hy for outlaws. It is much more
remarkable, however, that, still retaining his faith in king and nobles,
Church and State, he should have pushed his appreciation of such men to
the degree of marvellously comprehending--nay, enjoying--certain types
of skepticism which sprang up in fiercest opposition to authority; urged
into existence by its abuses, as germs of plants have been thought to be
electrified into life by sharp blows. And it is most remarkable of all,
that he did this at a time when none among his English readers seem to
have had any comprehension whatever of these characters, or to have
surmised the fact that to merely understand and depict them, the writer
must have ventured into fearful depths of reflection and of study. In
treating these characters, Walter Scott seems to become positively
_subjective_--and I will venture to say that it is the only instance of
the slightest approach to anything of the kind to be found in all his
writings. Unlike Byron, who was painfully conscious, not of the nature
of his want in this respect, but of _something_ wanting, Scott nowhere
else betrays the slightest consciousness of his continual life under
limitations, when, _plump!_ we find him making a headlong leap right
into the very centre of that terrible pool whose waters feed the
forbidden-fruit tree of good and of evil.

The characters to which I particularly refer in Sir Walter Scott's
novels are those of the Templar, Brian de Bois Guilbert, in 'Ivanhoe;'
of the gypsy Hayraddin Maugrabin in 'Quentin Durward;' of Dryfesdale,
the steward, in 'The Abbot;' and of the 'leech' Henbane Dwining, in 'The
Fair Maid of Perth.' There are several others which more or less
resemble these, as, for instance, Ranald Mac Eagh, the Child of the
Mist, in 'Montrose,' and Rashleigh, in 'Rob Roy;' but the latter,
considered by themselves, are only partly developed. In fact, if Scott
had given to the world only _one_ of these outlaws of faith, there would
have been but little ground for inferring that his mind had ever taken
so daring a range as I venture to claim for him. It is in his constant,
wistful return, in one form or the other, to that terrible type of
humanity--the man who, as a matter of intensely sincere faith, has freed
himself from all adherence to the laws of man or GOD--that we find the
clue to the _real_ nature of the author's extraordinary sympathy for the
most daring, yet most subtle example of the law-breaker. In comparing