the whole existence of Consuelo; or that the affection of Jeanie Deans
for the companion of her childhood, drawn like a field of soft blue
heaven beyond the cloudy wrack of her sorrow, is less fully in
possession of her soul than the hesitating and self-reproachful impulses
under which a modern heroine forgets herself in a boat, or compromises
herself in the cool of the evening.

I do not wish to return over the waste ground we have traversed,
comparing, point by point, Scott's manner with those of Bermondsey and
the Faubourgs; but it may be, perhaps, interesting at this moment to
examine, with illustration from those Waverley novels which have so
lately _re_tracted the attention of a fair and gentle public, the
universal conditions of 'style,' rightly so called, which are in all
ages, and above all local currents or wavering tides of temporary
manners, pillars of what is for ever strong, and models of what is for
ever fair.

But I must first define, and that within strict horizon, the works of
Scott, in which his perfect mind may be known, and his chosen ways
understood.

His great works of prose fiction, excepting only the first half-volume
of _Waverley_, were all written in twelve years, 1814-26 (of his own age
forty-three to fifty-five), the actual time employed in their
composition being not more than a couple of months out of each year; and
during that time only the morning hours and spare minutes during the
professional day. 'Though the first volume of _Waverley_ was begun long
ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun and
finished between the 4th of June and the first of July, during all which
I attended my duty in court, and proceeded without loss of time or
hindrance of business.'[165]

Few of the maxims for the enforcement of which, in _Modern Painters_,
long ago, I got the general character of a lover of paradox, are more
singular, or more sure, than the statement, apparently so encouraging to
the idle, that if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done
easily. But it is in that kind of ease with which a tree blossoms after
long years of gathered strength, and all Scott's great writings were the
recreations of a mind confirmed in dutiful labour, and rich with organic
gathering of boundless resource.

Omitting from our count the two minor and ill-finished sketches of the
_Black Dwarf_ and _Legend of Montrose_, and, for a reason presently to
be noticed, the unhappy _St. Ronan'