And truly enough, the essential qualities of the life and scenes peculiarly those of Europe of the Past are mostly gone, and partially also the very aspects. During three-quarters of a century just elapsed, strange changes have been wrought; yet readers, especially those of Walter Scott's works, have found that there can yet be present to them a power investing many of the old scenes with expressions of their former life.

And taking Walter Scott- his still living power— to be a guide, it will be found that he can lead through widely extended Old-World lands, — that he has made peculiarly his own, and that he still occupies, and lead, as no other can, through what no other has so united in an

"Attaching maze,—

The brilliant, fair, and soft, -the glories of old days."

Years ago, but not longer ago than the memories of many now living can reach, when young in public life, Scott wrote,

That period to which these lines refer was one of rapid transition, when old Jacobite times and influences in Great Britain were passing away, and, with them, clan-life in Scotland; when, also, the old régime in France and its institutions became buried things; when Venice with her thirteen hundred years of life and rule changed before the great innovator; when ancient social usages, and the habitations, the works, the thoughts, and, it seemed, even the very characters of men, were changing. It was just then-at this intensest expression of the passing away of Old Europe— that he appeared to grow up, through this period of transition, into marvellous capacity for picturing the life thus changing, — picturing it so vividly as to make it seem again around us in many a scene, to which he, our proposed guide, can lead (may be said again) as can no other.

III.

BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY LIFE OF SCOTT.

THE geographical route of the tour proposed, being part of the geography of Romance Land, might hardly be considered beginning at any one point on material earth; the route certainly has a convenient quality of being accessible and useful anywhere along its extent. There is, however, a natural beginning to it at the place where the proposed guide, during it, first appeared in bodily form, and that place is Edinburgh; a city otherways rendered a very proper starting-point, not only because every one who travels in Great Britain is supposed to visit it, but because it is a place abounding in objects to arouse, to interest, to inspire those journeying among Old-World scenes. It is a city with few rivals of its own characteristics and remarkable combinations. It is a city of unusually varied picturesqueness and beauty, a thoroughly storied city surrounded by a thoroughly storied country; a place in which one can now see and feel, as in few others, the Present joined with the Past; and this tour will necessarily lead to quite thorough exploration of it. Description of its rather well-known general natural formation and historical and architectural features may be omitted now, while, in proper custom, preliminary research is being made about our guide, — where and when he came into existence, and how he grew and gained the power that attaches us to him.

It must be confessed that the enthusiasm of a pilgrim to shrines of romance, finds severe test in an excursion to the College Wynd, as existing in the old town of Edinburgh, leading from the Cowgate upward behind the great college edifice. This wynd, or lane, is by no means lovely now; or it was not when the writer saw it, for it was steep, narrow, dirty, and ill-smelling, and the houses along it were ordinary and dingy enough. Yet a hundred years ago it was respectable, — inhabited by professional gentlemen. Through it, then, was the main access to the college, the decorated gateway of which faced directly down it. By the side of this wynd, near the site of that gateway, in a house destroyed with others to

make room for the present northern front of the college, we find, that, on the 15th of August, 1771, our guide came into this world, to rise, even from a spot now so forbidding, and grow into the wonderful power that he attained; that there and then was born Walter Scott, whose creations and whose influences, expressed in verse and prose, have become (it is pardonable to repeat) inseparably and fascinatingly associated with such extent of scenes and compass of history and of romance, as are thus associated with no other one. Shakespeare or Byron or Southey may have written of more widely scattered places or have created scenes in them; but neither of these- with all his power or any other one of the masters of literary art, has invested with his own personality and creations more objects, or won to himself a domain more thoroughly his own, than has Walter Scott.

From that narrow wynd came the "Great Magician to animate those enchanted lands, through which it is proposed that he, “but present still though now unseen," conduct us; and since his name as guide has been already repeated, — indeed since it has once been told, —commendation sufficient of his ability and agreeableness, as such, has also been told.

