He

power of making a picture of him just as he sat. But about 11 o'clock Miss Scott came over to me, looking much frightened, and saying that she feared he was about to have another paralytic attack. had, she said, been rather confused in mind the day before, and the dinner-party had been too much for him. She had observed that on trying to answer a note from the Admiral that morning, he had not been able to form a letter on the paper, and she thought he was now sitting in a sort of stupor. She begged that Dr. Davy would visit him as soon as possible, and that I would accompany him, so that he might not suppose it a medical visit, for to all such he had an utter objection. I sent for Dr. D. instantly, and the moment he returned we went together to the hotel. We found Sir Walter sitting near a fire, dressed, as I had seen him just before, in a large silk dressing-gown, his face a good deal flushed, and his eyes heavy. He rose, however, as I went up to him, and, addressing me by my mother's name, Mrs. Fletcher,' asked kindly whether I was quite recovered from a little illness I had complained of the day before, and then walked to a table on the other side of the room, to look at some views of the new Volcano in the Mediterranean, which, by way of apology for our early visit, we had carried with us. With these he seemed pleased; but there was great indistinctness in his manner of speaking. He soon after sat down, and began, of his own accord, to converse with Dr. Davy on the work he was then engaged in-the Life of Sir Humphry-saying that he was truly glad he was thus engaged, as he did not think justice had been done to the character of his friend by Dr. Paris. In speaking of the scientific distinction attained by Sir Humphry, he said, I hope, Dr. Davy, your mother lived to see it. There must have been such great pleasure in that to her.' We both remember with much interest this kindly little observation; and it was but one of many that dropt from him as naturally at the different times we met, showing that, fallen' as the mighty' was, and his weapons of war perished,' the springs of fancy dried up, and memory on most subjects much impaired, his sense of the value of home-bred worth and affection was in full force."

While at Naples, Sir Walter received great attention from a number of distinguished individuals, foreign as well as native. Among these the celebrated Sir William Gell deserves particular notice, one of the best of Cicerones that could anywhere be found to Pæstum, Pompeii, &c. We quote from Sir William's Memoranda a few particulars.

"When Sir Walter was presented at Court, the King received him with marked attention, and insisted on his being seated, on account of his infirmity. They both spoke, and the by-standers observed that His Majesty mentioned the pleasure he had received from reading the works of his visiter. Sir Walter answered in French, but not in a clear tone of voice; and he afterwards observed, that he and the King parted mutually pleased with the interview, considering that neither had heard one word of what was uttered by the other.

"On the 17th of January I took Sir Walter to dine with the venerable Archbishop of Tarentum, a prelate in his 90th year, but yet retaining his faculties unimpaired, and the warmer feelings of youth, with well-known

hospitality. The two elders seemed mutually pleased with the interview, but the difficulties of language were opposed to any very agreeable conversation.

"On the 26th of January I attended Sir Walter in a boat, with several friends, to the ruins of a Roman villa, supposed by Mr. Hamilton and others to have been that of Pollio, and situated upon a rock in the sea at the extremity of the promontory of Posilipo. It was by no means the recollection of Pollio that induced Sir Walter to make this excursion. A story existed that out of an opening in the floor of one of the rooms in this villa, a spectre robed in white occasionally appeared, whence the place had acquired the name of La Casa degli Spiriti, and none had presumed to inhabit it. The fact was, that a third story had been built upon the Roman ruins, and this being only inhabited by paupers, had fallen into decay, so as to endanger one angle of the fabric, and the police, for fear of accident, had ordered that it should remain untenanted. The house is situated upon a rock projecting into the sea, but attached on one side to the mainland. An entrance for a boat has been left in the basement story, and it is probable that a sort of open court, into which the sea enters at the back of the house, and in which is the staircase, was constructed for the purpose of cooling the apartments in the heat of summer, by means of the perpetual heaving and sinking of the ocean which takes place even in the calmest weather. The staircase was too much ruined for Sir Walter to ascend with safety, but he appeared satisfied with what he saw, and took some interest in the proofs which the appearance of the opus reticulatum, high up in the external walls, afforded of the antiquity of the place.

