The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, Volumes I & II.

[390] An amusing illustration of the difficulty of seeing ourselves as others see us may be found written twenty-five years later by Nathaniel Hawthorne, where the author of the Scarlet Letter expresses in like manner his surprise at the want of refinement in Englishmen:—"I had been struck by the very rough aspect of these John Bulls in their morning garb, their coarse frock-coats, grey hats, check trousers, and stout shoes; at dinner-table it was not at first easy to recognise the same individuals.... But after a while, 'you see the same rough figure through all the finery, and become sensible that John Bull cannot make himself fine, whatever he may put on. He is a rough animal, and his female is well adapted to him.'"—Hawthorne and His Wife, vol. ii. p. 70. 2 vols. 8vo. Cambridge, U.S.A., 1884.

[391] Architects style it Elizabethan, but Sir Walter's term is not inappropriate.

[392] An amanuensis who was employed by Scott at this time.

[393] British Hotel, 70 Queen St.

[394] See Winter's Tale, Act IV. Sc. 2.

[395] See ante, January 15, 1828, p. 111. Mr. Mackenzie of Portmore died in September 1830, when Sir Walter wrote Mr. Skene the following letter:—

"DEAR SKENE,—I observe from the papers that our invaluable friend is no more. I have reason to think, that as I surmised when I saw him last, the interval has been a melancholy one, at least to those who had to watch the progress. I never expected to see his kind face more, after I took leave of him in Charlotte Square; yet the certainty that such must be the case is still a painful shock, as I can never hope again to meet, during the remaining span of my own life, a friend in whom high talents for the business of life were more happily mingled with all those affections which form the dearest part of human intercourse. In that respect I believe his like hardly is to be found. I hope Mrs. Skene and you will make my assurance of deep sympathy, of which they know it is expressed by a friend of poor Colin of fifty years' standing.

"I hope my young friend, his son, will keep his father's example before his eyes. His best friend cannot wish him a better model.

"I am just setting off to the West for a long-promised tour of a week. I shall be at Abbotsford after Monday, 27th current, and I hope Mrs. Skene and you, with some of our young friends, will do us the pleasure to come here for a few days. We see how separations may happen among friends, and should not neglect the opportunity of being together while we can. Besides, entre nous, it is time to think what is to be done about the Society, as the time of my retirement draws nigh, and I am determined, at whatever loss, not to drag out the last sands of my life in that sand-cart of a place, the Parliament House. I think it hurt poor Colin. This is, however, subject for future consideration, as I have not breathed a syllable about resigning the Chair to any one, but it must soon follow as a matter of course.^[C]

"Should you think of writing to let me know how the distressed family are, you may direct, during the beginning of next week, to Drumlanrig, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire.

"My kind love attends my dear Mrs. Skene, girls, boys, and all the family, and I am, always yours,

"WALTER SCOTT.

"ABBOTSFORD, 18th September [1830]."

[C] Sir Walter had been President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for some years; his resignation was not accepted, and he retained the office until he died.

[396] Much Ado about Nothing, Act III. Sc. 5.

[397] 1 King Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1.

[398] The biography here spoken of was not published.

[399] Sir Walter had seats placed at suitable distances between the house and Chiefswood.

[400] Titus Andronicus, Act IV. Sc. 2.

[401] For an account of these "miracles" see Peace in Believing—a memoir of Isabella Campbell of Fernicarry. Roseneath, 8vo, 1829.

[402] Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J.G. Lockhart, Esq., was published before the end of the year in Murray's Family Library.

[403] School for Scandal.

[404] Sir Walter had written to Morritt on his retirement from the Court of Session, and his old friend responded in the following cordial letter:—

"November, 1830.

