But when the hurricane

a very familiar one to us. of 1825 came on, it swept away all those buildings that were not founded on a rock, and those of Messrs. Constable, among others, soon became literally mere castles in the air-in plain English, the firm stopped payment. The assets were very trifling in comparison with the debts; and Sir Walter Scott was found on their paper to the frightful amount of one hundred thousand pounds!

His conduct on the occasion was precisely what was to have been anticipated from one who had declared on a similar, though much less appalling conjuncture, "I am always ready to make any sacrifices to do justice to my engagements, and would rather sell anything, or everything, than be less than a true man to the world." He put up his house and furniture in town at auction, delivered over his personal effects at Abbotsford, his plate, books, furniture, &c., to be held in trust for his creditors (the estate itself had been recently secured to his son on occasion of his marriage), and bound himself to discharge a certain amount annually of the liabilities of the insolvent firm. He then, with his characteristic energy, set about the performance of his Herculean task. He took lodgings in a thirdrate house in St. David's-street, saw but little company, abridged the hours usually devoted to his meals and his family, gave up his ordinary exercise, and, in short, adopted the severe habits of a regular Grubstreet stipendiary.

"For many years," he said to Mr. Gillies, "I have

been accustomed to hard work, because I found it a pleasure; now, with all due respect for Falstaff's principle, nothing on compulsion,' I certainly will not shrink from work because it has become necessary."

One of his first tasks was his "Life of Bonaparte," achieved in the space of thirteen months. For this he received fourteen thousand pounds, about eleven hundred per month-not a bad bargain either, as it proved, for the publishers. The first two volumes of the nine which make up the English edition were a rifacimento of what he had before compiled for the "Annual Register." With every allowance for the inaccuracies, and the excessive expansion incident to such a flashing rapidity of execution, the work, taking into view the broad range of its topics, its shrewd and sagacious reflections, and the free, bold, and picturesque colouring of its narration, and, above all, considering the brief time in which it was written, is indisputably one of the most remarkable monuments of genius and industry-perhaps the most remarkable ever recorded.

Scott's celebrity made everything that fell from him, however trifling-the dewdrops from the lion's mane-of value. But none of the many adventures he embarked in, or, rather, set afloat, proved so profitable as the republication of his novels, with his notes and illustrations. As he felt his own strength in the increasing success of his labours, he appears to have relaxed somewhat from them, and to have again resumed somewhat of his ancient habits, and, in a mit

At

igated degree, his ancient hospitality. But still his exertions were too severe, and pressed heavily on the springs of his health, already deprived by age of their former elasticity and vigour. At length, in 1831, he was overtaken by one of those terrible shocks of paralysis which seem to have been constitutional in his family, but which, with more precaution, and under happier auspices, might, doubtless, have been postponed, if not wholly averted. this time he had, in the short space of little more than five years, by his sacrifices and efforts, discharged about two thirds of the debt for which he was responsible: an astonishing result, wholly unparalleled in the history of letters! There is something inexpressibly painful in this spectacle of a generous heart thus courageously contending with fortune, bearing up against the tide with unconquerable spirit, and finally overwhelmed by it just within reach of shore.

The rest of his story is one of humiliation and sorrow. He was induced to take a voyage to the Continent to try the effect of a more genial climate. Under the sunny sky of Italy, he seemed to gather new strength for a while; but his eye fell with indifference on the venerable monuments which, in better days, would have kindled all his enthusiasm. The invalid sighed for his own home at Abbotsford. The heat of the weather and the fatigue of rapid travel brought on another shock, which reduced him to a state of deplorable imbecility. In this condition he returned to his own halls, where the sight of early

D D

friends, and of the beautiful scenery, the creation, as it were, of his own hands, seemed to impart a gleam of melancholy satisfaction, which soon, however, sunk into insensibility. To his present situation might well be applied the exquisite verses which he indited on another melancholy occasion:

"Yet not the landscape to mine eye

Bears those bright hues that once it borë;
Though Evening, with her richest dye,
Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore.

"With listless look along the plain

I see Tweed's silver current glide,

And coldly mark the holy fane

Of Melrose rise in ruined pride.

"The quiet lake, the balmy air,

The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree,
Are they still such as once they were,
Or is the dreary change in me?"

Providence, in its mercy, did not suffer the shattered frame long to outlive the glorious spirit which had informed it. He breathed his last on the 21st of September, 1832. His remains were deposited, as he had always desired, in the hoary abbey of Dryburgh, and the pilgrim from many a distant clime shall repair to the consecrated spot so long as the reverence for exalted genius and worth shall survive in the human heart.

This sketch, brief as we could make it, of the literary history of Sir Walter Scott, has extended so far as to leave but little space for-what Lockhart's volumes afford ample materials for-his personal charTake it for all and all, it is not too much to say that this character is probably the most remark

acter.

able on record. lebrity that we now recall, who combined, in so eminent a degree, the highest qualities of the moral, the intellectual, and the physical. He united in his own character what hitherto had been found incompatible. Though a poet, and living in an ideal world, he was an exact, methodical man of business; though achieving with the most wonderful facility of genius, he was patient and laborious; a mousing antiquarian, yet with the most active interest in the present, and whatever was going on around him; with a strong turn for a roving life and military adventure, he was yet chained to his desk more hours, at some periods of his life, than a monkish recluse; a man with a heart as capacious as his head; a Tory, brim full of Jacobitism, yet full of sympathy and unaffected familiarity with all classes, even the humblest; a successful author, without pedantry and without conceit; one, indeed, at the head of the republic of letters, and yet with a lower estimate of letters, as compared with other intellectual pursuits, than was ever hazarded before.

There is no man of historical ce

The first quality of his character, or, rather, that which forms the basis of it, as of all great characters, was his energy. We see it, in his early youth, triumphing over the impediments of nature, and, in spite of lameness, making him conspicuous in every sort of athletic exercise-clambering up dizzy precipices, wading through treacherous fords, and performing feats of pedestrianism that make one's joints ache to read of. As he advanced in life, we see the