an invading band at the window of the chamber where Ivanhoe lies wounded. But the insight into the cruelty and hardness of the social order he paints so brilliantly seems to us to indicate a wonderful width and range of sympathy. This is what we mean by his setting the chivalric ideal on a modern background. When Shakespeare paints a Jew, he borrows the spirit of his persecutors, and his Jewess is held up to admiration for robbing her father and deserting his faith. Scott lets the Jewess shine forth in spotless purity against her Christian persecutors, and gives, in his finest female creation,* a voice to a race downtrodden for ages. A far deeper poet than Scott has, in his song of the rabbi Ben-Ezra, given the Jew an utterance which seems to us the translation into the deeper genius of a rich and pregnant thinker of the feeling expressed in Rebecca's demeanor in the lists of Templestowe; and we close the allusion to her with the lines,

Thou- if thou wast He-who at midwatch

came

By the starlight naming a dubious name!
Thou art the judge. We are bruisèd thus
But the judgment over, join sides with us!
We withstood Christ then, be mindful how
At least we withstand Barabbas now!
Was our outrage sore? but the worst we
spared,

not, like Shakespeare's, impartial. It has certain lacunæ, it has also certain definite preferences. He cannot paint those of his own class effectively; he must look up, or look down, to be at his best; and though, even on the level of commonplace genteel life, it appears to us that his pictures are redeemed from mediocrity by occasional reflections of his own magnanimous character, still no doubt it is in the extremes of social life that he is at his best. What we would now dwell upon is, that of these extremes the most effective is the lowest. The Scotch peasant owes his literary existence to Scott's portrait. We must allow that it is the Scotch peasant under a certain rather artificial aspectit is the feudal attitude of the poor which strongly interests him. What Caleb Balderstone would be, apart from his paltry master, we do not gain much help from his creator to imagine. But to speak of this as a limitation of Scott's sympathies is simply to say that he should not have allowed them to be captivated by a feudal ideal. It would be almost as unfair to say that Shakespeare shows a narrowness of sympathy because, while he has painted many men in other attitudes than in relation to women, he has never painted any woman except in relation to a man. The relation of contrast will always, we believe, remain the most poetic and the most picturesque in which any character can be represented. And perhaps, when the peculiar sense of bond between the lowly Scott's sympathy with what is common born and the highly born, which Scott constitutes at once a striking characteris-delighted to paint, has faded into remotetic of his genius and the most lovable ness, it will be more distinctly seen than element in his character. "Vulgar, my it is now that some excellences can only dear," he once remonstrated with his be thus developed. We do not, indeed, daughter Anne, who had applied the epi- allow that Scott has no power of drawing thet to something which did not deserve peasant life except in this attitude: the it, "do you know the meaning of vulgar? picture of Jeanie Deans is enough to It means only common, and when you save his advocate from such a concession; have lived to my years you will thank God but though a most striking exception, we that nothing worth caring most for is un- should still call this noble picture, regarded common." The remark is one of the very from this point, an exception to the ordifew which remain as an adequate expres-nary course of his dramatic sympathy. sion of the man. It came from the core He is in this respect the complement of of his hearty, simple, genial nature; it Wordsworth, and we own that, while expressed that width of unfastidious sym- Scott's ideal is no doubt the much less pathy which, while it leaves its stamp on original conception of peasant life, we do every work of his genius, is even more felt not find it the least interesting of the two. in the records which put the reader, as much as mere records can do, in contact with himself. Width of sympathy is, in fact, in the moral world what dramatic power is in the intellectual. Scott's range is

To have called these Christians had we dared?

Let defiance to them pay mistrust of thee,
And Rome make amends for Calvary !

