rom Edinburgh. The tower of
Wolf's Crag was probably suggested to him by Fast Castle, the ruin of
which still lures the traveller's eye, upon the iron-ribbed and gloomy
coast of the North Sea, a few miles southeast of Dunbar--a place,
however, that Scott never visited, and never saw except from the ocean.
There is a beach upon that coast, just above Cockburnspath, that might
well have suggested to him the quicksand and the final catastrophe. I
saw it when the morning sun was shining upon it and upon the placid
waters just rippling on its verge; and even in the glad glow of a summer
day it was grim with silent menace and mysterious with an air of
sinister secrecy. In the preparation of this piece for the stage all the
sources and associations of the subject were considered; and the
pictorial setting, framed upon the right artistic principle--that
imagination should transfigure truth and thus produce the essential
result of poetic effect--was elaborate and magnificent. And the play is
the best one that ever has been made upon this subject.

The basis of fact upon which Sir Walter Scott built his novel of the
_Bride of Lammermoor_ is given in the introduction that he wrote for it
in 1829. Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair and of his
wife Margaret Ross, had privately plighted herself to Lord Rutherford.
Those lovers had broken a piece of gold together, and had bound
themselves by vows the most solemn and fervent that passion could
prompt. But Lord Rutherford was objectionable to Miss Dalrymple's
parents, who liked not either his family or his politics. Lady Stair,
furthermore, had selected a husband for her daughter, in the person of
David Dunbar, of Baldoon; and Lady Stair was a woman of formidable
character, set upon having her own way and accustomed to prevail. As
soon as she heard of Janet's private engagement to Lord Rutherford she
declared the vow to be undutiful and unlawful and she commanded that it
should be broken. Lord Rutherford, a man of energy and of spirit,
thereupon insisted that he would take his dismissal only from the lips
of Miss Dalrymple herself, and he demanded and obtained an interview
with her. Lady Stair was present, and such was her ascendency over her
daughter's mind that the young lady remained motionless and mute,
permitting her betrothal to Lord Rutherford to be broken, and, upon her
mother's command, giving back to him the piece of gold that was the
token of her promise. Lord