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Bacon's plain and easy discrimination between ancient philosophy and his own Christian ideas, is an intelligible and clear rule for fixing the right medium between profane and nature-worship on the one hand, and gloomy hatred of nature on the other: to which latter one-sided reason is peculiarly prone; when intent only upon morality, it is perplexed in its apprehensions of nature, and has only imperfect and confused notions of divinity. But a right appreciation of the actual difference between nature and God is the most important point both of thought and belief, of life and conduct. Bacon's views this head are the more fittingly introduced here, because the philosophy of our own time is for the most part distracted between the two extremes indicated above: the reprehensible nature-worship of some who do not distinguish between the Creator and his works, God and the world: or, on the other, the hatred and blindness of those despisers of nature, whose reason is exclusively directed to their personal destiny. The just medium between these opposite errors-that is to say, the only correct consideration of nature is that involved in a sense of intimate connexion of our immeasurable superiority, morally, and to a proper awe of those of her elements that significantly point to matters of higher import than herself. All such vestiges, exciting either love or fear, as a silent awe, or a prophetic declaration, reveal the hand that formed them, and the purpose which they are designed to accomplish.

Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, Lect. xiii.

SIR WALTER SCOTT, baronet, born in Edinburgh, August 15, 1771, attended the Latin, Greek, and Logic classes of the University of Edinburgh in 1783-84; became apprentice to his father as a Writer to the Signet, 1786; was admitted by the Faculty of Advocates to his first trials, 1791, and called to the bar, 1792; Sheriff of Selkirkshire, 1799, and appointed one of the principal Clerks of the Court of Session (of which he did not receive the full endowment until the death of George Horne in 1812) 1806; made a baronet 1820; involved by the failure of Constable & Co. and Ballantyne & Co., in 1826, to the amount of about £147,000, which he had reduced at the time of his death, September 21, 1832, to £54,000, which was soon afterwards discharged. In another place (Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, vol. ii., 1971-1975) we have given a detailed bibliographical catalogue of Scott's publica

tions from 1796 to 1831. Here it will be sufficient to enumerate his principal productions: The Chace, and William and Ellen, 1796; Goetz of Berlichingen, with The Iron Hand. and The House of Aspen, 1799; Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802; Sir Tristram, a Metrical Romance, 1804; The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and Waverley, chapters i.-vii., 1805 (not published until 1814); Ballads and Lyrical Poems, 1806; Marmion, 1808; The Lady of the Lake, 1810; The Vision of Don Roderick, 1811; Rokeby, and The Bridal of Triermain, 1813; Waverley, and The Lord of the Isles, 1814; Guy Mannering, The Field of Waterloo, and (part author of) Peter's Letters to His Kinsfolk, 1815; The Antiquary, and Tales of My Landlord, First Series: The Black Dwarf, Old Mortality, 1816; Harold the Dauntless, 1817; Rob Roy, and Tales of My Landlord, Second Series: The Heart of Mid-Lothian, 1818; Tales of My Landlord, Third Series: The Bride of Lammermoor, A Legend of Montrose, 1819; Ivanhoe, the Monastery, and The Abbot, 1820; Biographical Prefaces to Ballantyne's Novelist's Library, 10 vols. royal 8vo, and Kenilworth, 1821; The Pirate, The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822; Peveril of the Peak, and Quentin Durward, 1823; St. Ronan's Well, and Redgauntlet, 1824; Tales of the Crusaders: The Betrothed, The Talisman, 1825; Woodstock, 1826; The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Chronicles of the Canongate, First Series: The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, The Surgeon's Daughter, and Tales of a Grandfather, First Series, 1827; Chronicles of the Canongate, Second Series: St. Valentine's Day, or, The Fair Maid of Perth, Tales of a Grandfather, Second Series, and Religious Discourses, by a Layman, 1828: Anne of Geierstein, Tales of a Grandfather, Third Series, and History of Scotland, vol. i., 1829; Tales of a Grandfather, Fourth Series: History of France, History of Scotland, vol. ii., and Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 1830; Tales of My Landlord, Fourth Series: Count Robert of Paris, Castle Dangerous.

"The great secret of his popularity, however, and the leading characteristic of his poetry, appears to us to consist evidently in this, that he has made more use of common topics, images, and expressions than any original poet of later times, and, at the same time, displayed more genius and originality than any recent author who has worked in the same materials."-LORD JEFFREY: Edin. Review, August, 1810, and in his Contrib. to Edin. Review, edit. 1853, 409, et seq.