"On the 9th of February Sir Walter went to Pompeii, where, with several ladies and gentlemen at that time resident in Naples, I accompanied him. I did not go in the same carriage, but, arriving at the street of the Tombs, found him already almost tired before he had advanced 100 yards. With great difficulty I forced him to accept the chair in which I was carried, supplying its place with another for myself, tied together with cords and handkerchiefs. He thus was enabled to pass through the city without more fatigue, and I was sometimes enabled to call his attention to such objects as were the most worthy of remark. To these observations, however, he seemed generally nearly insensible, viewing the whole and not the parts, with the eye, not of an antiquary, but a poet, and exclaiming frequently The city of the Dead,' without any other remark. An excavation had been ordered for him, but it produced nothing more than a few bells, hinges, and other objects of brass, which are found every day. Sir Walter seemed to view, however, the splendid mosaic, representing a combat of the Greeks and Persians, with more interest, and, seated upon a table whence he could look down upon it, he remained some time to examine it. We dined at a large table spread in the Forum, and Sir Walter was cheerful and pleased. In the evening he was a little tired, but felt no bad effects from the excursion to the City of the Dead."

Scott had wished to return to England by the route of the Tyrol and Germany, having in contemplation an interview with Goëthe at Weimar. That poet's death, however, prevented the fulfilment of this design, and acted powerfully on the traveller. His impatience

to get home became extreme, for all his fine dreams of recovery seemed to vanish at once. "Alas!" he exclaims, "but he at least died at home. Let us to Abbotsford." From this date the great Minstrel's history is one that touches the feelings in an extraordinary manner. It is pathetic and awakening in a remarkable degree.

"The last jotting," says Mr. Lockhart," of Sir Walter's Diary, perhaps the last specimen of his handwriting records his starting from Naples on the 16th of April." We find, however, some notices from Sir William Gell's pen of the illustrious invalid's stay in Rome, in which there is a glimpse or two of sunshine, only to be rendered the more affecting by the general melancholy of the remaining narrative. Could admiration and assiduous attentions on the part of the great have banished solicitude and ailments Scott's must have been a happy and flattering journey. Sir William Gell writes,

Soon after his arrival I took Sir Walter to St. Peter's, which he had resolved to visit, that he might see the tomb of the last of the Stuarts. I took him to one of the side doors, in order to shorten the walk, and by great good fortune met with Colonel Blair and Mr. Phillips, under whose protection he accomplished his purpose. We contrived to tie a glove round the point of his stick, to prevent his slipping in some degree, but to conduct hini was really a source of danger and alarm, owing to his infirmity and total want of caution. He has been censured for not having frequently visited the treasures of the Vatican-but by those only who were unacquainted with the difficulty with which he moved. Days and weeks must have been passed in this immense museum, in order to have given him any idea of its value, nor do I know that it would have been possible for him to have ascended the rugged stairs, or to have traced its corridors and interminable galleries, in the state of reduced strength and dislike to being assisted under which he then laboured.

"On the 8th of May we all dined at the Palace of the Duchess Torlonia with a very large company. The dinner was very late and very splendid, and from the known hospitality of the family it was probable that Sir Walter, in the heat of conversation, and with servants on all sides pressing him to eat and drink, as is their custom at Rome, might be induced to eat more than was safe for his malady. Colonel Blair, who sat next him, was requested to take care that this should not happen. Whenever I observed him, however, Sir Walter appeared always to be eating; while the Duchess, who had discovered the nature of the office imposed on the Colonel, was by no means satisfied, and after dinner observed that it was an odd sort of friendship which consisted in starving one's neighbour to death when he had a good appetite, and there was dinner enough.

"It was at this entertainment that Sir Walter met with the Duke and Duchess of Corchiano, who were both well read in his works, and delighted to have been in company with him. This acquaintance might have led to some agreeable consequences had Sir Walter's life been spared, for the Duke told him he was possessed of a vast collection of papers, giving true

accounts of all the murders, poisonings, intrigues, and curious adventures of all the great Roman families during many centuries, all which were at his service to copy and publish in his own way as historical romances, only disguising the names, so as not to compromise the credit of the existing descendants of the families in question. Sir Walter listened to the Duke for the remainder of the evening, and was so captivated with all he heard from that amiable and accomplished personage, that at one moment he thought of remaining for a time at Rome, and at another he vowed he would return there in the ensuing winter. Whoever has read any of these memoirs of Italian families, of which many are published and very many exist in manuscript, will acknowledge how they abound in strange events and romantic stories, and may form some idea of the delight with which Sir Walter imagined himself on the point of pouncing upon a treasure after his own heart."