"MY DEAR SCOTT,—... I am sorry to read what you tell me of your lameness, but legs are not so obedient to many of us at our age as they were twenty years ago, non immunes ab illis malis sumus, as the learned Partridge and Lilly's Grammar tells us. I find mine swell, and am forced to bandage, and should not exert them with impunity in walking as I used to do, either in long walks or in rough ground. I am glad, however, you have escaped from the Court of Session, even at the risk of sometimes feeling the want you allude to of winter society. You think you shall tire of solitude in these months: and in spite of books and the love of them, I have discovered by experience the possibility of such a feeling; but can we not in some degree remedy this? Why should we both be within two days' march of each other and not sometimes together, as of old? How I have enjoyed in your house the summum bonum of Sir Wm. Temple's philosophy, 'something which is not Home and yet with the liberty of Home, which is not Solitude, and yet hath the ease of Solitude, and which is only found in the house of an old friend.' Our summer months are well provided with summer friends. You have plenty and to spare of sightseers, Lions, and their hunters, and I have travellers, moor-shooters, etc., in equal abundance, but now when the country is abandoned, and Walter is leaving you, how I wish you would bring dear Anne and partake for a while our little circle here—we stir not till Christmas—if before that time such a pleasure could be attainable. Well, then, for auld lang syne, will you not, now that the Session has no claim on you, combine our forces against the possibility of ennui. If you will do this, I will positively, and in good faith, hold myself in readiness to do as much by you in the next November, and in every alternate November, nor shall the month ever pass without bringing us together. Do not tell me, as Wm. Rose would not fail to do if I gave him so good an opportunity, that my proposal would be a greater bore than the solitude it destroyed. It shall be no such thing, but only the trouble of a journey. I feel too, as I grow older, the vis inertiæ, and fancy that locomotion is more difficult, but let us abjure the doctrine, for it baulks much pleasure. Pray—pray as the children say—come to us, think of it first as not impossible, then weigh fairly the objections, and if they resolve themselves into mere aversion to change, overcome them by an assurance that the very change will give value to the resumption of your home avocations. If I plead thus strongly, perhaps it is because I feel the advantage to myself. Time has made gaps in the list of old friends as in yours; young ones, though very cheering and useful, are not, and cannot be, the same. I enjoy them too when present, but in absence I regret the others. What remains but to make the most of those we have still left when both body and mind permit us [to enjoy] them. I have books; also a room that shall [be your own], and a [pony] off which I can shoot, which I will engage shall neither tumble himself or allow you to tumble in any excursion on which you may venture. Dear Anne will find and make my womenkind as happy as you will make me, and we have only to beg you to stay long and be most cordially welcome. ... Adieu, dear Scott. I fear you will not come for all I can say. I could almost lose a tooth or a finger (if it were necessary) to find myself mistaken. Come, and come soon; stay long; be assured of welcome.

"All unite in this and in love to you and Anne, with your assured friend,

J.B. MORRITT."

[405] See Life, vol. x. pp. 10-25.

[406]

"From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show."
—Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.

[407] Mr. Cadell and Mr. Ballantyne had arrived at Abbotsford on the 18th, bringing with them the good news from Edinburgh of the payment of the second dividend, and of the handsome conduct of the creditors. There had been a painful discussion between them and Sir Walter during the early part of the winter on Count Robert of Paris, particulars of which are given in the Life (vol. x. pp. 6, 10-17, 21-23), but they found their host much better than they had ventured to anticipate, and he made the gift of his library the chief subject of conversation during the evening. Next morning Mr. Ballantyne was asked to read aloud a political essay on Reform—intended to be a Fourth Epistle of Malachi. After careful consideration, the critical arbiters concurred in condemning the production, but suggested a compromise. His friends left him on the 21st, and the essay, though put in type, was never published. Proof and MS. were finally consigned to the flames!—Life, vol. x. pp. 21-25.

[408] An account of this incident is given by an eye-witness, Mr. Peter Rodger, Procurator-Fiscal, who says: "The prisoner, thinking it a good chance of escaping, made a movement in direction of the door. This Sir Walter detected in time to descend from the Bench and place himself in the desperate man's path. 'Never!' said he; 'if you do, it will be over the body of an old man.' Whereupon the other officials of the Court came to the Sheriff's assistance and the prisoner was secured."—Craig-Brown's Selkirkshire, vol. ii. p. 141.

[409] Count Robert of Paris.

[411] John Swanston, a forester at Abbotsford, who did all he could to replace Tom Purdie.—Life, vol. x. p. 66.

[412] Dr. Ferguson, Sir Adam's father, died in 1816.—See Misc. Prose Works, vol. xix. pp. 331-33.

[413] See Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 1.

