His appointment as Sheriff of Selkirkshire, with | gallant warriors, and combined a faithful trana salary of £300, together with Mrs. Scott's in- script of the natural beauties of the scenery with come, compensated for his want of practice at a romantic tale, gave an interest to this part of the bar, and enabled him to devote his time to Scotland which otherwise it would probably more congenial pursuits. In their little cottage, never have attained. Thousands and tens of surrounded by a beautiful garden, in which thousands visited Scotland, before unknown to Scott delighted to cultivate shrubs and flowers, the greater part of Europe and America, and with its rustic archway overgrown with ivy, made pilgrimages to the wild and picturesque they spent many summers, receiving the visits Trossachs. Rocks and caves were pointed out of their chosen friends from the neighbouring as the spots described by the poet, pathways city, and wandering at will among some of the identified as those traversed by the chivalrous most romantic scenes of Scotland. Fitz James, and "fair Ellen's isle" almost denuded of flowers and ferns by enthusiastic tourists. It had long been Scott's delight to collect the ancient ballads of his native land as they fell from the lips of his companions and acquaintances, or from persons whom he sought out for that purpose. This harvest, which he gleaned at first without any ulterior object, was storing his imagination with the wealth which, at a future day, he was to pay back a thousand-fold increased. The accumulation of these relics at length led to the conception of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and the success of that work decided his future career. In January, 1802, the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy appeared, which may be said to have first introduced Walter Scott to the world as an author. Three years later the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," which naturally grew from the Minstrelsy, was published, and at once placed its author in the front rank of the poets of the nineteenth century. With its publication began a career of prolific and prosperous authorship unexampled in the annals of literature. In the history of British poetry perhaps nothing has ever equalled the demand for the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." The circulation of the work in Great Britain in its first flush of success was nearly thirty thousand copies. It must be remembered that at that day the reading community was not one-half what it is at present that books were expensive, and that the great mass of readers resorted to public libraries, unable to indulge in so costly a luxury. Next came "Marmion,” which met with the same kind reception that greeted his first poem, and a few years after the "Lady of the Lake" was published. This charming story, the most successful of Scott's poetical works, in which he peopled the glades and islands of the Perthshire lakes with blue eyed maidens and In 1806 Scott was appointed a clerk of the Court of Session, which sat at Edinburgh about six months in the year; it was an honourable position, which he could hold conjointly with the sheriffdom, and was worth about £800 per annum. After the publication of the "Lady of the Lake," a poem unequal in many respects to "Marmion," but far dearer to the great mass of youthful readers, Scott found his popularity as a poet waning. This discovery set him to work upon an old unfinished manuscript which had lain for years in one of his drawers. That MS. was the first volume of Waverley. There is nothing finer in literary biography than the composure, the magnanimity with which the last of the Border minstrels, aware that he was being supplanted in popular favour by Byron, tranquilly turned his genius into another channel, in which he reigned supreme. The novel which had been thrown aside as a failure was completed, the last two volumes being written in twenty-six summer afternoons, and published. Its success was wonderful. There never had been such a sensation book since literature began. Although, except from a few, he preserved a strict incognito, there were not many persons among the literary circles of Edinburgh who did not at once recognize the hand of Walter Scott. Professor Wilson asked if people had forgotten the prose of the Minstrelsy, and the Ettrick Shepherd had his copy rebound and lettered Waverley, by Walter Scott. A month after the publication of Guy Mannering, the second of the series, written in six weeks, he made his second visit to London. "Make up your mind to be stared at only a little less than the Czar of Muscovy or old Blücher," wrote his friend Joanna Baillie, a few days before he left Scotland. Her prophecy was fulfilled-all classes, from the Prince Regent down, vied with each other in doing him honour. During this visit Scott and Byron met for the first time. Half-yearly letters passed between them ever afterwards, although they met but once again. It was while correcting the proof-sheets of the Antiquary, the third of the series, published in 1816, that he first began to equip his chapters with mottoes of his own fabrication. He happened to ask John Ballantyne, his printer, to hunt for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. He