and a better sphere, where the beautiful will also be the everlasting. The homage involuntarily paid to its mysterious influence is but an unconscious acknowledgment of its divine origin, and its eternal future. Here we see it, but through a glass darkly. The presence of beauty has been perpetual in our fictions, but Scott was the first novelist who made its absence the ground- work for the character of a hero. His example has been followed in more than one illustrious instance, though whether it gave the hint for Byron's "Deformed Transformed," admits of a question. Full of animation, breaking new ground, and dramatic in action, if not in construction, it is to be regretted that it should only be a fragment: I doubt whether it could ever have been finished, it came too home. A sensitive person feels, and an imaginative one exaggerates any defect—and Lord Byron was both. His lameness originating, as it did, in an unsightly malconformation, was a perpetual source of bitterness to him. What was its effect on Scott it would be more difficult to discover; naturally reserved and cautious, his own feelings are rarely allowed to peep out in the course of his narratives; but it is remarkable that in two instances he has made the personal deficiences of his heroes lead to the formation of their characters, each character exercising a paramount influence on the conduct of the story.
In Rashleigh Osbaldistone the effect has been
