ay would have analyzed with the airs of a
philosopher, and painted with the curiosity of a gossip, indicates any
absence in his heart of sympathy with the great and sacred elements of
personal happiness. An era like ours, which has with diligence and
ostentation swept its heart clear of all the passions once known as
loyalty, patriotism, and piety, necessarily magnifies the apparent force
of the one remaining sentiment which sighs through the barren chambers,
or clings inextricably round the chasms of ruin; nor can it but regard
with awe the unconquerable spirit which still tempts or betrays the
sagacities of selfishness into error or frenzy which is believed to be
love.

That Scott was never himself, in the sense of the phrase as employed by
lovers of the Parisian school, "ivre d'amour," may be admitted without
prejudice to his sensibility,[50] and that he never knew "l'amor che
move 'l sol e l'altre stelle," was the chief, though unrecognized,
calamity of his deeply checkered life. But the reader of honor and
feeling will not therefore suppose that the love which Miss Vernon
sacrifices, stooping for an instant from her horse, is of less noble
stamp, or less enduring faith, than that which troubles and degrades 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.

23. 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,[51] 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 forever strong, and models of what is
forever 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 (o