fame reached such a point as this, it became both a worry and a serious waste of money, and what was far more valuable than money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of mind.  And though no man ever bore such worries with the equanimity of Scott, no man ever received less pleasure from the adulation of unknown and often vulgar and ignorant admirers.  His real amusements were his trees and his friends.  “Planting and pruning trees,” he said, “I could work at from morning to night.  There is a sort of self-congratulation, a little tickling self-flattery, in the idea that while you are pleasing and amusing yourself, you are seriously contributing to the future welfare of the country, and that your very acorn may send its future ribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar,"[42]—­for the day of iron ships was not yet.  And again, at a later stage of his planting:—­“You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of a planter,—­he is like a painter laying on his colours,—­at every moment he sees his effects coming out.  There is no art or occupation comparable to this; it is full of past, present, and future enjoyment.  I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare heath; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up, all of which, I may say almost each of which, have received my personal attention.  I remember, five years ago, looking forward with the most delighted expectation to this very hour, and as each year has passed, the expectation has gone on increasing.  I do the same now.  I anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress.  Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted; but goes on from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetually augmenting interest.  Farming I hate.  What have I to do with fattening and killing beasts, or raising corn, only to cut it down, and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy of the seasons?  There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in planting trees."[43] Scott indeed regarded planting as a mode of so moulding the form and colour of the outward world, that nature herself became indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses of colour, and deeper shadows, as well as for more fertile and sheltered soils.  And he was as skilful in producing the last result, as he was in the artistic effects of his planting.  In the essay on the planting of waste lands, he mentions a story,—­drawn from his own experience,—­of a planter, who having scooped out the lowest part of his land for enclosures, and “planted the wood round them in masses enlarged or contracted as the natural lying of the ground seemed to dictate,” met, six years after these changes, his former tenant on the ground, and said to him, “I suppose, Mr. R——­, you will say I have ruined your farm by laying half of it into woodland?”