"It is the great glory of Scott that, by nice attention to costume and character in his novels, he has raised them to historic importance without impairing their interest as works of art. Who now would imagine that he could form a satisfactory notion of the golden days of Queen Bess that had not read' Kenilworth,' or of Richard Coeur de Lion

and his brave paladins that had not read Ivanhoe'?... Scott was, in truth, master of the picturesque. He understood better than any historian since the time of Livy how to dispose his lights and shades so as to produce the most striking result. This property of romance he had a right to borrow. This talent is particularly observable in the animated parts of his story, in his battles, for example. No man has painted those terrible scenes with greater effect.... It is when treading on Scottish ground that he seems to feel all his

strength... 'I seem always to step more firmly,'

he said to some one, 'when on my own native heather.' His mind was steeped in Scottish lore, and his bosom warmed with a sympathetic glow for the age of chivalry."-WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT: Biogr. and Crit. Miscell., edit. 1855, 284, 285, 286. See also 54, 130, 139, 606, n., 623, 702; N. Amer.

Review, xxxv. 187.

RAVENSWOOD AND LUCY ASHTON.

"Do you know me, Miss Ashton ?-I am still that Edgar Ravenswood, who, for your affection, renounced the dear ties by which injured honour bound him to seek vengeance. I am that Ravenswood, who, for your sake, forgave, nay clasped hands in friendship with the oppressor and pillager of his house, the traducer and murderer of his father.'

"My daughter," answered Lady Ashton, interrupting him, "has no occasion to dispute the identity of your person; the venom of your present language is sufficient to remind her that she speaks with the mortal enemy of her father."

"I pray you to be patient, madam," answered Ravenswood; "my answer must come from her own lips.-Önce more, Miss Lucy Ashton, I am that Ravenswood to whom you granted the solemn engagement which you now desire to retract and cancel."

Lucy's bloodless lips could only falter out the words, "It was my mother."

"She speaks truly," said Lady Ashton, "it was I who, authorized alike by the laws of God and man, advised her, and concurred | with her, to set aside an unhappy and precipitate engagement, and to annul it by the authority of Scripture itself."

fully.

Scripture!" said Ravenswood, scorn

"Let him hear the text," said Lady Ashton, appealing to the divine, "on which you yourself, with cautious reluctance, declared the nullity of the pretended engagement insisted upon by this violent man.'

The clergyman took his clasped Bible from his pocket, and read the following words: "If a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth; and her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her: then

all her vows shall stand, and every vow wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand." "And was it not so even with us?" interrupted Ravenswood.

Control thy impatience, young man," answered the divine, "and hear what follows in the sacred text: But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the

Lord shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her.'"

"And was not," said Lady Ashton, fiercely and triumphantly breaking in,—“ was not ours the case stated in the holy writ?-Will this person deny that the instant her parents heard of the vow, or bond, by which our daughter had bound her soul, we disallowed the same in the most express terms, and informed him by writing of our determination ?”

"And is this all?" said Ravenswood, looking at Lucy. "Are you willing to barter sworn faith, the exercise of free will, and the feelings of mutual affection, to this wretched hypocritical sophistry?"

"Hear him!" said Lady Ashton, looking to the clergyman,-"hear the blasphemer!" "May God forgive him," said Bide-thebent, "and enlighten his ignorance."

"Hear what I have sacrificed for you," said Ravenswood, still addressing Lucy, “ere you sanction what has been done in your name. The honour of an ancient family, the urgent advice of my best friends, have been in vain used to sway my resolution; neither the arguments of reason, nor the portents of superstition, have shaken my fidelity. The very dead have arisen to warn me, and their warning has been despised. Are you prepared to pierce my heart for its fidelity with the very weapon which my rash confidence intrusted to your grasp?"

"Master of Ravenswood," said Lady Ashton, "you have asked what questions you thought fit. You see the total incapacity of my daughter to answer you. But I will reply for her, and in a manner which you cannot dispute. You desire to know whether Lucy Ashton, of her own free will, desires to annul the engagement into which she has been trepanned. You have her letter under her own hand, demanding the surrender of it; and, in yet more full evidence of her purpose, here is the contract which she has this morning subscribed, in presence of this reverend gentleman, with Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw."

