of the halo of romance. Jacobitism was a ruin in a good state of preservation when Waverley was penned. Thus Scott took the most romantic episode in Scottish history, nay, possibly in the world's history, for the theme of his first novel. He knew the incidents of the rising minutely, frequent visits had made him familiar with the localities-the stage on which his figures moved. He had a mass of information from the very actors themselves. Just and fair-minded by nature, himself connected by descent with each of the great parties which have for centuries, under one name or another, divided Scotland, he was able to sympathise with both sides. The subject suited his own romantic temperament, the story was not the less powerful, the less charming, because the narrative was so often historically true. Whilst recognising that the daring attempt to recover the throne for the Stewarts was wrong and impossible, hopeless from the first and deservedly doomed to failure, one cannot but feel profound admiration at the enthusiasm and devotion of the brave upholders of a lost cause. It is this tender sentiment which inspires and quickens the narrative, makes it something more than an interesting story, which it is all the same. And the portraits, historical and imaginary, are well drawn. Fergus Mac-Ivor is a gallant figure, though he has just a little of the stage-property Highland chief about him, that touch of theatrical unreality which mars so many of Scott's heroic types. In Charles Edward (whom no biographer of Scott would venture

to call the Young Pretender) he gave the world the first of those delineations of princely personages in which he has never been surpassed; and Flora Mac-Ivor has as much real interest as any other of his graceful but somewhat characterless heroines, though the more robust figure of Jeanie Deans has, doubtless, a firmer grip on the imagination. The combination of somewhat longwinded pedantry with real worth and solid capacity which makes up the character of the Baron of Bradwardine, has its own charm, and no one could fail to see that here was a man.

Of the minor characters-to use a term which is really inconsistent with Scott's way of looking at life—the half-witted ballad-singing Davie Gellatley (whose wits, however, proved to be efficient enough upon occasion) bore undoubted resemblance to a rather remarkable living person. This was the confidential servant of William Stewart Rose, an ex-Methodist preacher and bookbinder named Hinves, who was privileged to receive copies of all the books of both Scott and Coleridge, including a specially corrected volume of Christabel. As to the nominal hero we have Lockhart's assurance that he was a reflection of the author's own personality so far as the development of his literary tastes is concerned ; and we may also trace in his political waverings a hint of the conviction of the unimportance of such differences which lay at the bottom of Scott's mind, though he could be warm partisan enough when supporting the head of the family.

The adventures of Stuart of Invernahyle, as given to Scott from his own lips, supplied a foundation for the incidents connected with the mutual protection afforded each other by Waverley and Colonel Talbot (the real person who procured Invernahyle's pardon was a certain Colonel Whitefoord, whose life he had saved at Prestonpans); and the situation of the novelist's father's Jacobite client after Culloden closely resembled that of the old Baron whom Waverley finds hiding from the soldiers in a cave on his own estate. Tully Veolan itself seems to have been a compound of several old houses which Scott had visited; but the silver bear which Waverley was fain to empty was a reminiscence of Lord Strathmore's lion quaffed by the novelist at Glammis Castle.

When Waverley was finished and the courts rose, Scott sailed for a six weeks' voyage round Scotland, from the Forth to the Clyde, with the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners. Several of his personal friends were of the party, which was headed by the celebrated engineer Robert Stevenson, grandfather of the still more celebrated R. L. Stevenson. The former's creation, the Bell Rock Lighthouse, was visited, and Scott inscribed some appreciative lines in the album kept there. The site for the afterwards famous Skerryvore light was also visited. St. Magnus, Kirkwall, and indeed every remarkable place in Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides was touched at, besides the "remarkably wild and mountainous deserts" of Sutherland, Ross, and Dunluce, and the Giant's Causeway and Port Rush on the Irish

coast. Scott was the life of the party, and has left a delightful diary of the tour. In a letter to Southey he describes elaborately the remarkable cave of Uamh Smowe, in the depths of which the voyagers explored a subterranean lake. Not less remarkable was a cavern in the Isle of Eigg strewed with the bones and skulls of the inhabitants, who a century and a half earlier had fled to its recesses to escape the wrath of the Macleods, only to be suffocated there by their inexorable foes. A spice of danger was imparted to the cruise by the appearance of two American privateers, from whom the expedition (prepared to fight in the last extreme) made shift to escape the worse only by their fright. The immediate fruit of the voyage was that the Bruce poem, which had long hung fire, was arranged and got ready for publication by the end of the year; while the materials of The Pirate, the future romance of the northern isles, had also been collected.