To all our faults a little blind."

But we certainly ought to be well content with the national portraiture, and do each what in us lies to perpetuate its nobler features. The work that Burns yearned after from the depths of his passionate heart, Scott has actually accomplished. From the story of our feuds and factions, from the dust and blood of the past, his genius and his patriotism have culled all that was pure and lovely and of good report, and have woven it into an immortal chaplet for the brow of Caledonia. He has fanned the fire of Scottish nationality without detriment-nay, with positive advantage to that higher and nobler nationality which rallies around the flag whereon the white cross fits so compactly into the red. Wherever the British flag flies it will find no better or truer defenders there than those Scotchmen who best know and love their Scott. (Applause.)

Amidst moral and intellectual benefits, I must not forget the important contributions of Scott to the material prosperity of his native land. The dead poet whom we celebrate is as distinctly an employer of labour as any of those captains of industry whose looms whirl by the Tweed or whose furnaces flame along the Clyde. Here, there, every where, pilgrims are flocking to the shrines which he has built for himself and his country; and trades and occupations of all kinds flourish by the brain which lies in Dryburgh, as they formerly flourished by the brain of St. Thomas. Mrs. Dodds of the Cleikum, Neil Blane of the Howff, and others, his pleasant publicans, are only a few of those whom Scott has established in a roaring business. When land is to be sold in any district of the Scott countries, his scenes and his characters therewith connected, and even his passing allusions, are carefully chronicled amongst other attractions in the advertisement, and duly inventoried amongst the title-deeds of the estate. It would be hard to say how many years' purchase Scott has added to the value of Branksome, or of the Eildon pastures. But there is no doubt that the touch of his pen does in many places form an important element of that unearned increment of value that, I believe, is the scientific termwhich Mr. Stuart Mill and friends propose shortly to transfer from the lords of the soil to the Lords of the Treasury. Some of Scott's truest admirers have been disposed to regret that there is no single piece of his that gives

of parturition were indeed unknown to that most prolific of brains. The mighty machinery of his mind worked with the least possible friction. Waverley is generally esteemed the most carefully finished of his tales, yet we know, on his own authority, the two last volumes were written between the 4th of June and the 1st of July. The noble lord who, in a party attack on the most illustrious of his countrymen, told the House of Commons that one of the Clerks of Session wrote more books than any other person had leisure to read, would probably have accomplished an unusual feat if he had read in one day the forty pages 8vo which Scott sometimes wrote in the same period of time. The two sermons which Scott wrote for a clerical friend were promised overnight and placed in his hand next morning. The absence of apparent effort in the exercise of even his highest powers struck all strangers who had an opportunity of observing his talents. Two acute and by no means superstitious observers solved the mystery by ascribing to him something of supernatural power. "There was," says Hazlitt, "a degree of capacity in that huge double forehead which superseded all effort, and made everything come intuitively and almost mechanically." Captain Basil Hall was at first much exercised by the phenomenon, but as he himself kept a very copious journal, and discovered that in one of his visits to Abbotsford he had written in one day about as much as Scott considered a fair day's task, he considered that his wonder was misapplied. "No such great matter after all," concluded the gallant captain; "it is mere industry and a little invention, and that we all know costs Scott nothing." (A laugh.) In fact, amongst his intimate friends the marvellous facility and fecundity of the man ceased to excite any surprise. Even the faithful and affectionate Laidlaw, his amanuensis in times of sickness, used to forget himself and everything else in the interest of the tale he was writing down. If the dictation flagged, he would say, "Come, sir, get on; get on:" and would receive the characteristic reply, "Hout! Willie, you forget I have to invent the story!" (Laughter.)

