of noted talents, and daughter of a man eminent in his profession, Dr. Rutherford of Edinburgh, a pupil of Boerhaave, and one of the founders of the great school of medicine in the Scotttish metropolis, to whom the family of that name in our own city was closely related. His own birth was on the 15th of August, 1771, and thirteen brothers and sisters, who followed him in rapid succession, all (such is the uncertain tenure of youth) preceded him to the grave. His brother Thomas was, I believe, the last: the same to whom, while with his regiment (the 70th, in which he was paymaster,) in Canada, was so confidently attributed by many the authorship of the Waverley novels. "He was the best loved," as Sir Walter mournfully said, "and the best deserving to be loved;" but with powers at will he assured me he never wrote a word. Indolence or ill-health broke down his literary resolutions, and after some preparation and many delays, he died without giving evidence to the world of a superiority of talents universally acknowledged by those who knew him, leaving an only son who bears his uncle's name, as he partakes much it is said of his kindred talents. The childhood of Scott was passed where childhood is most happily, perhaps most wisely taught, surrounded by the awakening scenes of There, as he himself tells us,

nature.

"There was the poetic impulse given,
By the green hill and clear blue heaven."

That he was at this time "a self-willed imp," we have his own authority for saying, but then he goes on to add what we can readily believe,

"But half a plague and half a jest
Was still endured, bcloved, carest."

His youth was spent in Edinburgh, to which city his father had removed, under the instruction of an able teacher, Dr. Adam of the high-school; but as his pupil loved more to tell

of his frolics than his studies, we may conclude that the wild nature was still uppermost in him. Among the incidents of that period, which he related to us with his deepest feeling, was the story of that "fair haired Goth," which he has elsewhere commemorated, who when wounded in one of their "bickers" or chance mêlées, indignantly refused the purse which was made up as a compensation for the wound, (the author of which he yet refused to divulge) with the noble answer, that "he did not sell his blood;" while from the tone of Sir Walter's narrative, I concluded his brother or himself to have been the unfortunate giver of it. Hardihood was as marked in Sir Walter's habits, as it is every where in his writings. He loved, practised, and excelled, in every manly sport. In spite of a lameness in his right ankle, brought upon him in infancy by the carelessness of a nurse, or rather perhaps in contempt of it, for he was not deficient in that quality (obstinacy) "which, as he himself observes, is often said to be proper to those who bear his surname," he prided himself on all athletic exercises, and would often walk thirty, or ride one hundred miles, without resting. In those days of youth, freedom, and frolic, such talents passed for more perhaps than they were truly worth; but at any rate, they made him with all, a favorite and boon companion; and right happy was the youth, who, in the hour of peril, could have Scott on his side, with his talents in counsel, and his prowess in the field. The picture of Willie Garlas, as given by Mc Niel, was doubtless true of him.

"The

But he had talents for other than the hour of peril. applause of my young companions was my recompense (he observes) for the disgraces and punishments which the future romance writer incurred for being idle himself, and keeping others idle, during hours that should have been em

ployed in their tasks." I will not now stop to inquire, with severer critics, whether the romances of his later years may not subject him to the same condemnation, but content myself with observing, that at this period of his life was that power nurtured which afterwards produced its "specious miracles;" since, to great natural talent for narrative, was now added the stimulus of applause and frequent practice-to which a long interval of feeble health added fuel, for it threw him back upon the world of fiction as a resource, at an age when imagination is most active, and made him, as he himself said, "a glutton of books," and more especially of the romances of chivalry.

Such was the education of the future poet-broken, partial, and irregular, and ever with a strong leaning to the culture of the imagination. If we take his statement as our criterion, he was ever ready to turn study into play: if we look to his works, we find them full of that varied and multifarious learning which is not to be gained in idleness. The truth, probably, lies between. He was more studious, we may believe, than he himself paints. But, then, his was a mind of that felicitous power, that gathering knowledge as it runs, and never losing what it has once gained—was often outwardly idle and inwardly busy. But with advancing years, graver cares engaged him. Though highly descended, gallant, brave, talented, and courteous, yet had he his own way to make to fortune. In an age of chivalry, that way would have been short and clear; but the days of chivalry, which, in one sense, he was destined to restore, had gone by, and that of economists had succeeded, in which "if a man will not work, neither shall he eat." One of a large family too, there were many to share and not much to divide; and although eventually, as the survivor, the inheritor of a handsome competency, still, neither his spirit nor his prospects permitted, at that time, much dependence upon it. In this emergency the profession of his father became his choice;

and, as soon as he was of legal age (1792), he was admitted to the practice of the Scottish bar. In the character of Darsie Latimer we read, no doubt, his own feelings as to the drudgery of this profession-straining like a greyhound in the slips for a freer course. But, whatever were his feelings, he restrained them sufficiently to become well versed in its technicalities, to acquire a fair reputation, and moderate practice in it, and add one other element to his future powers as a novelist: I mean that niceness of distinction, and that acuteness in tracing the chain of moral probabilities, which is so preeminent in his writings, and which is to be learned no where so thoroughly as in the studies and practice of this most intellectual of professions. So far, at least, Scott was a lawyer, and often evinces, in the management of his incidents and characters, the habits of a wary counsel and the skill of a thorough bred cross-examiner.

But nature was too strong for all his resolutions. In 1794 he translated the Lenore of Bürger; and the zeal with which it was done proves how congenial was the poetic task. He began it one evening, after supper, and completed it as the day was dawning. Glenfinlas was his earliest attempt at original poetry, and was published together with a few other things, in 1796, but without attracting much attention. His subsequent contributions to Lewis's Tales of Wonder(in 1801) shared the same fate; partly from their company, being jocosely termed the Tales of Plunder, instead of Wonder; and partly from their own deficiencies, for he had not as yet struck upon the true vein of his genius. In the language of miners, he was following a dead lode-or, to take the figure from his favourite pursuit, a false scent; but the quarry was almost in view-the golden ore was near-and, as if aware of his approach to it, he proceeded more boldly with (what Bacon terms) his "tentative experiments." His "Scottish Minstrelsy" was a decided step in advance, but still, in the phraseology of the trade, "a heavy concern." In the mean

time, it was more than fame he was writing for: he had married, some years before, Miss Carpenter, a young lady of the island of Jersey; and the claims of a rising family must have made him look with no little anxiety to the dubious profits of his new labors, and the retiring ones of his old profession; since, in Scotland as elsewhere, to use his own words, "the goddess Themis is peculiarly jealous of any flirtation with the muses on the part of those who have ranged themselves under her banners."

In this emergency our author took a course as marked by prudence as it subsequently was by the higher trait of consistency. He resolved, abandoning all ambitious prospects at the bar, to seek nevertheless some official station connected with it; the salary of which, together with his private means, might raise him above dependence, and thus leave the casual profits of literature to be, as he resolved they should be, "the staff and not the crutch" of his declining years. To such a man the needful patronage could not long be wanting : we accordingly soon find him in possession of the moderate preferment of sheriff of Selkirkshire, worth about three hundred pounds per annum; to which was not long after added, through the personal friendship of Dundas, and the patronage of Pitt, the more lucrative, but at the same time more laborious situation, of one of the principal clerks of session. The former of these appointments he held at the period of my visit, and it was one suited alike to his taste and habits; there was not only something baronial in its influence, but what was still more congenial, it gave him the opportunity of conferring many and important kindnesses, both as a man and á magistrate. The latter station he either had, or was then about resigning from the fatigue attendant upon its duties. It was one of pure drudgery, the labors of which he had gratuitously performed under agreement with its former incumbent for five years after he had nominally enjoyed the profits. By a singular coin