Nothing but the beautiful unison of a soul so firm and true with the circumstances and habits appropriate to her class, could have brought out the whole of Jeanie's virtues. Nor do her dangers, or the fame and success she has won, make for a moment that effect upon her which such experiences would make upon the temperament to which a desire of "bettering itself "—in one way as noble a desire as it is possible to entertain -is the chief of human motives. That desire has been the parent of many fine deeds, but its introduction would have desecrated Jeanie. With a higher and nobler art, the poet has perceived that the time which has been so important to her is, after all, but a little interval in her life, and that it has no power to upset the sweet balance of her nature, or whisper into her sound and healthful brain any extravagant wishes. The accidental and temporary pass away, the perennial and natural remain. Jeanie is greater than rank or gain could make her in the noble simplicity of her nature; and the elevation which is the natural reward of virtue in every fairy tale would be puerile and unworthy of her false to every principle of art as well as nature. The pretty Perdita becomes a princess by every rule of romance, even when she is not an anonymous king's daughter to begin with; but Jeanie is above any such primitive reward. She is herself always, which is greater than any princess; and there never was a more exquisite touch than that in which, after her outburst of poetic eloquence to the Queen-eloquence to which she is stimulated by the very climax of love and anxiety -she sinks serene into herself, and contemplates Richmond Hill as "braw rich feeding for the cows," the innocent dumb friends of her simple and unchanging soul. This is the true moderation of genius. An inferior writer would have kept

Jeanie up at the poetic pitch, and lost her in an attempt to prove the elevating influence of high emotion -an elevation which in that case would have been as poor as it was artificial, and devoid of all true insight. Scott knew better; his humble maiden of the fields never ceases for a moment to be the best and highest thing he could make her-herself.

It is with a mingling of surprise and amusement that we read in the letter we have just quoted a contemporary's bold criticism upon the construction of this tale. When we think of it, we entirely agree with what is said, and have felt it all our life, though it has been a kind of irreverence to think of saying it. "The latter part of the fourth volume unavoidably flags," says this bold critic, whom we suppose by the style to be a woman. "After Jeanie is happily settled at Rosneath, we have no more to wish for." This is quite true. The postscriptal part of the story is unnecessary and uncalled for. We do not much care to know what became of Effie, nor have we any interest to speak of in her abandoned child. We are perfectly contented to part with them all, after the hurried farewell between the sisters, and when the minister's wife has been settled in homely dignity upon her beautiful peninsula. We cannot even make out very clearly for what object this postscript is added on. It does not help, but rather mars, the tale; it is huddled up and ended in a hurry, and no necessity of either art or nature demands its introduction. When we thus apply the more ordinary rules of criticism to a book which has taken possession of our very hearts, and twined itself in with our lives, we feel a certain surprise at our own temerity. For here once more Scott is as Shakespeare in our minds. His very errors are dear to us; they

beloved weaknesses of a dear friend -the little clouds that inake his glory supportable, and which we love for his sake-than defects to be criticised in art. We can no more take him to pieces in cold blood than we could

"Peep and botanise Upon our mother's grave' that last profanity of the intellect, denounced as it deserves by another great poet. Far from us be this irreverence. It is well for the national heart, for its faithfulness and its true humanity, that it should possess poets and heroes who are above comment-men who can do no wrong. If history disagrees with our Shakespeare, so much the worse for history; and if our Scott, in a moment of weariness, runs contrary to a law of perfect art, why, then, it is not for such a crowned and reigning soul that laws of art were made. Let us be bound by them, who are as other men-but not our sovereign, of whose gentle errors, whose splendid mistakes and irregularities, we are proud.

While all this magnificent stream was going, Scott was, thank heaven, at the height of happiness, enjoying his harassed, laborious, and anxious life as few men enjoy the most undisturbed existence. He had to toil as none but himself could toil to pay John Ballantyne's terrible notes of hand, which seem to have dropped in at the most unexpected moments, to everybody's consternation-and to float off by his fairy vessels and ships of light the heavy mass of dead and valueless lumber which the brothers had accumulated. And while he was stirred to the last possibility of his powers by this gigantic task, he was himself extravagant, let us allow. He join ed field to field with that strange craving for a little and a little more and which is one of the strongest appetites of human nature when