It is natural at first sight to regret all this headlong haste, and to wish that four or five of the novels had been compressed into a perfect work of art, into a "gem of purest ray serene" altogether worthy of the mind whence it came. No doubt the rule of Goldsmith's connoisseur is generally a sound one, that the picture would have been better

had the painter taken more pains; and if we can conceive such a thing as a pedagogue seated with a row of possible Walter Scotts before him, it would be highly proper that he should impress the maxim on their young minds. But as the genius of Scott was in so many points exceptional, it is possible that it may have worked under special laws of its own, and that something of the charm of his works may belong to their rapid and spontaneous flow, like the rush of a river or melody from the throats of birds

"That carol their sweet pleasures to the spring." (Applause.) The influence of Scott upon literature, both at home and abroad, was immense. Whatever he did, whatever attire he chose to assume, at once became the fashion. The apparent ease of his verse, the fatal facility of the octosyllabic measure, procured him a large poetical following, in which there were, no doubt, many figures strange to see, like the alderman, in whose person Holyrood saw

"The royal Albyn's tartan as a belt

Gird the gross sirloin of a city Celt." But his school can likewise boast of several

disciples of rare genius. His presence may be felt in some of the earlier tales of Byron; from his shrine comes some of the fire that burns in Ivry and the Armada, and the Roman Lays of Macaulay, and in the Cavalier Ballads of our own still lamented Aytoun. Of the his torical romance in prose he may be called the father; and never had literary sire a more goodly offspring in the second generation—

"By many names men call them,
In many lands they dwell."

In France, Hugo, De Vigny, the elder Dumas;
in Spain, Fernan Caballero; in Italy, Manzoni
and D'Azeglio; in Germany, Zschokke and
Alexis; in America, Cooper; at home, Grattan,
Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray, are only a few of
the writers well known to fame, who have
essayed to bend the bow of Scott.
Of living
English writers I will not speak. Many names
will at once occur to you all, and I am sure
that the most famous of the band would be the
foremost in rendering homage to their great
master. If the words that Scott wrote to Mr.
Cadell in 1830 were somewhat overcharged
then, they are more near the truth in 1871-
"The fact is," he wrote, "I have taught a
hundred gentlemen to write nearly, if not al-
together, as well as myself." In truth, Scott's
art, using the word in the larger sense, was
like that of Falstaff, who was witty himself

and the cause of wit in other men.

Even in the fields less peculiarly his own than

fiction his influence was very great. His writ ings stimulated historical research in a hundred directions; and he was the founder of the Bannatyne Club, parent model of many similar societies prolific of goodly quartos. In his romances the delighted reader had found himself brought face to face with personages whom he had before seen only as in a glass darkly. Historians began to take a leaf out of the great novelist's book; to use a style more dramatic and pictorial; to develop individual character; and bestow unwonted pains on accessories of time and place. Is it too much to say that we probably owe to the example of Scott some of the most graceful digressions of Hallam; something of the splendid scene-painting of Macaulay; something of the electric light flashed over many famous men, and into many dark places, from the pen of Carlyle? (Applause.) Is it unreasonable to suppose that his great genius has exercised an influence, not the less real because untraced, unseen, unsuspected, like the influence of the Gulf Stream diffusing itself through our western sounds and sea-coasts in softer verdure and richer foliage?

Of all the legacies which Scott has bequeathed to mankind, I believe none are more precious than his own character and life. (Applause.) Happy in many things, unhappy in a few, he was singularly happy in a biographer. Amongst our chosen book companions, amongst the friends that can never alter nor forsake, Lockhart's Life of Scott deserves to hold a place of chief honour and ready access. I doubt whether the world has ever been told so much about any one man by any single biographer-whether the life of a great man has ever fallen into the hands of a writer with equal opportunity of knowing the whole truth, and equal faculty for telling it; and whether the whole Biographie Universelle can furnish a single other name that would show so fair if the whole life which belonged to it were unrolled like that of Scott, year by year, almost day by day, before the gaze of his fellowmen. (Applause.) The admiration with which Scott was regarded during the larger portion of his life was great, but the love and affection which he inspired during his whole life was still greater. widely loved before he was famous, in later days he attracted the regard of various remarkable persons to whom his fame was an unknown quantity. In Paris, in 1815, amongst all the celebrities of Europe, he seemed especially to fascinate Blucher and Platoff the Cossack, the latter of whom, cantering down the Rue de la Paix, would jump off his horse to kiss him. It is highly improbable that either the Prussian

