iction, being content to admit, even to himself, that
while his feelings leaned in one direction, his reason pointed decidedly
in the other; and holding that it was hardly needful to identify himself
positively with either. As regarded the present, however, feeling always
carried the day. Scott was a Tory all his life.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vi. 172-3. The edition
referred to is throughout the edition of 1839 in ten volumes.]

[Footnote 2: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 241.]

[Footnote 3: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 243-4.]

[Footnote 4: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, i. 128.]

CHAPTER II.

YOUTH--CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.

As Scott grew up, entered the classes of the college, and began his legal
studies, first as apprentice to his father, and then in the law classes of
the University, he became noticeable to all his friends for his gigantic
memory,--the rich stores of romantic material with which it was
loaded,--his giant feats of industry for any cherished purpose,--his
delight in adventure and in all athletic enterprises,--his great enjoyment
of youthful "rows," so long as they did not divide the knot of friends to
which he belonged, and his skill in peacemaking amongst his own set.
During his apprenticeship his only means of increasing his slender
allowance with funds which he could devote to his favourite studies, was
to earn money by copying, and he tells us himself that he remembered
writing "120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest,"
fourteen or fifteen hours' very hard work at the very least,--expressly
for this purpose.

In the second year of Scott's apprenticeship, at about the age of
sixteen, he had an attack of haemorrhage, no recurrence of which took
place for some forty years, but which was then the beginning of the
end. During this illness silence was absolutely imposed upon him,--two
old ladies putting their fingers on their lips, whenever he offered
to speak. It was at this time that the lad began his study of the
scenic side of history, and especially of campaigns, which he
illustrated for himself by the arrangement of shells, seeds, and
pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies, in the manner
referred to (and referred to apparently in anticipation of a later
stage of his life than that he was then speaking of) in the passage
from the introduction to the third canto of _Marmion_ which I have
already given. He also managed so to arr