to pay every penny.  Times were indeed changed in England when, instead of a literary genius starving until some wealthy patron gave him a pension, this man, aided by his pen alone, could confidently begin to earn that enormous amount of money.  And this is one of the unnoticed results of the popularization of literature.  Without a doubt Scott would have accomplished the task, had he been granted only a few years of health.  He still lived at Abbotsford, which he had offered to his creditors, but which they generously refused to accept; and in two years, by miscellaneous work, had paid some two hundred thousand dollars of his debt, nearly half of this sum coming from his Life of Napoleon.  A new edition of the Waverley novels appeared, which was very successful financially, and Scott had every reason to hope that he would soon face the world owing no man a penny, when he suddenly broke under the strain.  In 1830 occurred a stroke of paralysis from which he never fully recovered; though after a little time he was again at work, dictating with splendid patience and resolution.  He writes in his diary at this time:  “The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely feel it.  It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready, yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky.”

It is good to remember that governments are not always ungrateful, and to record that, when it became known that a voyage to Italy might improve Scott’s health, the British government promptly placed a naval vessel at the disposal of a man who had led no armies to the slaughter, but had only given pleasure to multitudes of peaceable men and women by his stories.  He visited Malta, Naples, and Rome; but in his heart he longed for Scotland, and turned homeward after a few months of exile.  The river Tweed, the Scotch hills, the trees of Abbotsford, the joyous clamor of his dogs, brought forth the first exclamation of delight which had passed Scott’s lips since he sailed away.  He died in September of the same year, 1832, and was buried with his ancestors in the old Dryburgh Abbey.

WORKS OF SCOTT.  Scott’s work is of a kind which the critic gladly passes over, leaving each reader to his own joyous and uninstructed opinion.  From a literary view point the works are faulty enough, if one is looking for faults; but it is well to remember that they were intended to give delight, and that they rarely fail of their object.  When one has read the stirring Marmion or the more enduring Lady of the Lake, felt the heroism of the Crusaders in The Talisman, the picturesqueness of chivalry in Ivanhoe, the nobleness of soul of a Scotch peasant girl in The Heart of Midlothian, and the quality of Scotch faith in Old Mortality, then his own opinion of Scott’s genius will be of more value than all the criticisms that have ever been written.