a great many of his own words that he must
have suffered in this uprooting of his most passionate hopes. And it
was in part probably the same pride which led him to form, within the
year, a new tie--his engagement to Mademoiselle Charpentier, or Miss
Carpenter as she was usually called,--the daughter of a French
royalist of Lyons who had died early in the revolution. She had come
after her father's death to England, chiefly, it seems, because in the
Marquis of Downshire, who was an old friend of the family, her mother
knew that she should find a protector for her children. Miss Carpenter
was a lively beauty, probably of no great depth of character. The few
letters given of hers in Mr. Lockhart's life of Scott, give the
impression of an amiable, petted girl, of somewhat thin and _espiegle_
character, who was rather charmed at the depth and intensity of
Scott's nature, and at the expectations which he seemed to form of
what love should mean, than capable of realizing them. Evidently she
had no inconsiderable pleasure in display; but she made on the whole a
very good wife, only one to be protected by him from every care, and
not one to share Scott's deeper anxieties, or to participate in his
dreams. Yet Mrs. Scott was not devoid of spirit and self-control. For
instance, when Mr. Jeffrey, having reviewed _Marmion_ in the
_Edinburgh_ in that depreciating and omniscient tone which was then
considered the evidence of critical acumen, dined with Scott on the
very day on which the review had appeared, Mrs. Scott behaved to him
through the whole evening with the greatest politeness, but fired this
parting shot in her broken English, as he took his leave,--"Well, good
night, Mr. Jeffrey,--dey tell me you have abused Scott in de _Review_,
and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it." It is
hinted that Mrs. Scott was, at the time of Scott's greatest fame, far
more exhilarated by it than her husband with his strong sense and sure
self-measurement ever was. Mr. Lockhart records that Mrs. Grant of
Laggan once said of them, "Mr. Scott always seems to me like a glass,
through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting
it; but the bit of paper that lies beside it will presently be in a
blaze, and no wonder." The bit of paper, however, never was in a blaze
that I know of; and possibly Mrs. Grant's remark may have had a
little feminine spite in it. At all events, it was not till the rays
of misfortune, i