one in the case of an impressionable boy.  A little later, when he passed from the educational care of his mother to that of a tutor, his relations to literature changed, as the following passage from his autobiography will show:  “My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a profane play or poem; and my mother had no longer the opportunity to hear me read poetry as formerly.  I found, however, in her dressing-room, where I slept at one time, some odd volumes of Shakespeare; nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I sat up in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment, until the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me that it was time to creep back to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since 9 o’clock.”  This is a suggestive, as well as frank, story.  Supposing for a moment that instead of Shakespeare the room had contained some of the volumes of verse and romance which, though denying alike the natural and the supernatural virtues, are to be found in many a Christian home, how easily might he have suffered a contamination of mind.

DOMESTIC LOVE AND SOCIAL DUTY.

It has been proudly said of Sir Walter as an author that he never forgot the sanctities of domestic love and social duty in all that he wrote; and considering how much he did write, and how vast has been the influence of his work on mankind, we can scarcely overestimate the importance of the fact.  Yet it might have been all wrecked by one little parental imprudence in this matter of books.  And what excuse is there, after all, for running the terrible risk?  Authors who are not fit to be read by the sons and daughters are rarely read without injury by the fathers and mothers; and it would be better by far, Savonarola-like, to make a bonfire of all the literature of folly, wickedness, and infidelity, than run the risk of injuring a child simply for the sake of having a few volumes more on one’s shelves.  In the balance of heaven there is no parity between a complete library and a lost soul.  But this story has another lesson.  It indicates once more the injury which may be done to character by undue limitations.  Under the ill-considered restrictions of his tutor, which ran counter to the good sense of his mother, whose wisdom was justified by the event, Walter Scott might easily have fallen into tricks of concealment and forfeited his candor—­that candor which developed into the noble probity which marked his conduct to the last.  Without candor there can not be truth, and, as he himself has said, there can be no other virtue without truth.  Fortunately for him, by the wise sanction his mother had given to his perusal of imaginative writings, she had robbed them of a mystery unhealthy in itself; and he came through these stolen readings substantially unharmed, because he knew that his fault was only the lighter one of sitting up when he was supposed to be lying down.