was still a province, and yet in many ways the most vigorous and
progressive part of a great empire. He represents patriotism
stimulated by contact with cosmopolitan movements. Loving every local
peculiarity, painting every class from the noble to the peasant,
loving the old traditions, and yet sharing the great impulses of the
day, Scott was able to interest the world at large. While the most
faithful portrayer of the special national type, he has too much sense
not to be well aware that picturesque cattle-stealers and Jacobite
chiefs were things of the past; but he loves with his whole heart the
institutions rooted in the past and rich in historical associations.
He transferred to poetry and fiction the political doctrine of Burke.
To him, the revolutionary movement was simply a solvent, corroding all
the old ties because it sapped the old traditions, and tended to
substitute a mob for a nation. The continuity of national life seemed
to him the essential condition; and a nation was not a mere aggregate
of separate individuals, but an ancient organism, developing on an
orderly system--where every man had his rightful place, and the
beggar, as he observes in the _Antiquary_, was as ready as the noble
to rise against foreign invasion. To him, the kings or priests who, to
the revolutionist, represented simple despotism, represented part of a
rough but manly order, in which many virtues were conspicuous and the
governing classes were discharging great functions. Though he did not
use the phrase, the revolutionary or radical view was hateful to him
on account of its 'individualism.' It meant the summary destruction of
all that he cherished most warmly in order to carry out theories
altogether revolting to his common-sense. The very roots of a sound
social order depend upon the traditions and accepted beliefs which
bind together clans or families, and assign to every man a
satisfactory function in life. The vivid realisation of history goes
naturally with a love--excessive or reasonable--of the old order; and
Scott, though writing carelessly to amuse idle readers, was
stimulating the historical conceptions, which, for whatever reason,
were most uncongenial to the Utilitarian as to all the revolutionists.

The more conscious philosophical application is illustrated by
Wordsworth and Coleridge. Both of them had shared the truly
revolutionary enthusiasm, and both came in time to be classed with the
Tories. Both, as will be seen