Had the magician of the north recovered his health and lived a few years longer, how splendid might have been the fruits of his visit to Malta and Italy! And yet it will be generally admitted that no work of his, whether scenery or character be considered, ever reached that pre-eminence which distinguishes those that belong to his native country, a thing to be expected of a writer who entertained an inextinguishable yearning of love for the land of his forefathers, as some of our few remaining extracts poignantly illustrate. After the 11th of May we read,

"The irritation of impatience, which had for a moment been suspended by the aspect and society of Rome, returned the moment he found himself on the road, and seemed to increase hourly. His companions could with difficulty prevail on him to see even the Falls of Terni, or the Church of Santa Croce at Florence. On the 17th, a cold and dreary day, they passed the Apennines, and dined on the top of the mountains. The snow and the pines recalled Scotland, and he expressed pleasure at the sight of them. That night they reached Bologna, but he would see none of the interesting objects there and next day, hurrying in like manner through Ferrara, he proceeded as far as Monselice. On the 19th he arrived at Venice; and he remained there till the 23rd; but showed no curiosity about any thing except the Bridge of Sighs and the adjoining dungeons-down into which he would scramble, though the exertion was exceedingly painful to him. On the other historical features of that place-one so sure in other days to have inexhaustible attractions for him-he would not even look; and it was the same with all that he came within reach of—even with the fondly anticipated chapel at Inspruck-as they proceeded through the Tyrol, and so onwards, by Munich, Ulm, and Heidelberg, to Frankfort. Here (June 5) he entered a bookseller's shop; and the people seeing an English party, brought out among the first things a lithographed print of Abbotsford. He said, I know that already, sir,' and hastened back to the inn without being recognised. Though in some parts of the journey they had very severe weather, he repeatedly wished to travel all the night as well as all the day; and the symptoms of an approaching fit were so obvious, that he was more than once bled, ere they reached Mayence, by the hand of his affectionate domestic.

"At this town they embarked on the 8th June in the Rhine steam-boat; and while they descended the famous river through its most picturesque region, he seemed to enjoy, though he said nothing, the perhaps unrivalled. scenery it presented to him. His eye was fixed on the successive crags and castles, and ruined monasteries, each of which had been celebrated in some German ballad familiar to his ear, and all of them blended in the immortal panorama of Childe Harold. But so soon as he resumed his carriage at Cologne, and nothing but flat shores, and here and there a grove of poplars and a village spire were offered to the vision, the weight of misery sunk down again upon him. It was near Nimeguen, on the evening of the 9th, that he sustained another serious attack of apoplexy, combined with paralysis. Nicolson's lancet restored, after the lapse of some minutes, the signs of animation; but this was the crowning blow. Next day he insisted on resuming his journey, and on the 11th was lifted from the carriage into a steam-boat at Rotterdam."

Scott lay in London for some weeks, when an universal interest and sympathy was manifested in his behalf. His condition during this period was generally that of stupor. We quote from the memorandum of Dr. Ferguson :

"When I saw Sir Walter he was lying in the second floor back-room of the St. James's Hotel, in Jermyn Street, in a state of stupor, from which, however, he could be roused for a moment by being addressed, and then he recognised those about him, but immediately relapsed. I think I never saw anything more magnificent than the symmetry of his colossal bust, as he lay on the pillow with his chest and neck exposed. During the time he was in Jermyn Street he was calm but never collected, and in general either in absolute stupor or in a waking dream. He never seemed to know where he was, but imagined himself to be still in the steam boat. The rattling of carriages, and the noises of the street sometimes disturbed this illusion, and then he fancied himself at the polling booth of Jedburgh, where he had been insulted and stoned.

"During the whole of this period of apparent helplessness, the great features of his character could not be mistaken. He always exhibited great self-possession, and acted his part with wonderful power whenever visited, though he relapsed the next moment into the stupor from which strange voices had roused him. A gentleman stumbled over a chair in his dark room;-he immediately started up, and though unconscious that it was a friend, expressed as much concern and feeling as if he had never been labouring under the irritability of disease. It was impossible even for those who most constantly saw and waited on him in his then deplorable condition, to relax from the habitual deference which he had always inspired. He expressed his will as determinedly as ever, and enforced it with the same apt and good-natured irony as he was wont to use.

"At length his constant yearning to return to Abbotsford induced his physicians to consent to his removal, and the moment this was notified to him it seemed to infuse new vigour into his frame. It was on a calm, clear afternoon of the 7th July, that every preparation was made for his embarkation on board the steam-boat. He was placed on a chair by his faithful servant Nicolson, half-dressed, and loosely wrapt in a quilted