[414] Æneid v. 194-7: thus rendered in English by Professor Conington:—

'Tis not the palm that Mnestheus seeks:
No hope of Victory fires his cheeks:
Yet, O that thought!—but conquer they
To whom great Neptune wills the day:
Not to be last make that your aim,
And triumph by averting shame.

[415] King Richard the Third, Act IV. Sc. 2.

[416] Mr. G.P.R. James, author of Richelieu, etc. He afterwards took Maxpopple for the season.

[417] Mr. Skene tells us that when No. 39 Castle Street was "displenished" in 1826, Scott sent him the full-length portrait of himself by Raeburn, now at Abbotsford, saying that he did not hesitate to claim his protection for the picture, which was threatened to be paraded under the hammer of the auctioneer, and he felt that his interposition to turn aside that buffet might admit of being justified. "As a piece of successful art, many might fancy the acquisition, but for the sake of the original he knew no refuge where it was likely to find a truer welcome. The picture accordingly remained many years in my possession, but when his health had begun to break, and the plan of his going abroad was proposed, I thought it would be proper to return the picture, for which purpose I had a most successful copy made of it, an absolute facsimile, for when the two were placed beside each, other it was almost impossible to determine which was the original and which the copy."—Reminiscences. Thus forestalling the wish expressed in the affecting letter now given, which belongs to this day. See ante, vol. i. p. 136 n.

"MY DEAR SKENE,—I have had no very pleasant news to send you, as I know it will give Mrs. Skene and you pain to know that I am suffering under a hundred little ailments which have greatly encroached upon the custom of the season which I used to take. On this I could say much, but it is better to leave alone what must be said with painful feeling, and you would be vexed with reading.

"One thing I will put to rights with all others respecting my little personal affairs. I am putting [in order] this house with what it contains, and as Walter will probably be anxious to have a memorial of my better days, I intend to beg you and my dear Mrs. Skene ... to have it [the picture] copied by such an artist as you should approve of, to supply the blank which must then be made on your hospitable walls with the shadow of a shade. If the opportunity should occur of copying the picture to your mind, I will be happy to have the copy as soon as possible. You must not think that I am nervous or foolishly apprehensive that I take these precautions. They are necessary and right, and if one puts off too long, we sometimes are unfit for the task when we desire to take it up....

"When the weather becomes milder, I hope Mrs. Skene and you, and some of the children, will come out to brighten the chain of friendship with your truly faithful,

WALTER SCOTT.

"ABBOTSFORD, 16 January 1831."

[418] Sir W. alludes to Mrs. Piozzi's Tale of The Three Warnings.—J.G.L.

[419] Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.

[420] Eccles. xii. 3.

[421] Crabbe's Borough, Letter xiii.—J.G.L.

[423] The deer-hound Bran which was presented by Macpherson of Cluny; Nimrod was Glengarry's gift.—See letter to Miss Edgeworth, printed in Life, vol. ix. p. 345.

[424] I Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 3.

[425] No. 1 Castle Street.

[426] "His host perceived that he was unfit for any company but the quietest, and had sometimes one old friend, Mr. Thomson, Mr. Clerk, or Mr. Skene to dinner, but no more. He seemed glad to see them, but they all observed him with pain. He never took the lead in conversation, and often remained altogether silent. In the mornings he wrote usually for several hours at Count Robert; and Mr. Cadell remembers in particular, that on Ballantyne's reminding him that a motto was wanted for one of the chapters already finished, he looked out for a moment at the gloomy weather, and penned these lines—

'The storm increases—'tis no sunny shower,
Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April,
Or such as parched summer cools his lips with.
Heaven's windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps
Call in hoarse greeting one upon another;
On comes the flood in all its foaming horrors,
And where's the dyke shall stop it?'"—The Deluge—a Poem.

—Life, vol. x. p. 37.

[427] A skilful mechanist, who, by a clever piece of handiwork, gave Sir Walter great relief, but only for a brief period.—Life, vol. x, p. 38.

[428] Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

[429] Lear, Act III. Sc. 4.

[430] Colman the elder.

[431] The British Herald, by Thomas Robson, 3 vols. 4to, 1830. Mr. Lockhart says this review never was published.

