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FEMALE PORTRAIT GALLERY, FROM SIR WALTER SCOTT.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE IMPROVISATRICE."
No. I.—Flora M'Ivor and Rose Bradwardine.
Sir Walter Scott was the Luther of literature. He reformed and he regenerated. To say that he founded a new school is not saying the whole truth; for there is something narrow in the idea of a school, and his influence has been universal. Indeed, there is no such thing as a school in literature; each great writer is his own original, and "none but himself can be his parallel." We hear of the school of Dryden and of Pope, but where and what are their imitators? Parnassus is the very reverse of Mont Blanc. There the summit is gained by treading closely in the steps of the guides; but in the first, the height is only to be reached by a pathway of our own. The influence of a genius like Scott's is shown by the fresh and new spirit he pours into literature.
No merely literary man ever before exercised the power over his age exercised by Scott. It is curious to note the wealth circulated through his means, and the industry and intelligence to which he gave the impetus. The innkeepers of Scotland ought to have no sign but his head. When Waverley appeared, a tour through Scotland was an achievement: now, how few there are but have passed an autumn at least amid its now classic scenery. I own it gave my picturesque fancies at first a shock, to hear of a steam-boat on Loch Katrine; but I was wrong. Nothing could be a more decisive proof of the increased communication between England and Scotland—and communication is the regal road to improvement of every kind. How many prejudices have floated away on the tremulous line of vapour following the steam-vessel; and what a store of poetical enjoyment must the voyagers have carried home! More than one touch of that sly humour, which seems to me peculiarly and solely marking the Scotch, has been bestowed on the cockney invaders of the "land of brown heath and shaggy wood." May I, a Londoner bred, say a word in defence of the feeling which takes such to the shore of
"Lovely Loch Achray!
Where shall they find on foreign land,
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"
But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one
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