Warmly and

field-marshal or the hetman of the Cossacks of the Don knew much about either Marmion or Waverley, or that they were influenced by anything deeper than the frank kindly aspect of the stalwart ex-volunteer, with "that beautiful smile of heart and feeling, geniality, courage, and tenderness," which Haydn assures us "neither painter nor sculptor has ever touched." How variegated with all the hues of character is the list of his friends! Jeffrey, Rogers, Moore, Byron, Crabbe, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Southey, Haydn, George IV., are only a sample of those who, differing from one another on many things, agreed to love and honour Scott. The reverence in which he was held from their first acquaintance by Lockhart is of itself no small proof of his titles to be revered and honoured. With the intellectual life of his time, Scott's relations were as genial as those which bound him to its social life. His career gave no incident to the "Quarrels of Authors." His high, frequently too high, appreciation of the writings of his contemporaries was one of the most noticeable of his many pleasant traits of character. Washington Irving, after passing a few days at Abbotsford in 1817, was convinced that his host was the author of the Waverley Novels, because they were the only important works of the day he had never quoted. How characteristic is Scott's reminiscence of Burns, and his pride in having, as a boy, helped the poet to the authorship of some lines by Langhorne, and having received a grateful look from him in return. From this, which was probably his first meeting with any distinguished man of letters, to that which was probably one of the last, at Naples, when being under the delusion that his debts were all paid, he offered pecuniary aid to Sir William Gell, the record of his relations with his brethren of the pen is a record of brotherly-kindness, encouragement, furtherance, earnest sympathy in success or in disappointment, of gifts of money when he had it, of loans of time, when time was to him in a special manner money. (Applause.)

Much has been written and said about Scott's desire to found a family upon the estate which his industry had acquired. It has been urged that being the Ariosto of the North, the Cervantes of his native land, it was pitiable that he should have cared to be Scott of Abbotsford-a kind of distinction frequently achieved and enjoyed by his Andrew Fairservices and Nicol Jarvies. This view of the case seems to leave out of sight the important fact that the Scott was as strong within him as the Ariosto or Cervantes, and that if

he had been devoid of one of the strongest tendencies of the race from which he was sprung, he would not have been the Walter Scott we have met here to celebrate. (Applause.) In the higher part of his character he was a poet, in the everyday concerns of life he was a shrewd practical man of the world. Hence, having acquired wealth by an unusual path, he invested that wealth very much as any one of his friends might have done who had acquired it by the practice of law or the weaving of wool. In his case land had a peculiar attraction, for he had loved the country from his cradle, and by its possession he was enabled to realize, or to try to realize, the half-feudal, half-patriarchal life of his day-dreams. The existence of a certain number of families, with more or less of permanence in the possession of the soil, and enjoying more or less of social importance, was, according to his political theories, essential to the welfare of an ancient kingdom. There was nothing inconsistent or unworthy that a man holding this theory should desire that amongst those families his descendants should be found. The popular and prevailing theory is, of course, of an opposite kind. But for some cause or other, which it is not for me to explain, when the holders of this theory buy land, it seems to lose its grasp of their vigorous and enterprising minds. They, too, build and plant on a scale altogether feudal; and their walls and windows blaze with heraldry, just as if romantic poetry and old-fashioned Toryism had been their business and their creed.

Even of Scott's politics, so characteristic of the man, I will venture to say a word. They were the opinions naturally growing up in the mind of a man who had been unable to feel any enthusiasm for French Liberalism in 1789; who had rejoiced in the fall of the French Napoleon in 1815, before a European coalition mainly formed and set in motion by the Tory ministry of England, and who had not seen, as we have seen, the national prosperity which attends three generations of revolution. Such as they were, the views of the young advocate defending a housebreaker at Jedburgh were those of the favourite at Carlton House, which is more than could be said for some of the fine folks he met there. On the whole, I believe few of us will be disposed to regret that he did not go over to the winning side in 1831-a year of rapid change and sudden conversion. He had chosen his party, and adhered to it strictly; but there was nothing in his tenets nor in his attitude that was ignoble, or narrow, or incongruous. His once famous Malagrowther's Letters show that he