sufficed to make many poets' reputations thirty years earlier, respond with a chuckle, "Ecod, we were in the luck of it to come before these fellows!" but went on to tell his own literary story, and even to acknowledge the Waverley Novels. "They have been a mine of wealth to me-but I find I fail in them now; I can no longer make them so good as at first."

Sir Walter got a sight this autumn of one who was to combine politics and literature to even greater advantage than his friend Canning. "Here has been a visitor of' Lockhart's, a sprig of the root of Aaron, young D'Israeli, he wrote to William Stewart Rose. The emissary of John Murray, enthusiastic and plausible as he was, did not prevent Scott from advising his son-in-law not to tie himself too closely to the new Tory paper then projected.* He, however, did not dissuade Lockhart from accepting the Quarterly editorship, though the loss of his society and that of his wife meant much to him— an end of the family dinner-parties on Sundays, the rides over to breakfast at Chiefswood, and so forth. He now discontinued the Abbotsford Hunt, as he found the crowd too great, so many of the old stagers gone, and no young folk to head the field. He had * Scott read Vivian Grey before he died.