esque dialect of the people; and every one told and listened to the stories about men who had died years before, as if they themselves had been actors in the scenes.

It was in this country, and among these people, that Walter passed his childhood and boyhood, rambling everywhere, listening to every one, seeing everything, and putting all away in his great roomy memory; no, not putting away, for what we merely put away in our memory never stays there; it is what we bring out and use that we really have: and Walter soon became the story-teller of the school; and lying on the grass, or walking with a comrade afield, he would weave a web of romance, half remembered, half made up at the moment, to which the lads listened with delight. It was just so with reading. He read here and there in all sorts of books; but he liked best books of chivalry, histories that told of battles, and ballads in which horses went rushing by, and the trumpet sounded for the onset.

As he grew older, he began to buy books with the little spending money which he had, and to gather, besides, curious relics from the places which he visited. In some ruined castle there had once been great banquets, and out

side, gay tournaments; he knew by heart for his love was in it - the names of the men who rode forth from the castle-yard when all those stones had been part of the strong towers; so he would carry away with him some block or carving, and it would be to him like the miniature of a friend; when be looked at it, he could rebuild in imagination the old castle, and repeople it with its gay pageant. His own ancestors would be found there, for he seized eagerly upon every scrap of Scottish history in which a Scott had figured.

Thus the country all about became to him a living book. He read the beauty and the wildness of the landscape, and he read, too, the stories written on it by the hands of the men, who, for hundreds of years, fathers and sons, had lived their strange, adventurous lives there. But this was much like dreaming; and all this while he was going on with the hard work of a plain gentleman's son, who had his bread to earn. His father was a lawyer, and in this profession Walter was bred, though he chose a different branch from that pursued by his father. For a long time, just when he was full of his romance, and of the good-fellowship which he enjoyed with his

companions in study, he worked steadily at the driest sort of labor, not relaxing until his work was done, but using his pen as a copyist as diligently as if he were engaged in the lighter task of writing a letter to his chosen friend, William Clerk. His good sense and straightforward honesty led him into habits of industry and close application, which were of inestimable value to him. They made it possible for him to accomplish a vast deal of work; and better than that, they gave him power to keep his strong imagination under control, so that he could use it, and not be run away with by it.

When twenty-six years old, he married, and lived in a simple fashion, for he had not much money, but in the constant enjoyment of the society of people like himself, young, hearty, witty, and thinking more of the inexhaustible pleasures of the mind and heart, than of those sensational pleasures which are worn out almost before they can be gone through with. He began to turn his thoughts to collecting some of the old ballads that he had so often heard, but rarely had seen in print. From this he turned to imitating the ballads, and telling in verse some of the numberless stories with which his mind was full. He obtained

two salaried offices, which enabled him to live as he could not by his profession, for which he had no strong liking, and now his taste for literature became more fixed; it was evident to himself, before it was to his friends, that writing books was to be the work of his life. But now this was made clear to the satisfaction of all, by the publication of his first long poetical work,-"The Lay of the Last Minstrel." In this he reproduced the stirring scenes which had passed away from men's immediate knowledge, but which in his mind were real, living pictures; he set them before others in so lively a fashion, that every one was enchanted. It had not seemed possible that right about them, and so few generations back, such fine things had happened; and now here they were told in rhyme, which went off in the ear like the canter of a pony. The poem was a success, the greatest success which an English poet had ever up to that time enjoyed, and Scott was now a famous man, and thenceforth till the end of his life, writing books, and especially books of romance, was his chief busi

ness.

There followed in succession the poems: "Marmion," "Lady of the Lake," "Vision of Don Roderick," "Rokeby," "Lord of the

Isles; " but overshadowing these works, there began and grew the great series of romance, called still after the title of the first, "The Waverley Novels." The first one, "Waverley," grew out of the same great fund of material which had been accumulating in Scott's mind; but it was in his own eyes a more hazardous proceeding to publish it, than it had been to publish "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." There were no successful novels then existing; good poetry was more popular, and a poet stood higher in men's minds than a novelist. Partly, perhaps, for these reasons, and partly for the pleasure of overhearing himself talked of, Scott published "Waverley " without putting his name to it, and continued to publish the series of novels in the same way. For fourteen years these volumes were coming out almost as fast as the eager public could read them, — in one year three novels in ten volumes being published,

and yet Scott never acknowledged their authorship, except to the few to whom he had intrusted the secret. Of course, long before he publicly claimed them, people talked of him as the author, and he only told at length what every one knew; but there was a mystery about the publication, and something so nearly impos