His pictures of royalty, on the other hand, seem to us to bear in a peculiar manner the stamp of his swift, simple, outward genius. There is no elaborate pomp of description, yet the reader is always made to confront in imagination some stately and dignified presence; we feel that something in Scott's nature readily

vibrated to the summons that demandedness on all Scott's poetry. It is difficult the respect of a subject, yet retaining his to find anything in the circumstances of manliness and balance at the same time. his life, at the time his poetry was written, No doubt he had in this respect eminently to explain this sense of insecurity and the défaut de sa qualité. His attitude change; at least it is only in a single case towards George IV. is not the most pleas- that we can trace any actual cause for it; ing part of his career, and we are glad to and though this one deep and enduring think of that tumbler in his coat pocket, feeling seems to us to have been not sufhonored by having touched the lips of that ficiently allowed for in any review of his illustrious monarch, which his loyal subject life, yet a healthy nature does not allow begged, pocketed, forgot, and sat down any single feeling, however deep and upon, startling the poet Crabbe by his strong, to color its whole being. Scott's sudden rebound from his uneasy seat. early love was not, however, obliterated We should gladly have hung up what re- by any adequate domestic companionship, mained of the fragile treasure by the side and some pathetic verses (pathetic at of Murray of Broughton's saucer, the least in their circumstances), in the feeble cup belonging to which was destroyed in handwriting of his last years, but not his a nobler manner by Scott's father, when own composition, and known to have been it had through Mrs. Scott's officiousness much admired by this young lady, remained conveyed a cup of tea to the renegade, after his death associated with her initials, -as a vestige of two different kinds of to witness to the undying love which seems loyalty. And well would the broken glass, to have been the source of a wonderfully at all events, have symbolized the brittle enduring pain, but perhaps also of that nature of all that was associated with deeper tone never wanting to his poetry, Scott's intercourse with George IV. But and giving it, to our mind, its special we have said enough of his weaknesses. charm. It often happens, we believe, that a nature of much sensibility associates with some painful memory many feelings which are not caused by it, and unawares lets some event become a symbol of temptations and sorrows with which it has no

No creation of his art interests us quite so much as the revelations of himself with which that art supplies us. Even his description of nature the most valuable part of his poetry, and that in which he is eminently a representative of the move-direct connection. We could almost fancy ment we have connected with his name seems to us most interesting when it blends itself with what Mr. Ruskin so happily calls his "far away Æolian note," -a touch of sentiment always simple, sometimes what might be called commonplace, but commonplace only because the feelings represented are so common, not because the allusion is borrowed. The feeling is always slight and expressed as shortly as possible, yet it appears to us to set his bright objective pictures on a wonderfully effective background of pensive coloring, while it often contains what seems the reflection of his own conscience on his genius. As for instance:

that the fair young girl whom he remem-
bered so tenderly in his old age (and to
whom his thoughts seem to have recurred
after his wife's death almost with a sense
of freedom) symbolized for him higher,
purer aims, and that he regretted in her
some ideal to which his whole life had
been faithless. It is in the poem where
he attempted to paint her † that we also
find many of the lines which seem dictated
by the spirit of self-reproach. We could
fancy that the spirit of warning and guid
ance which most of us can trace in some
form or other, in looking back at our lives,
sometimes threw the shadow of his own
temptations on the canvas that glowed
with his creative power. It might have
been his guardian angel who bid him write,
O teach him, while your lessons last,
To judge the present by the past;
Remind him of each wish pursued,
How rich it glow'd with promised good;

* They were addressed "To Time," and believed to have been the composition of the object of his affection. They are a specimen of the slight conventional style of eighty years ago, and, though not actually written by the person to whom they were attributed, are an evidence of a certain power, both of mind and character, in their possible author.

† We suppose that she must have been the lady "long since dead" whom he described as the original of the colorless Matilda.