did as requested, but failed to find the lines. "Hang it, Johnnie," cried, Scott, "I believe I can make a motto sooner than you can find one." He accordingly did so, and from that time, whenever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph, he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of "old play," or "old ballad." These were, indeed, happy and prosperous days with the great author. His writings were everywhere read with delight, and afforded him an income, with his salary as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, of at least £10,000 per annum. Acre after acre was added to Abbotsford-blooming daughters and stalwart sons spread sunshine under his roof, and princely hospitality was dispensed to all sorts of people. No eminent foreigner visited Scotland without seeing Scott. To those who met him under his own roof it seemed utterly impossible that he could be the author of the Waverley Novels, which appeared at the rate of three or four each year, for he devoted all but a hardly perceptible portion of his mornings to visitors, or to out-of-door occupations with his factotum, Tom Purdie, planting trees, making roads, or removing fences-watching stone upon stone added to his baronial mansion, and now listening to some neighbouring squire's account of parochial plans or grievances, and devoting the whole of his evenings to the entertainment of his guests. But the secret was this: he was an early riser. A private passage conducted him from his chamber to his study, and there, with his door locked, with no other witness but his favourite stag-hound, he wrote page after page of those matchless novels with marvellous rapidity. In In 1820 he was created a baronet, and in the same year his eldest daughter Sophia was married to John Gibson Lockhart, whose name will ever be associated with that of Sir Walter Scott in the pages of that splendid biography, the most enduring monument to both. 1825, the last year of unclouded prosperity, his eldest son was married to the niece of one of his greatest friends, on which occasion the halls of Abbotsford were displayed in all their splendour for the first time and the last. The whole range of apartments were never opened again for the reception of company, but once-on the day of Sir Walter's funeral. The great author was at this time at the climax of earthly happiness, surrounded by his family and "troops of friends," with wealth apparently inexhaustible, and fame unembittered by a single hostile voice. But before the end of the year the terrible blow fell-he was a bankrupt, and his halls no longer resounded with the merriment of the great and gay. Upon the investigation of the affairs of Constable and the Ballantynes, with whom he was connected in the publishing and printing trade, it appeared that they owed the enormous sum of one hundred and seventeen thousand pounds. Had Sir Walter been willing to go into the Gazette, his affairs could have been arranged in a short time by the surrender of the existing copyrights and his life interest in Abbotsford, but he felt that his honour was engaged in seeing every man receive the full amount of his claim. Full of courage and hope he set to work with wonderful industry, almost beyond the power of nature, to pay this enormous debt by the fruits of his pen. The world has never seen a grander spectacle than that old man, nearly threescore years of age, resolutely sitting down to cancel that debt. He went into humble lodgings in Edinburgh, and tasked his brain and body ten, twelve, and even fourteen hours a day, in writing reviews and carrying on his great works. Why did he submit to this terrible toil and drudgery? That his name might go down to posterity untarnished, and that a fantastic mansion and the broad acres that surrounded it might be transmitted to a long line of Scotts of Abbotsford. On September 21, 1832, surrounded by all his children, the noble Scotchman breathed his last. It was a beautiful day, so warm that every window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt round his bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.' He was buried within the picturesque ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, the tomb of his ancestors. Near him rest the remains of several members of his family, and his son-in-law Lockhart, who, with an overworked brain and sorrow-laden heart, sought out Abbotsford-to die, similar causes producing the same disease that brought Sir Walter to the grave. As I stood a few summers since amid those venerable ruins, where the Great Minstrel, who shall strike the lyre no more, is mouldering to dust, I could not but recall his own beautiful lines, which seemed strikingly appropriate to the scene: "Call it not vain; they do not err At the unveiling of Steel's bronze statue of Sir Walter, in the Central Park, New York, November, 1872, the venerable American poet Bryant, in the course of an address delivered on the occasion, remarked: "As I look round on this assembly I perceive few persons of my own age-few who can remember, as I can, the rising and setting of this brilliant luminary of modern literature. I well recollect the time when Scott, then thirty-four years of age, gave to the world his Lay of the Last Minstrel,' the first of his works which