real existence.  Goethe’s pictures of women were no doubt the intuitions of genius; and so are Scott’s of men—­and here and there of his women too.  Professional women he can always paint with power.  Meg Dods, the innkeeper, Meg Merrilies, the gipsy, Mause Headrigg, the Covenanter, Elspeth, the old fishwife in The Antiquary, and the old crones employed to nurse and watch, and lay out the corpse, in The Bride of Lammermoor, are all in their way impressive figures.

And even in relation to women of a rank more fascinating to Scott, and whose inner character was perhaps on that account, less familiar to his imagination, grant him but a few hints from history, and he draws a picture which, for vividness and brilliancy, may almost compare with Shakespeare’s own studies in English history.  Had Shakespeare painted the scene in The Abbot, in which Mary Stuart commands one of her Mary’s in waiting to tell her at what bridal she last danced, and Mary Fleming blurts out the reference to the marriage of Sebastian at Holyrood, would any one hesitate to regard it as a stroke of genius worthy of the great dramatist?  This picture of the Queen’s mind suddenly thrown off its balance, and betraying, in the agony of the moment, the fear and remorse which every association with Darnley conjured up, is painted “from the heart outwards,” not “from the skin inwards,” if ever there were such a painting in the world.  Scott hardly ever failed in painting kings or peasants, queens or peasant-women.  There was something in the well-marked type of both to catch his imagination, which can always hit off the grander features of royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility.  Is there any sketch traced in lines of more sweeping grandeur and more impressive force than the following of Mary Stuart’s lucid interval of remorse—­lucid compared with her ordinary mood, though it was of a remorse that was almost delirious—­which breaks in upon her hour of fascinating condescension?—­

     “’Are they not a lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not
     heart-rending to think that I must be their ruin?’

“‘Not so,’ said Roland Graeme, ’it is we, gracious sovereign, who will be your deliverers.’ ‘Ex oribus parvulorum!’ said the queen, looking upward; ’if it is by the mouth of these children that heaven calls me to resume the stately thoughts which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant them thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their zeal.’  Then turning to Fleming, she instantly added, ’Thou knowest, my friend, whether to make those who have served me happy, was not ever Mary’s favourite pastime.  When I have been rebuked by the stern preachers of the Calvinistic heresy—­when I have seen the fierce countenances of my nobles averted from me, has it not been because I mixed in the harmless pleasures of the young and gay, and rather for the sake of their happiness than my own, have mingled in the masque, the song or the dance,