we

armour and knick-knacks with a very rage of acquisition; and he opened his hospitable doors-the doors of the cottage which was soon to become a castle, the little house of Abbotsford which he could not content himself without turning into a great one-to all the world. This was very imprudent, let us confess, but it was no doubt a very condition of the wonderful inspired existence which he was leading. Without this margin of self-indulgence the word seems harsh-of indulgence in his indulgence in his own innocent tastes and perfectly legitimate pleasures, it is probable that he could not have gone on at all. But for the dead weight of the Ballantynes and their concerns, his landbuying, his rococo, and his hospitality would all have been within his means; but granted the terrible clog, and the superhuman exertions necessary to drag on with it, Scott's personal extravagances were, should be inclined to say, necessary to his very existence. They were to him what fresh air, fresh water, a draught of generous wine, is to a man engaged in some immense athletic feat. They kept him going; the spring of pleasure and exhilaration which they communicated give him vigour for his almost hopeless labour. Here was at least something in which there was satisfaction, something gained out of the wreck and fermentation of time. There are some of us now who know as well as Scott did what ease and consolation there is in now and then a piece of pure personal extravagance, an unjustifiable yet most balmy and sweet indulgence in the midst of hard and thankless labours. It is foolishit makes the burden heavier and the toil harder - but it is life. Economy, self-denial, a few years' seclusion like that of Wordsworth, sharp saving and care of the pennies,

since the pounds must go into the Ballantynes' miserable till, would very likely have set him right. But this, Scott-born, as people say, of the thriftiest race in Christendom -was simply incapable of. Necessary poverty he would have borne as bravely as he did everything else, but voluntary economy was impossible to him. He had to live largely while he strode along under his burden, or to throw it down and die. Heaven help those who have such burdens on their shoulders! They must make out to live and labour somehow, and one way or other they have to pay for the power.

In the year 1817 another immense and novel success was attained in Ivanhoe,' which took England (especially) by storm, and which has since reigned among the very best of Scott's novels. "As a work of art 'Ivanhoe' is perhaps the first of all Scott's efforts in prose or verse," says Mr Lockhart; but this is an opinion in which we cannot agree. It is a model of a romantic and picturesque narrative, perhaps the very finest and most animated sketch of ancient manners ever made, and certainly the noblest in the English language. But Mr Lockhart adds: "I believe no reader who is capable of comprehending the author's Scotch character and Scotch dialogue will ever place even 'Ivanhoe' as a work of genius on the same level with 'Waverley,' 'Guy Mannering,' or the 'Heart of Midlothian.' In this verdict we emphatically concur. The splendour of life and movement in this work, the ease with which it carries the reader back to a period so far beyond the limits of natural interest, and the dazzling reproduction before us of that early age, which, however far it be from absolute correctness, is henceforward our only picture of the days of Coeur-deLion-all this, we repeat, cannot for a moment be put in the balance

with Jeanie Deans. The triumph in one case is as great in degree as in the other, but it is infinitely inferior in kind.

It is impossible in our limited space to enter more fully into either the work or the life of this brilliant middle period. From the time when Constable took upon him the burden of the Ballantynes' responsibilities, until the time when Constable himself began to stagger in his too-impetuous career, the pressure upon Scott diminished. He was led from extravagance to extravagance, all, alas! but too congenial to his mind, by the sanguine impetuosity of the publisher, who was ever ready to advance to him thousands upon thousands of pounds for future novels, without any stipulation, except that they were to be by the author of Waverley.' This time of his splendour and happiness is pathetic beyond description to the reader who knows what is coming, and is aware of the frightful precipice upon the very edge of which this beautiful, liberal, princely household was standing. But he was very happy, thank heaven! All the good that man could get out of life was his. He built himself the castle of his dreams he gathered round him all the curious and beautiful things which he loved-he saw his children grow and thrive about him— he received, with a hospitality without bounds, everybody that was worth receiving in the three kingdoms, and a great many who very little merited that delightful and never-failing welcome. Everything went well with him for these glorious abundant years-or at least appeared to go well. In was in 1825 that the first threatenings of ruin came. One of the commercial crises that overtake, it seems periodically, all great commercial countries, had arrived; and Constable, a most daring, sanguine, and enthusiastic man by nature, had gone further than

man ought to go in a career of business, which reads like a publisher's fairy tale, and had rushed at last far beyond the limits of a well-founded commercial standing into the bog of debt and bills. Sir Walter-for by

this time his title had been conferred upon him-had through the Ballantynes become involved in Constable's affairs in a manner which we have no time to explain, and he was the first, and indeed only, hope of the despairing publisher in his downfall. By this time he had attained his fifty-fourth year, a time when men begin to feel the comfort of slackening their labours. But when this terrible news broke upon him, the first and only thought in Scott's mind was how he could best and most rapidly work off the enormous burden. We cannot enter into Constable's mad schemes, one of which was to borrow £100,000 from the Bank of England on the security of future works by the author of Waverley! All we can do is to keep to the thread of Scott's own actions and feelings. He had already suffered a great deal from serious illness, and had met with one or two discouragements, interruptions in the wonderful course of his literary success. In the saddest pathetic way he forebodes in his journal the possible failure of his powers in the gigantic struggle with ruin and shame which he was about to undertake. Nothing can be more sad than the following passage, written in the first pang of the discovery. As he gazes into the face of probable ruin, his whole life passes before him like a dream.

