erfection of Deity, indulged in the love of country? The Saviour,
when He took to Himself a human heart, wept over the city of His
fathers. Now, it is well that this spirit should be fostered, not in
its harsh and exclusive, but in its human and more charitable form.

Liberty cannot long exist apart from it. The spirit of war and
aggression is yet abroad: there are laws to be established, rights to
be defended, invaders to be repulsed, tyrants to be deposed. And who
but the patriot is equal to these things? How was the cry of 'Scotland
for ever' responded to at Waterloo, when the Scots Greys broke through
a column of the enemy to the rescue of their countrymen, and the
Highlanders levelled their bayonets for the charge! A people cannot
survive without the national spirit, except as slaves. The man who
adds to the vigour of the feeling at the same time that he lessens its
exclusiveness, deserves well of his country; and who can doubt that
Sir Walter has done so?

The sympathies of Sir Walter, despite his high Tory predilections,
were more favourable to the people as such than those of Shakespeare.
If the station be low among the characters of the dramatist, it is an
invariable rule that the style of thinking and of sentiment is low
also.

The humble wool-comber of Stratford-on-Avon, possessed of a mind more
capacious beyond comparison than the minds of all the nobles and
monarchs of the age, introduced no such man as himself into his
dramas--no such men as Bunyan or Burns,--men low in place, but kingly
in intellect. Not so, however, the aristocratic Sir Walter. There is
scarcely a finer character in all his writings than the youthful
peasant of Glendearg, Halbert Glendinning, afterwards the noble knight
of Avenel, brave and wise, and alike fitted to lead in the councils of
a great monarch, or to carry his banner in war. His brother Edward is
scarcely a lower character. And when was unsullied integrity in a
humble condition placed in an attitude more suited to command respect
and regard, than in the person of Jeanie Deans?

A man of a lower nature, wrapt round by the vulgar prejudices of rank,
could not have conceived such a character: he would have transferred
to it a portion of his own vulgarity, dressed up in a few borrowed
peculiarities of habit and phraseology. Even the character of Jeanie's
father lies quite as much beyond the ordinary reach. Men such as
Sheridan, Fielding, and Foote, would have represented him