Remind him of each wish enjoy'd, anticipations of the discoveries of Speke, How soon his hopes possession cloy'd! Burton, and Livingstone in central Africa. Tell him we play unequal game Here is a man -Captain Singleton, the Whene'er we shoot by Fancy's aim ! name is, there is no date on the book And, ere he strip him for her race, who professes to have travelled across Show the conditions of the chase. Africa from Zanzibar to the Gold Coast, Two sisters by the goal are set, Cold Disappointment and Regret ; and who tells you what he and his party One disenchants the winner's eyes, saw on each day's march, what wild beasts And strips of all its worth the prize. they met, how they were treated by the While one augments its gaudy show natives, where they halted, and how far More to enhance the loser's woe. they walked at a stretch. They had nothThe victor sees his fairy gold ing but a chart and a pocket compass, and Transform'd, when won, to drossy mould, yet they crossed the whole continent. But But still the vanquish'd mourns his loss, the extraordinary part of it is that he came And rues, as gold, that glittering dross. across the sources of the Nile, and saw it Trite moralizing, the reader may decide, flowing from a lake exactly as Speke dewhose palate, accustomed to the highly scribes. This man really ought to get the seasoned speculation of our own day, finds credit of the discovery. He must have insipidity in what is simple. To such a been there, for he gives the particulars of mood the grandest thoughts of antiquity each day's march in the most minute way, would appear trite if they were not veiled and besides, you see, he has been conin a learned language, and hallowed by the firmed. I can't understand how I never respectful attention of ages. This first of heard of him before. I don't think his the Romanticists (first at least in fame) name has turned up in any of these discusmay take his place by the side of many a sions at the Geographical Society. Can classic writer for the purity and simplicity you tell me anything about him? When of the thought which seems poor at first, did he live?" "Captain Singleton! Capand enriches itself with the growing expe- tain Singleton!" said the publisher; rience of life, so that it expands to take in" that is surely the name of the hero of one a part of all that we most vividly remember and hope.

That note of dissatisfaction is what we most gladly remember, as we bid him farewell. Whatever in his career was worldly and disappointing, he did not sink so low as to be satisfied with it. He felt the emptiness and poverty of the things he grasped at. Such at least was the utter ance of his truest self-such we will also believe (though from a proud, reserved nature there could hardly be evidence of it) was the conviction that lay deeper even than the sense of their loss, and blended with the sense of things eternal that showed clearer as his brittle follies were swept away. JULIA WEDGWOOD.

From Macmillan's Magazine. "THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT" IN 1720.

A FEW years ago, a literary man of some eminence, since prematurely gone from us, came to a publisher in a state of great excitement. "I have just picked up the most wonderful thing at a bookstall," he said. "Did you ever hear of an African explorer of the name of Singleton? Can you tell me anything about this book of his? It contains the most extraordinary

of Defoe's stories ;" and turning to the list of Defoe's works, he found that his memory had not deceived him.

"The Adventures of Captain Singleton," and his account of the customs and manners of central Africa, are the creation of the author of "Robinson Crusoe;" but this pushes the surprise at his anticipations of recent discovery only a step farther back. I must admit for my own part, that till I thought of following the captain's itinerary on a modern map, I had supposed, from his general appearance of accuracy, that our ancestors had information about central Africa which had somehow been allowed to drop out of knowledge. It is always the case, in supposed anticipations of modern discoveries, that the bygone investigator or speculator has hit upon the most startling feature, the most blazing promontory, in an unexplored country, or unobserved fact, or unthought-of contrivance. He has announced, in short, by some happy intuition, all that the mass of us ever come to know, and we are conse quently ready to give him as much credit as the patient discoverer or inventor who has brought certitude or practical value to his random guesses. Captain Singleton appeared to be a worthy predecessor and anticipator of Livingstone and Speke, because, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, he narrated how in the interior of

Africa, which the map-makers of the time | Portuguese traveller. The Portuguese had represented as an unexplored blank, he had seen vast lakes, and a river issuing from one of them which he believed to be the Nile. The one fact in the discoveries of African travellers before Stanley that had laid hold of popular interest was that the Nile had its source in a huge lake, and not, as had previously been the common belief, in the Mountains of the Moon. Captain Singleton was apparently aware of this, and therefore it seemed that his merits as an explorer had been unfairly allowed to die out of the memories of men.