of that wretched crew of all that rendered life pleasant in his eyes, the lack of which paralysed him in body and mind, rendered him pitiable to others, loathsome to himself,—­so much so, that he once said, “Where is the beggar who would change places with me, notwithstanding all my fame?” Ah!  God knows perfectly well how to strike.  He permitted him to retain all his literary fame to the very last—­his literary fame for which he cared nothing; but what became of the sweetness of life, his fine house, his grand company, and his entertainments?  The grand house ceased to be his; he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur it might still retain, it soon became as desolate a looking house as any misanthrope could wish to see—­where were the grand entertainments and the grand company? there are no grand entertainments where there is no money; no lords and ladies where there are no entertainments—­and there lay the poor lodger in the desolate house, groaning on a bed no longer his, smitten by the hand of God in the part where he was most vulnerable.  Of what use telling such a man to take comfort, for he had written the “Minstrel” and “Rob Roy,”—­telling him to think of his literary fame?  Literary fame, indeed! he wanted back his lost gentility:-

“Retain my altar,
I care nothing for it—­but, oh! touch not my beard.” 
PORNY’S War of the Gods.

He dies, his children die too, and then comes the crowning judgment of God on what remains of his race and the house which he had built.  He was not a Papist himself, nor did he wish any one belonging to him to be Popish, for he had read enough of the Bible to know that no one can be saved through Popery, yet had he a sneaking affection for it, and would at times in an underhand manner, give it a good word both in writing and discourse, because it was a gaudy kind of worship, and ignorance and vassalage prevailed so long as it flourished—­but he certainly did not wish any of his people to become Papists, nor the house which he had built to become a Popish house, though the very name he gave it savoured of Popery; but Popery becomes fashionable through his novels and poems—­the only one that remains of his race, a female grandchild, marries a person who, following the fashion, becomes a Papist, and makes her a Papist too.  Money abounds with the husband, who buys the house, and then the house becomes the rankest Popish house in Britain.  A superstitious person might almost imagine that one of the old Scottish Covenanters, whilst the grand house was being built from the profits resulting from the sale of writings favouring Popery and persecution, and calumniatory of Scotland’s saints and martyrs, had risen from the grave, and banned Scott, his race, and his house, by reading a certain psalm.