awakened the enthusiastic admiration that afterwards attached to all he wrote. In that poem the spirit of the old Scottish balladsthe most beautiful of their class-lived again. In it we had all their fire, their rapid narrative, their unlaboured graces, their pathos, animating a story to which he had given a certain epic breadth and unity. We read with scarcely less delight his poem of Marmion,' and soon afterwards the youths and maidens of our country hung with rapture over his 'Lady of the Lake.' I need not enumerate his other poems, but this I will say of them all, that no other metrical narratives in our language seem to me to possess an equal power of enchaining the attention of the reader, and carrying him on from incident to incident with such entire freedom from weariness. These works, printed in cheap editions, were dispersed all over our country; they found their way to almost every fireside, and their popularity raised up both here and in Great Britain a multitude of imitators now forgotten." From among several passages of acute criticism on Walter Scott as a poet, by the most eminent critics of the past fifty years, our limits prevent us from introducing more than the following vigorous passage from the pen of Professor John Wilson. "Though greatly inferior," he writes, "in many things to his illustrious brethren (Byron and Wordsworth) Scott is, perhaps, after all, the most unequivocally original. We do not know of any model after which the form of his principal poems has been moulded. They bear no resemblance, and, we must allow, are far inferior to the heroic poems of Greece; nor do they, though he has been called the Ariosto of the North, seem to me to resemble, in any way whatever, any of the great poems of modern Italy. He has given a most intensely real representation of the living spirit of the chivalrous age of his country. He has not shrouded the figures or the characters of his heroes in high poetical lustre, so as to dazzle us by resplendent fictitious beings shining through the scenes and events of a half imaginary world. They are as much real men in his poetry as the 'mighty earls' of old are in our histories and annals. The incidents, too, and events are all wonderfully like those of real life; and when we add to this, that all the most interesting and impressive superstitions and fancies of the times are in his poetry incorporated and intertwined with the ordinary tissue of mere human existence, we feel ourselves hurried from this our civilized age back into the troubled bosom of semi-barbarous life, and made keen partakers in all its impassioned and poetical eredulities. "His poems are historical narrations, true in all things to the spirit of history, but everywhere overspread with those bright and breathing colours which only genius can be- | but magnificent ages, and connects us, in the midst of philosophy, science, and refinement. stow on reality: and when it is remembered War, A BRIDAL IN BRANKSOME. Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, This is my own, my native land! From wandering on a foreign strand! O Caledonia! stern and wild, Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Sole friends thy woods and streams were left; By Yarrow's stream still let me stray, 1 Byron preferred this poem to any other of Scott's metrical romances.- ED. Though there, forgotten and alone, Not scorn'd like me! to Branksome hall They sound the pipe, they strike the string, Me lists not at this tide declare The splendour of the spousal rite, Both maid and matron, squire and knight: Some bards have sung, the Ladye high O'er sprites in planetary hour; Yet scarce I praise their venturous part, Who tamper with such dangerous art. But this for faithful truth, I say, The Ladye by the altar stood, Of sable velvet her array, And on her head a crimson hood, With pearls embroidered and entwined, Guarded with gold, with ermine lined; A merlin sat upon her wrist, Held by a leash of silken twist. The spousal rites were ended soon, Above, beneath, without, within! Rung trumpet, shalm, and psaltery; The hooded hawks, high perch'd on beam, THE DEATH OF MARMION.1 When, doffed his casque, he felt free air, Marmion is generally conceded to be the most powerful of all Scott's poems. "No one," says Allan Cunningham, since the days of Homer, has sung with such an impetuous and burning breath the muster, the march, the onset, and all the fiery vicissitudes of battle."—ED. Redeem my pennon-charge again! Tunstall lies dead upon the field; Let Stanley charge with spur of fire- Clare drew her from the sight away O, woman! in our hours of ease, By the light quivering aspen made; | A ministering angel thou! Scarce were the piteous accents said, To the nigh streamlet ran: Sees but the dying man. She stoop'd her by the runnel's side, But in abhorrence backward drew; For, oozing from the mountain side, Where raged the war, a dark red tide Was curdling in the streamlet blue. Where shall she turn?-behold her mark A little fountain-cell, Where water, clear as diamond spark, In a stone basin fell. Above, some half-worn letters say, DRINK. WEARY. PILGRIM. DRINK. AND. PRAY. FOR. THE. KIND. SOUL. OF. SYBIL. GREY. WHO. BUILT. THIS. CROSS. AND. WELL. She filled the helm, and back she hied, A monk supporting Marmion's head; |