endants to borrow his name and live in the halls of
which he was so proud. And yet this, and this only, was wanting to
give something of the grandeur of tragedy to the end of Scott's great
enterprise. He valued his works little compared with the house and
lands which they were to be the means of gaining for his descendants;
yet every end for which he struggled so gallantly is all but lost,
while his works have gained more of added lustre from the losing
battle which he fought so long, than they could ever have gained from
his success.

What there was in him of true grandeur could never have been seen, had
the fifth act of his life been less tragic than it was. Generous,
large-hearted, and magnanimous as Scott was, there was something in
the days of his prosperity that fell short of what men need for their
highest ideal of a strong man. Unbroken success, unrivalled
popularity, imaginative effort flowing almost as steadily as the
current of a stream,--these are characteristics, which, even when
enhanced as they were in his case, by the power to defy physical pain,
and to live in his imaginative world when his body was writhing in
torture, fail to touch the heroic point. And there was nothing in
Scott, while he remained prosperous, to relieve adequately the glare
of triumphant prosperity. His religious and moral feeling, though
strong and sound, was purely regulative, and not always even
regulative, where his inward principle was not reflected in the
opinions of the society in which he lived. The finer spiritual element
in Scott was relatively deficient, and so the strength of the natural
man was almost too equal, complete, and glaring. Something that should
"tame the glaring white" of that broad sunshine, was needed; and in
the years of reverse, when one gift after another was taken away, till
at length what he called even his "magic wand" was broken, and the old
man struggled on to the last, without bitterness, without defiance,
without murmuring, but not without such sudden flashes of subduing
sweetness as melted away the anger of the teacher of his
childhood,--that something seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came,
Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Then
first was perceived in him something above nature, something which
could endure though every end in life for which he had fought so
boldly should be defeated,--something which could endure and more than
endure, which could shoot a soft