ving people had some vague, general, indistinct notions
about dead people mouldering away to nothing, centuries ago, in regular
kirk-yards and chance burial-places, 'mang muirs and mosses many O,'
somewhere or other in that difficultly distinguished and very debatable
district called the Borders. All at once he touched their tombs with a
divining-rod, and the turf streamed out ghosts, some in woodmen's
dresses, most in warriors' mail; queer archers leapt forth, with yew
bows and quivers, and giants stalked shaking spears! The gray
chronicler smiled, and taking up his pen, wrote in lines of light the
annals of the chivalrous and heroic days of auld feudal Scotland. The
nation then, for the first time, knew the character of its ancestors;
for these were not spectres--not they, indeed,--nor phantoms of the
brain, but gaunt flesh and blood, or glad and glorious;--base-born
cottage churls of the olden time, because Scottish, became familiar to
the love of the nation's heart, and so to its pride did the high born
lineage of palace kings. * * * We know now the character of our own
people as it showed itself in war and peace--in palace, castle, hall,
hut, hovel, and shieling--through centuries of advancing civilization."

And it was not only to his countrymen that Scott made vivid and
familiar the history of his native land. Since his genius described the
Highland fastnesses, and peopled them with the chiefs and maidens of
old, all the world feels at home in that land at once so small and so
great. In Italy, in France in Germany, in America, Jeanie Deans and the
Master of Ravenswood are household friends, and Scottish life and
habits are known to tens of thousands who never leave their native
town.

Besides making his country celebrated by his writings, Scott placed the
novel on the firm foundation in public estimation which it has since
retained. He redeemed its character from the disrepute into which it
had fallen. He used it not only as a means of giving acute and
healthful pleasure, but he made it the medium for moral and
intellectual advancement. The purity of thought which pervades all his
writings, the never-failing nobility of the views of life which he
placed before his readers can have no other than an elevating
influence.

Scott's literary success was due both to genius and to industry. Of his
early precocity Mrs. Cockburn has left a remarkable instance.[203] "I
last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the