[432] Mr. Andrew Lang, Sheriff and Commissary Clerk, and Clerk of Peace, for Selkirkshire, grandfather of Mr. Andrew Lang, the accomplished poet and man of letters of the present time. The tact and ability of the grandfather are noticed by Sir Walter in his letter to Lord Montagu of Oct. 3, 1819, describing Prince Leopold at Selkirk.—Life, vol. vi. p. 131.

[433] This proposal, resisted successfully in 1832, has since been put in force so far as Parliament is concerned.

[434] I Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 3.

[435] Taming of the Shrew, Introd.

[436] As this is the last reference to the Ettrick Shepherd in the Journal, it may be noted that Sir Walter, as late as March 23d, 1832, was still desirous to promote Hogg's welfare. In writing from Naples he says, in reference to the Shepherd's social success in London, "I am glad Hogg has succeeded so well. I hope he will make hay while the sun shines; but he must be aware that the Lion of this season always becomes the Boar of the next.... I will subscribe the proper sum, i.e. what you think right, for Hogg, by all means; and I pray God, keep farms and other absurd temptations likely to beset him out of his way. He has another chance for comfort if he will use common sense with his very considerable genius."

[437] This expression of irritation can easily be understood after reading the passages referred to in the twenty-ninth volume of Blackwood's Magazine, pp. 30-35, and 535-544. Readers of this Journal have seen what uphill work these "Letters on Demonology" were to the author, but the unsparing criticism of Christopher North must have appeared to the author as a very unfriendly act, more especially, he thought, if the critic really knew the conditions under which the book had been written.

[438] Mr. Lockhart says:—"He proposed one of the Tory resolutions in a speech of some length, but delivered in a tone so low, and with such hesitation in utterance, that only a few detached passages were intelligible to the bulk of the audience."—See Life, vol. x. pp. 46-8.

[439] The passing of the great Reform Bill in the House of Commons on the 22d March.

[440] His friend Richardson, who was a Whig, writes him from London on February 14:—"What a singular feeling it was to me to find Brougham Lord Chancellor, and Jeffrey and Cockburn in their present stations! I am afraid that the spirit of reform goes at present beyond the limits to which even the Government will go—and but for the large stock of good sense and feeling which I think yet pervades the country, I should tremble for the future."

[441] Merry Wives, Act I. Sc. 1.

[442] Stulko or Stulk (? Stocaire, in Irish), a word formerly in common use among the Irish, signifying an idle, lazy, good-for-nothing fellow.

[443] Mary Campbell, Lady Ruthven, for whom the picture was painted, was not only the friend of Scott, but she held relations more or less close with nearly every one famous in Art and Literature during the greater part of the nineteenth century. No mean artist herself, and though, perhaps, not a clever letter-writer, she had among her correspondents some of the most brilliant men of her day. She survived all her early friends, but had the gift of being attractive to the young, and for three generations was the delight of their children and grandchildren. Those who were privileged to share in the refined hospitality of Winton, never forgot either the picturesque old house (the supposed Ravenswood Castle of the Bride of Lammermoor), or its venerable mistress as she sat of an evening in her unique drawing-room, the walls of which were adorned with pictures of Grecian temple and landscape, her own handiwork in days long gone by when she was styled by her friends Queen of Athens. Her conversation, after she was ninety, was fresh and vigorous; and, despite blindness and imperfect hearing, she kept herself well acquainted with the affairs of the day. The last great speech in Parliament, or the newest bon mot, were equally acceptable and equally relished. Her sense of humour and fun made her, at times, forget her own sufferings, and her splendid memory enabled her to while away many a sleepless hour by repeating long passages from the Bible or Milton. The former she had so much in her heart that it was scarcely possible to believe she was not reading from the Book. Above all was her truly divine gift of charity, the practical application of which, in her every-day life, was only bounded by her means.

It was said of her by one who knew her well—

"She lived to a great age, dispensing kindness and benevolence to the last, and cheered in the sore infirmities of her later years by the love of friends of all ranks, and all parties of all ages.
"The Living Lamp of Lothian, which from Winton, has so long shed its beneficent lustre, has been extinguished, but not so will be lost the memory of the gifted lady, for by not a few will still be cherished the recollection of her noble nature, and of her Christian life."

Lady Ruthven prized the picture referred to. She would not, as Sir Francis Grant relates,^[D] permit him to touch the canvas after it left the Abbotsford studio; and it remained a cherished possession which she took pride in showing to appreciative guests, pointing out the details of face and form which she still saw with that inner eye, which time had not darkened.