Ravenswood gazed upon the deed as if petrified. "And it was without fraud or compulsion," said he, looking towards the clergyman, "that Miss Ashton subscribed this parchment?"

"I vouch it upon my sacred character." "This is indeed, madame, an undeniable piece of evidence," said Ravenswood, sternly; and it will be equally unnecessary and dishonourable to waste another word in useless remonstrance or reproach. There, madame," he said, laying down before Lucy the signed paper and the broken piece of gold,-"there are the evidences of your first engagement; may you be more faithful to that which you have just formed. I will trouble you to return the corresponding tokens of my ill-placed confidence,-I ought rather to say, of my egregious folly."

Lucy returned the scornful glance of her lover with a gaze from which perception seemed to have been banished; yet she seemed partly to have understood his meaning. for she raised her hands as if to undo a blue ribbon which she wore around her neck. She was unable to accomplish her purpose, but Lady Ashton cut the ribbon asunder, and detached the broken piece of gold which Miss Ashton had till then concealed in her bosom : the written counterpart of the lovers' engagement she for some time had had in her own possession. With a haughty curtsy she delivered both to Ravenswood, who was much softened when he took the piece of gold.

"And she could wear it thus," he saidspeaking to himself "could wear it in her very bosom-could wear it next to her heart -even when But complaint avails not," he said, dashing from his eye the tear which had gathered in it, and resuming the stern composure of his manner. He strode to the chimney and threw into the fire the paper and piece of gold, stamping upon the coals with the heel of his boot, as if to ensure their destruction. "I will be no longer," he then said, "an intruder here. Your evil wishes and your worse offices, Lady Ashton, I will only return, by hoping these will be your last machinations against your daughter's honour and happiness. And to you, madame," he said, addressing Lucy, "I have nothing farther to say, except to pray to God that you may not become a world's wonder for this act of wilful and deliberate perjury." Having uttered these words, he turned on his heel, and left the apartment.

The Bride of Lammermoor, Chap. xxxiii.

BOIS-GUILBERT AND REBECCA.

"The friend and protector," said the Templar, gravely, "I will yet be,-but mark at what risk, or rather at what certainty, of dishonour; and then blame me not if I make my stipulations, before I offer up all that I have hitherto held dear, to save the life of a Jewish maiden."

Speak," said Rebecca; "I understand thee not."

"Well, then," said Bois-Guilbert, "I will speak as freely as ever did doting penitent to his ghostly father, when placed in the tricky confessional. Rebecca, if I appear not in these lists I lose fame and rank,—lose that which is the breath of my nostrils; the esteem, I mean, in which I am held by my brethren, and the hopes I have of succeeding to that mighty authority which is now wielded by the bigoted dotard Lucas de Beaumanoir, but of which I should make a far different use. Such is my certain doom, except I appear in arms against thy cause. Accursed be he of Goodalricke, who baited this trap for me! and doubly accursed Albert de Malvoison, who withheld me from the resolution I had formed of hurling back the glove at the face of the superstitious and superannuated fool who listened to a charge so absurd and against a creature so high in mind and so lovely in form as thou art!" "And what now avails rant or flattery?" answered Rebecca. "Thou hast made thy choice between causing to be shed the blood of an innocent woman, or of endangering thine own earthly state and earthly hopes,what avails it to reckon together?-thy choice is made."

"No, Rebecca," said the knight, in a softer tone, and drawing nearer towards her; "my choice is NOT made,-nay, mark, it is thine to make the election. If I appear in the lists, I must maintain my name in arms; and if 1 do so, championed or unchampioned, thou diest by the stake and faggot,-for there lives not the knight who hath coped with me in arms on equal issue, or on terms of vantage, save Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and his minion of Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, as thou well knowest, is unable to bear his corslet, and Richard is in a foreign prison. If I appear, then, thou diest, even although thy charms should instigate some hot-headed youth to enter the lists in thy defence."

"And what avails repeating this so often?" said Rebecca.

"Much," replied the Templar; "for thou must learn to look at thy fate on every side.” "Well, then, turn the tapestry," said the Jewess, and let me see the other side."

