e mind or to the body--and seldom may it visit
your ladyship--and when the hour of death that comes to high and low--lang
and late may it be yours--oh, my lady, then it is na' what we hae dune
for oursels but what we hae dune for ithers that we think on maist
pleasantly. And the thought that ye hae intervened to spare the puir
thing's life will be sweeter in that hour, come when it may, than if a
word of your mouth could hang the haill Porteous mob at the tail of ae
tow." Jeanie Deans is the strongest woman in the gallery of Scott, and
an embodiment of all that is sober, and strong, and conscientious, and
passionate in Scotch nature.

The bookman has indeed no trouble arranging his gossips in his mind,
where they hold good fellowship, but he is careful to keep them apart
upon his bookshelves, and when he comes home after an absence and finds
his study has been tidied, which in the feminine mind means putting
things in order, and to the bookman general anarchy (it was the real
reason Eve was put out of Eden), when he comes home, I say, and finds
that happy but indecorous rascal Boccaccio, holding his very sides for
laughter, between Lecky's _History of European Morals_ and Law's _Serious
Call_, both admirable books, then the bookman is much exhilarated.
Because of the mischief that is in him he will not relieve those two
excellent men of that disgraceful Italian's company for a little space,
but if he finds that the domestic sprite has thrust a Puritan between two
Anglican theologians he effects a separation without delay, for a
religious controversy with its din and clatter is more than he can bear.

The bookman is indeed perpetually engaged in his form of spring cleaning,
which is rearranging his books, and is always hoping to square the
circle, in both collecting the books of one department together, and also
having his books in equal sizes. After a brief glance at a folio and an
octavo side by side he gives up that attempt, but although he may have to
be content to see his large Augustine, Benedictine edition, in the same
row with Bayle's Dictionary, he does not like it and comforts himself by
thrusting in between, as a kind of mediator, Spotswood's _History of the
Church of Scotland_ with Burnett's _Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton_,
that edition which has the rare portrait of Charles I. by Faithorne. He
will be all his life rearranging, and so comes to understand how it is
that women spend forenoons of delight