It is now in the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland—bequeathed to the nation with other pictures, as well as the magnificent collection of Greek archaeological objects gathered by herself and Lord Ruthven in their early married life. She was born in 1789, and died in 1885.

[444] Robert Dundas of Arniston, Esq., the worthy representative of an illustrious lineage, died at his paternal seat in June 1838.—J.G.L. See Arniston Memoirs—Three Centuries of a Scottish House, 1571-1838. Edin. 8vo, 1887.

[D] See long and interesting letter of June 5, 1872, from Sir Francis to Sir W.S. Maxwell.—Laing's Catalogue, pp. 72-81.

[445] Henry Liddell, second Baron Ravensworth, author of a translation of the Odes of Horace, a volume of Latin Poems, etc.

[446] In a letter from Sir Walter to his son-in-law, of April 11th, he says:—

"When you can take an hour to think of this, I will be glad to hear from you.... I am in possession of five or six manuscripts, copies, or large extracts, taken under my own eyes. Croker thinks, and I am of his opinion, that if there was room for a personal narrative of the character, it would answer admirably."

[447] This gentleman, a brother to the Laird of Raeburn, had made some fortune in the East Indies, and bestowed the name of Ravenswood on a villa which he built near Melrose. He died in 1831.—J.G.L.

[448] The Manuscripts were sold by auction in London on August 19th, 1831, and the prices realised fell far short of what might have been expected, e.g. (1) Monastery, £18; (2) Guy Mannering, £27, 10s.; (3) Old Mortality, £33; (4) Antiquary, £42; (5) Rob Roy, £50; (6) Peveril of the Peak, £42; (7) Waverley, £18; (8) Abbot, £14; (9) Ivanhoe, £12; (10) Pirate, £12; (11) Nigel, £16, 16s.; (12) Kenilworth, £17; (13) Bride of Lammermoor, £14, 14s.—Total £317.—See David Laing's Catalogue, pp. 99-108, for an account of the dispersion and sales of the original MSS., prose and poetry.

[449] Miss J. Erskine, a daughter of Lord Kinnedder's. She died in 1838.—J.G.L.

[450] The Rev. N. Paterson, author of The Manse Garden; afterwards minister of St. Andrew's, Glasgow. He died in 1871. Mr. Paterson was a grandson of Robert Paterson, "Old Mortality," and brother of the Rev. Walter Paterson, minister of Kirkurd, author of the Legend of Iona—a poem written in imitation of the style of Scott, and in which he recognises his obligations to Sir Walter in the following terms:—"From him I derived courage to persevere in an undertaking on which I had often reflected with terror and distrust."—Legend, notes, p. 305.

[451] Mr. John Smith of Darnick, the builder of Abbotsford, and architect of these bridges.—J.G.L.

[452] This gentleman died in Edinburgh on the 4th February 1838.—J.G.L.

[453] The late Captain Watson, R.N., was distantly related to Sir Walter's mother. His son, Sir John Watson Gordon, rose to great eminence as a painter; and his portraits of Scott and Hogg rank among his best pieces. He became President of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1850, died in 1864, leaving funds to endow a Chair of Fine Arts in the Edinburgh University.

[454] Mr. W.F. Skene, Historiographer Royal for Scotland, and son of Scott's dear friend, has been good enough to give me his recollections of these days:—

