Now what could have induced Scott to write novels tending to make people Papists and Jacobites, and in love with arbitrary power?  Did he think that Christianity was a gaudy mummery?  He did not, he could not, for he had read the Bible; yet was he fond of gaudy mummeries, fond of talking about them.  Did he believe that the Stuarts were a good family, and fit to govern a country like Britain?  He knew that they were a vicious, worthless crew, and that Britain was a degraded country as long as they swayed the sceptre; but for those facts he cared nothing, they governed in a way which he liked, for he had an abstract love of despotism, and an abhorrence of everything savouring of freedom and the rights of man in general.  His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate, careless king, nominally absolute—­the heads of great houses paying court to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no wonder he admired such a church as that of Rome, and that which Laud set up; and by nature formed to be the holder of the candle to ancient worm-eaten and profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies were with the Stuarts and their dissipated insolent party, and all his hatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a state of vassalage, that is, wretchedness.  Those who were born great, were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however worthless their characters.  Those who were born low, were always to remain so, however great their talents; though, if that rule were carried out, where would he have been himself?

In the book which he called the “History of Napoleon Bonaparte,” in which he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe, whatever their crimes, vices, or miserable imbecilities, he, in his abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself illustrious, calls Murat of the sabre the son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook.  It is a pity that people who give themselves hoity-toity airs—­and the Scotch in general are wonderfully addicted to giving themselves hoity-toity airs, and checking people better than themselves with their birth {6} and their country—­it is a great pity that such people do not look at home-son of a pastry-cook, of a Marseilleise pastry-cook!  Well, and what was Scott himself?  Why, son of a pettifogger, of an Edinburgh pettifogger.  “Oh, but Scott was descended from the old cow-stealers of Buccleuch, and therefore—­” descended from old cow-stealers, was he?  Well, had he nothing to boast of beyond such a pedigree, he would have lived and died the son of a pettifogger, and