recent
dialects and rhythms; the essential virtues of language, in both the
masters of the old school, hinging ultimately, little as it might be
thought, on certain unalterable views of theirs concerning the code
called 'of the Ten Commandments,' wholly at variance with the dogmas of
automatic morality which, summed again by the witches' line, 'Fair is
foul, and foul is fair,' hover through the fog and filthy air of our
prosperous England.

JOHN RUSKIN.

* * * * *

'_He hated greetings in the market-place_, and there were generally
loiterers in the streets to persecute him _either about the events of
the day_, or about some petty pieces of business.'

These lines, which the reader will find near the beginning of the
sixteenth chapter of the first volume of the _Antiquary_, contain two
indications of the old man's character, which, receiving the ideal of
him as a portrait of Scott himself, are of extreme interest to me. They
mean essentially that neither Monkbarns nor Scott had any mind to be
called of men, Rabbi, in mere hearing of the mob; and especially that
they hated to be drawn back out of their far-away thoughts, or forward
out of their long-ago thoughts, by any manner of 'daily' news, whether
printed or gabbled. Of which two vital characteristics, deeper in both
the men, (for I must always speak of Scott's creations as if they were
as real as himself,) than any of their superficial vanities, or passing
enthusiasms, I have to speak more at another time. I quote the passage
just now, because there was one piece of the daily news of the year 1815
which did extremely interest Scott, and materially direct the labour of
the latter part of his life; nor is there any piece of history in this
whole nineteenth century quite so pregnant with various instruction as
the study of the reasons which influenced Scott and Byron in their
opposite views of the glories of the battle of Waterloo.

But I quote it for another reason also. The principal greeting which Mr.
Oldbuck on this occasion receives in the market-place, being compared
with the speech of Andrew Fairservice, examined in my first paper, will
furnish me with the text of what I have mainly to say in the present
one.

'"Mr. Oldbuck," said the town-clerk (a more important person, who came
in front and ventured to stop the old gentleman), "the provost,
understanding you were in town, begs on no account that you'll quit it
without