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"If I appear," said Bois-Guilbert, "in the fatal lists, thou diest by a slow and cruel death, in pain such as they say is destined to the guilty hereafter. But if I appear not, then am I a degraded and dishonoured knight, accused of witchcraft and of communion with infidels,-the illustrious name, which has grown yet more so under my wearing, becomes a hissing and a reproach. I lose fame, I lose honour, I lose the pros pect of such greatness as scarce emperors

attain to, I sacrifice mighty ambition. I destroy schemes built as high as the mountains with which heathens say their heaven was once nearly sealed, and yet, Rebecca," he added, throwing himself at her feet, "this greatness will I sacrifice, this fame will I renounce, this power will I forego, even now when it is half within my grasp, if thou wilt say, 'Bois-Guilbert, I receive thee for my lover.'"

"Think not of such foolishness, Sir Knight," answered Rebecca, "but hasten to the Regent, the Queen Mother, and to Prince John, they cannot, in honour to the English crown, allow of the proceedings of your Grand Master. So shall you give me protection without sacrifice on your part, or the pretext of requiring any requital from me." "With these I deal not," he continued, holding the train of her robe,-"it is thee only I address; and what can counterbalance thy choice? Bethink thee, were I a fiend, yet death is a worse, and it is death who is my rival."

"I weigh not these evils," said Rebecca, afraid to provoke the wild knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion, nor even feign to endure it. "Be a man, be a Christian! If, indeed, thy faith recommends that mercy which rather your tongue than your actions pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital which would change thy magnanimity into base barter."

"No, damsel!" said the proud Templar, springing up, "thou shalt not thus impose on me, if I renounce present fame and future ambition, I renounce it for thy sake, and we will escape in company. Listen to me, Rebecca," he said, again softening his tone; "England-Europe-is not the world. There are spheres in which we may act, ample enough even for my ambition. We will go to Palestine, where Conrade, Marquis of Montserrat, is my friend,-a friend free as myself from the doting scruples which fetter our free-born reason,-rather with Saladin will we league ourselves than endure the scorn of the bigots whom we contemn.-I will form new paths to greatness," he continued, again traversing the room with hasty strides," Europe shall hear the loud step of him she has driven from her sons!-Not the millions whom her crusades send to slaughter can do so much to defend Palestine, not the sabres of the thousands and thousands of Saracens can hew their way so deep into that land for which nations are striving, as the strength and policy of me and those brethren, who, in despite of yonder old bigot, will adhere to me in good and evil. Thou shalt be a queen, Rebecca.— Mount Carmel shall we pitch the throne

-on

which my valour will gain for you, and I will exchange my long-desired baton for a sceptre." Ivanhoe, Chap. xxxix.

QUEEN ELIZABETH, AMY ROBSART, AND
LEICESTER.

Urged to this extremity, dragged, as it were, by irresistible force to the verge of the precipice, which she saw but could not avoid, -permitted not a moment's respite by the eager words and menacing gestures of the offended Queen, Amy at length uttered in despair, "The Earl of Leicester knows it all."

The Earl of Leicester!" said Elizabeth, in utter astonishment. "The Earl of Leices ter! The Earl of Leicester!" she repeated, with kindling anger. "Woman, thou art set on to this, thou dost belie him,-he takes no keep of such things as thou art. Thou art suborned to slander the noblest lord and the truest-hearted gentleman in England! But were he the right hand of our trust, or something yet dearer to us, thou shalt have thy hearing, and that in his presence. Come with me,--come with me instantly!"

As Amy shrunk back with terror, which the incensed Queen interpreted as that of conscious guilt, Elizabeth rapidly advanced, seized on her arm, and hastened with swift and long steps out of the grotto, and along the principal alley of the Pleasance, dragging with her the terrified Countess, whom she still held by the arm, and whose utmost exertions could but just keep pace with those of the indignant Queen.

Leicester was at this moment the centre of a splendid group of lords and ladies, assembled together under an arcade or portico, which closed the alley. The company had drawn together in that place to attend the commands of her Majesty when the hunting party should go forward, and their astonishment may be imagined, when, instead of seeing Elizabeth advance towards them with her usual measured dignity of motion, they beheld her walking so rapidly that she was in the midst of them ere they were aware; and then observed, with fear and surprise, that her features were flushed betwixt anger and agitation, that her hair was loosened by her haste of motion, and that her eyes sparkled as they were wont when the spirit of Henry VIII. mounted highest in his daughter. Nor were they less astonished at the appearance of the pale, extenuated, half dead, yet still lovely female, whom the Queen upheld by main strength with one hand, while with the other she waved aside the ladies and nobles who pressed towards her, under the idea that she was taken suddenly ill. Where is my Lord of Leices

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