so many classes, and few bear so well that hardest of tests, re-perusal.  Many novels stimulate us more, and while we are reading them we think they are superior to Scott’s; but we miss, in the general impression they leave on the mind, that peculiar charm which, in Scott, calls us back, after a few years, to his pages, to revive the recollection of scenes and characters which may be fading away from our memories.  We doubt, also, if any other novelist has, in a like degree, the power of instantaneously withdrawing so wide a variety of readers from the perplexities and discomforts of actual existence, and making them for the time denizens of a new world.  He has stimulating elements enough, and he exhibits masterly art in the wise economy with which he uses them; but he still stimulates only to invigorate; and when he enlivens jaded minds, it is rather by infusing fresh life than by applying fierce excitements, and there is consequently no reaction of weariness and disgust.  He appeases, satisfies, and enchants, rather than stings and inflames.  The interest he rouses is not of that absorbing nature which exhausts from its very intensity, but is of that genial kind which continuously holds the pleased attention while the story is in progress, and remains in the mind as a delightful memory after the story is finished.  It may also be said of his characters, that, if some other novelists have exhibited a finer and firmer power in delineating higher or rarer types of humanity, Scott is still unapproached in this, that he has succeeded in domesticating his creations in the general heart and brain, and thus obtained the endorsement of human nature as evidence of their genuineness.  His characters are the friends and acquaintances of everybody,—­quoted, referred to, gossipped about, discussed, criticized, as though they were actual beings.  He, as an individual, is almost lost sight of in the imaginary world his genius has peopled; and most of his readers have a more vivid sense of the reality of Dominie Sampson, Jennie Deans, or any other of his characterizations, than they have of himself.  And the reason is obvious.  They know Dominie Sampson through Scott; they know Scott only through Lockhart.  Still, it is certain that the nature of Scott, that essential nature which no biography can give, underlies, animates, disposes, and permeates all the natures he has delineated.  It is this, which, in the last analysis, is found to be the source of his universal popularity, and which, without analysis, is felt as a continual charm by all his readers, whether they live in palaces or cottages.  His is a nature which is welcomed everywhere, because it is at home everywhere.  The mere power and variety of his imagination cannot account for his influence; for the same power and variety might have been directed by a discontented and misanthropic spirit, or have obeyed the impulses of selfish and sensual passions, and thus conveyed a bitter or impure view of human nature and human life.  It is, then, the