"For myself, if things go badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp. He must then, faith, be termed the Too-well-known. The feast of fancy will be over with the feeling of independence. He will no longer have the delight of waking in the morning with bright ideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to paper, and count them monthly as the means of

planting such scaurs and purchasing such wastes; replacing dreams of fiction by other prospective visions of walks by 'Fountain-heads and pathless groves, Places which pale Passion loves.'

stantial husbandry; i.c., write history and such concerns. They will not be received with the same enthusiasm: at least, I much doubt, the general knowledge that an author must work for his bread, at him and his productions in the public least for improving his pittance, degrades eye. He falls into the second-rate rank of estimation.

"This cannot be: but I may work sub

'While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad,

The high-mettled racer's a hack on the

road.'

start at it, let them flow. My heart "It is a bitter thought, and if tears clings to the place I have created-there is scarce a tree in it that does not owe its being to me.

"What a life mine has been !-half educated, almost wholly neglected, or left to myself: stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold and a clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years; my heart handsomely pieced again - but the crack will remain to my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch of pride, and nearly winged (unless good news should come): because London chooses to be in an uproar, and in the tumult of bulls and bears, a poor inoffensive lion like myself is pushed to the wall. But what is to be the end of it? God knows; and so ends the catechism.

"Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me that is one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in thinking that my least. I have the satisfaction to recollect fall will make them higher, or seem so at that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest? how live a poor indebted man where I was once the wealthy, the honoured? I was to have gone there on Saturday, in joy and prosperity, to receive my

friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish-but the thoughts of parting I

from these dumb creatures have moved me

more than any of the painful reflections have put down. Poor things! I must get them kind masters! There may be yet those who, loving me, may love my dog, because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees-I hear them whining and seeking for me everywhere. This is nonsense, but it is what they would do, could they know how things may be. An odd thought strikes me-When I die, will the journal of these days be taken out of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, and read with wonder, that the well-seeming Baronet should ever have experienced the risk of such a hitch ?—or will it be found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed son of chivalry has hung up his scutcheon, and where one or two old friends will look

grave, and whisper to each other, 'Poor gentleman'a well-meaning man nobody's enemy but his own'-' thought his parts would never wear out'-'family poorly left-pity he took that foolish title? Who can answer this question? "Poor Will Laidlaw !-poor Tom Purdie !-such news will wring your hearts, and many a poor fellow's besides, to whom my prosperity was daily bread."

Further on he breaks into an apostrophe more touching still, one which makes the heart contract, and the eyes fill with a too-painful sympathy. "Oh Invention, rouse thyself!" he cries; "may man be kind, may God be propitious! The worst is," he adds, with unspeakable and most pathetic humility, "I never quite know when I am right or wrong; and Ballantyne, who does know in some degree, will fear to tell me." This was in January 1826, some few months after the catastrophe had happened. Yet the man who writes thus-with a cry of uncontrollable anguish which some few minds will be able to realise but too deeply, and which must impress all-by sheer work, by the invention which he thus invoked, did, between the close of 1825 and the 10th of June 1827, "diminish his debt to an amount which," Mr Lockhart tells us,

can

not be stated at less than £28,000!" This was produced by the novel of 'Woodstock,' for which £8000 was given; by the Life of Napoleon,' which produced £18,000; and by some portion of the Chronicles of the Canongate.' These immense earnings were accompanied by corresponding economies; and though the courageous cheerfulness of his mind broke down at intervals under the terrible weight, he pursued his course with a passion of zeal and earnestness. In two years he had cleared off £40,000, and in 1830 the debt was reduced to £54,000, considerably less than half the original sum. The creditors, in admiration and gratitude, presented him with his own library, plate, and furniture a gift which he received with simple and profound pleasure. They had before allowed him to continue to live in Abbotsford. But from this time a cold shadow began to creep over the great life. He had one or two fits of paralysis, trifling in themselves, but sadly sufficient to show what was coming. He tells us himself that he has "awkward feelings" which he "cannot bear up against," confusions of head and thought, dreariness, and pain. "A man carries no scales about him to ascertain his own value," he cries once more, with sharp anguish in his tone. The power is gliding away from him unawares. In 1831 he has " a remonstrance from these critical people, Ballantyne and Cadell, against the last volume of Count Robert.' "I suspect their opinion will be found to coincide with that of the public," he adds, with a desperate calmness; "at least it is not very different from my own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready; yet, God knows, I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaking, I think, into the bargain. I have