the
child long afterwards as "a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all
about the house," and certainly the miniature taken of him in his
seventh year confirms the impression thus given. It is sweet-tempered
above everything, and only the long upper lip and large mouth, derived
from his ancestress, Meg Murray, convey the promise of the power which
was in him. Of course the high, almost conical forehead, which gained
him in his later days from his comrades at the bar the name of "Old
Peveril," in allusion to "the peak" which they saw towering high above
the heads of other men as he approached, is not so much marked beneath
the childish locks of this miniature as it was in later life; and the
massive, and, in repose, certainly heavy face of his maturity, which
conveyed the impression of the great bulk of his character, is still
quite invisible under the sunny ripple of childish earnestness and
gaiety. Scott's hair in childhood was light chestnut, which turned to
nut brown in youth. His eyebrows were bushy, for we find mention made
of them as a "pent-house." His eyes were always light blue. They had
in them a capacity, on the one hand, for enthusiasm, sunny brightness,
and even hare-brained humour, and on the other for expressing
determined resolve and kindly irony, which gave great range of
expression to the face. There are plenty of materials for judging what
sort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he early taught
himself to clamber about with an agility that few children could have
surpassed, and to sit his first pony--a little Shetland, not bigger
than a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the house to be
fed by him--even in gallops on very rough ground. He became very early
a declaimer. Having learned the ballad of Hardy Knute, he shouted it
forth with such pertinacious enthusiasm that the clergyman of his
grandfather's parish complained that he "might as well speak in a
cannon's mouth as where that child was." At six years of age Mrs.
Cockburn described him as the most astounding genius of a boy, she
ever saw. "He was reading a poem to his mother when I went in. I made
him read on: it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose
with the storm. 'There's the mast gone,' says he; 'crash it goes; they
will all perish.' After his agitation he turns to me, 'That is too
melancholy,' says he; 'I had better read you something more amusing.'"
And after the call, he told his aunt he liked Mrs. Co