* * * * *

    “Nor deem that localized Romance
      Plays false with our affections;
    Unsanctifies our tears—­made sport
      For fanciful dejections: 
    Ah, no! the visions of the past
      Sustain the heart in feeling
    Life as she is—­our changeful Life
      With friends and kindred dealing.

    “Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day
      In Yarrow’s groves were centred,
    Who through the silent portal arch
      Of mouldering Newark enter’d;
    And clomb the winding stair that once
      Too timidly was mounted
    By the last Minstrel—­not the last!—­
      Ere he his tale recounted.”

Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of which was not yet, do honour to itself in doing homage to the Minstrel of romantic energy and martial enterprise, who, with the school of poetry he loved, was passing away.

On the 23rd September Scott left Abbotsford, spending five days on his journey to London; nor would he allow any of the old objects of interest to be passed without getting out of the carriage to see them.  He did not leave London for Portsmouth till the 23rd October, but spent the intervening time in London, where he took medical advice, and with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair into a dark corner during the physicians’ absence from the room to consult, that he might read their faces clearly on their return without their being able to read his.  They recognized traces of brain disease, but Sir Walter was relieved by their comparatively favourable opinion, for he admitted that he had feared insanity, and therefore had “feared them.”  On the 29th October he sailed for Malta, and on the 20th November Sir Walter insisted on being landed on a small volcanic island which had appeared four months previously, and which disappeared again in a few days, and on clambering about its crumbling lava, in spite of sinking at nearly every step almost up to his knees, in order that he might send a description of it to his old friend Mr. Skene.  On the 22nd November he reached Malta, where he looked eagerly at the antiquities of the place, for he still hoped to write a novel—­and, indeed, actually wrote one at Naples, which was never published, called The Siege of Malta—­on the subject of the Knights of Malta, who had interested him so much in his youth.  From Malta Scott went to Naples, which he reached on the 17th December, and where he found much pleasure in the society of Sir William Gell, an invalid like himself, but not one who, like himself, struggled against the admission of his infirmities, and refused to be carried when his own legs would not safely carry him.  Sir William Gell’s dog delighted the old man; he would pat it and call it “Poor boy!” and confide to Sir William how he had at home “two very fine favourite dogs, so large that I am always afraid they look too large and too feudal for my diminished income.”  In all his letters home he gave some injunction to Mr. Laidlaw about the poor people and the dogs.