After briefly recalling, as has been suggested, how and where he grew up, the writer proposes excursions to those scenes in his Lands, successively, associated with the stories of the great poems that he wrote, and then exploration, in more geographical order, of the wide-spread scenes associated with the more numerous prose romances, his later works; and that all the while there be observation of whatever is found associated with the quite as nobly romantic story formed by his own life.

Walter Scott had early opportunity to see more of the world than appeared in his native wynd. When only eighteen months old, being ill, he was sent to live with his paternal grandfather at Sandy Knowe, a farm-house from which a long reach of the vale of lower Tweed is overlooked. In his fourth year, he was taken by London to Bath, where he lived nearly a year. After this, he was again at Edinburgh and Sandy Knowe. When about eight years old, he was some time at Prestonpans, and was already exploring historical or other scenes that afterwards appeared in his works. Thence he went to a new residence of his father, house No. 25, George's Square, Edinburgh, in which his father lived many years, and that continued the "most established place of residence" of this son, until

his marriage in 1797. During the earlier portion, even of this boyhood time, he was becoming acquainted with many old stories, and, during a school-life of three years succeeding, was learning very much of English literature and Border Ballads, and additionally, during the latter portion of this period, — influenced by the beauties of Tweed-dale at Kelso, where he spent several months, he was experiencing, as he informs us, an awaking of a delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects, which never afterward deserted him. In his fifteenth year he began that knowledge of the affairs of law, and of the active living world, which so much aided in his development, being then apprenticed to his father, a Writer to the Signet. Soon afterward he made his first excursion to the Highlands. During four years, 1789 to 1792, he was studying for the bar, and with great ardor and perseverance, at the University of Edinburgh. Through all his boyhood and youth, he was reading immensely of whatever was adventurous or romantic or poetic in general literature, Italian, German, French, as well as British. Meanwhile, also, he was both delighting and fashioning his already characterized tastes, by visits, on foot or on horseback, to ruins, to castlehalls, to battle-fields and famous landscapes,-loving most the places invested with historical and legendary associations. Thus he intimately learned the environs of his native, or, as he called it, "his own romantic town."

Growing older, he became familiar with more distant scenes. In "'91," and again in "'92," he went to Northumberland and Flodden Field. In the latter year he for the first time made an excursion to Liddesdale; and, as Mr. Lockhart pleasantly informs us, "during seven successive years Scott made a raid, as he called it, into Liddesdale, with Mr. Shortreed for his guide; exploring every rivulet to its source, and every ruined peel from foundation to battlement. At this time no wheeled carriage had even been seen in the district the first, indeed, that ever appeared there was a gig, driven by Scott himself for a part of his way, when on the last of these seven excursions. There was no inn nor public house of any kind in the whole valley; the travellers passed from the shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the homestead; gathering, wherever they went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible relics of antiquity-even such "a rowth of auld nicknackets" as Burns ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles

Scott owed much of the materials of his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border;" and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the living manners of these unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any definite object before him in his researches seems very doubtful. "He was makin' himsell a' the time," said Mr. Shortreed; "but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed. At first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun.”

And thus, insensibly or sensibly, he "made himself."

-a translation from the German In 1796 his first book appeared, of Bürger, a mere preliminary exercise. In "'97" occurred his romantic introduction to Miss Carpenter at Gilsland, and their acquaintance and marriage, of which more hereafter. His residences during his early married life were at Edinburgh in George Street and in South Castle Street. There is not much that is noticeable in either of these places.

During the summer of 1798 he hired Lasswade Cottage, in which he lived until he removed to Ashestiel in 1804. While his home was at Lasswade, he began his career in authorship and other public life.

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IV.

LASSWADE, 1798-1805.

N excursion to Lasswade and its neighborhood is one of the most delightful of the many that can be made from Edinburgh, including as it may, in a day, a visit to the stately park and palace of the Duke of Buccleuch, at Dalkeith, a stroll of three or four miles along the picturesque Esk Vale, and explorations of Hawthornden, that exquisitely romantic spot where the poet Drummond lived, and of Roslin Castle and Chapel. This chapel is the well-known elaborated example of Spanish Gothic, unique in Scotland, now "restored" and well kept. The castle, near by and

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