"On referring to my Diary for the year 1831 I find the following entry: 'This Spring, on 31st April, I went with my father to Abbotsford and left on Sir Walter Scott being taken ill.' The date here given for my visit does not correspond with that in Sir Walter's Diary, but, as there are only thirty days in April it has evidently been written by mistake for the 13th. I had just attained my twenty-first year, and as such a visit at that early age was a great event in my life, I retain a very distinct recollection of the main features of it. I recollect that Lord Meadowbank and his eldest son Alan came at the same time, and the dinner party, at which Mr. Pringle of the Haining and his brother were present. The day after our arrival Sir Walter asked me to drive with him. We went in his open carriage to the Yarrow, where we got out, and Sir Walter, leaning on my arm, walked up the side of the river, pouring forth a continuous stream of anecdotes, traditions, and scraps of ballads. I was in the seventh heaven of delight, and thought I had never spent such a day. On Sunday Sir Walter did not come down to breakfast, but sent a message to say that he had caught cold and had taken some medicine for it the night before, which had made him ill, and would remain in bed. When we sat at either lunch or dinner, I do not recollect which, Sir Walter walked into the room and sat down near the table, but ate nothing. He seemed in a dazed state, and took no notice of any one, but after a few minutes' silence, during which his daughter Anne, who was at table, and was watching him with some anxiety, motioned to us to take no notice, he began in a quiet voice to tell us a story of a pauper lunatic, who, fancying he was a rich man, and was entertaining all sorts of high persons to the most splendid banquets, communicated to his doctor in confidence that there was one thing that troubled him much, and which he could not account for, and that was that all these exquisite dishes seemed to him to taste of oatmeal porridge. Sir Walter told this with much humour, and after a few minutes' silence began again, and told the same story over a second time, and then again a third time.^[E] His daughter, who was watching him with increasing anxiety, then motioned to us to rise from table, and persuaded her father to return to his bedroom. Next day the doctor, who had been sent for, told us that he was seriously ill, and advised that his guests should leave at once, so that the house might be kept quiet and his daughter devote herself entirely to the care of her father. We accordingly left at once, and I never saw Sir Walter again. I still, however, retain a memorial of my visit. I had fallen into indifferent health in the previous year, and been recommended Highland air. By Sir Walter's advice I was sent to live with a friend of his, the Reverend Doctor Macintosh Mackay, then minister of Laggan, in the Inverness-shire Highlands, and had passed my time learning from him the Gaelic language. This excited in me a taste for Celtic Antiquities, and finding in Sir Walter's Library a copy of O'Connor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores veteres, I sat up one night transcribing from it the Annals of Tighernac. This transcript is still in my library.—WILLIAM F. SKENE.

"27 INVERLEITH ROW,
Sept. 1890."

[E] An echo of one of his own singular illustrations (see Letters on Demonology) of the occasional collision between a disturbed imagination and the organs of sense.

[455] Æneid II. 62.

[456] Falconer's Shipwreck, p. 162—"The Storm." 12mo ed. London, Albion Press, 1810.

[457] Scotch Metrical Version of the 90th Psalm.

[458] On the 18th October Sir Walter sent Mr. Burn the following inscription for the monument he had commissioned, and which now stands in the churchyard of Irongray:—

"This stone was erected by the Author of Waverley to the memory of Helen Walker, who died in the year of God 1791. This humble individual practised in real life the virtues with which fiction has invested the imaginary character of Jeanie Deans; refusing the slightest departure from veracity, even to save the life of a sister, she nevertheless showed her kindness and fortitude, in rescuing her from the severity of the law, at the expense of personal exertions, which the time rendered as difficult as the motive was laudable. Respect the grave of Poverty when combined with the love of Truth and dear affection."

It is well known that on the publication of Old Mortality many people were offended by what was considered a caricature of the Covenanters, and that Dr. M'Crie, the biographer of Knox, wrote a series of papers in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, which Scott affected to despise, and said he would not read. He not only was obliged to read the articles, but found it necessary to inspire or write an elaborate defence of the truth of his own picture of the Covenanters in the Number for January 1817 of the Quarterly Review.

In June 1818, however, he made ample amends, and won the hearts of all classes of his countrymen by his beautiful pictures of national character in the Heart of Midlothian.

It is worth noticing also that ten years later, viz., in December 1828, his friend Richardson having written that in the Tales of a Grandfather "You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in Old Mortality. His character is inconceivable to me: the atrocity of his murder of those peasants, as undauntedly devoted to their own good cause as himself to his, his personal (almost hangman-like) superintendence of their executions, are wholly irreconcilable with a chivalrous spirit, which, however scornful of the lowly, could never, in my mind, be cruel," Scott, in reply, gave his matured opinion in the following words:—

"As to Covenanters and Malignants, they were both a set of cruel and bloody bigots, and had, notwithstanding, those virtues with which bigotry is sometimes allied. Their characters were of a kind much more picturesque than beautiful; neither had the least idea either of toleration or humanity, so that it happens that, so far as they can be distinguished from each other, one is tempted to hate most the party which chances to be uppermost for the time."