the same commotion. The coast was threatened by a descent from two
English trigates, and the flower of the young men were with the army of
Prince Charles Edward, then in England; yet the summons was so effectual
that even old age and childhood obeyed it; and a force was collected in
a few hours, so numerous and so enthusiastic, that all attempt at
the intended diversion upon the country of the absent warriors was in
prudence abandoned, as desperate."

19. The Summer dawn's reflected hue, etc. Mr. Ruskin says (Modern
Painters, iii. 278): "And thus Nature becomes dear to Scott in a
threefold way: dear to him, first, as containing those remains or
memories of the past, which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of
Praetorian mound or knight's grave in every green slope and shade of its
desolate places; dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for
him just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediaeval;...
and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in cities
and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to thirst,
and Scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's most earnestly.

"And in this love of beauty, observe that the love of colour is a
leading element, his healthy mind being incapable of losing, under any
modern false teaching, its joy in brilliancy of hue. ... In general, if
he does not mean to say much about things, the one character which
he will give is colour, using it with the most perfect mastery and
faithfulness."

After giving many illustrations of Scott's use of colour in his
poetry, Ruskin quotes the present passage, which he says is "still more
interesting, because it has no form in it at all except in one word
(chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of colour, or of that
delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so important an
element in modern landscape."

"Two more considerations," he adds, "are, however, suggested by the
above passage. The first, that the love of natural history, excited
by the continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens
reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an important
element in Scott's description, leading him to finish, down to the
minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of attributed emotion,
the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange opposition to Homer's
slightly named 'sea-crows, who have care of the works of the sea,' and
Dante'