one things worthy to be written was in his eyes a dignity to which no
man made any approach, who had only written things worthy to be read.
He on two occasions, which I can never forget, betrayed painful
uneasiness when his works were alluded to as reflecting honor on the
age that had produced Watt's improvement of the steam-engine, and the
safety-lamp of Sir Humphry Davy. Such was his modest creed--but from
all I ever saw or heard of his intercourse with the Duke of
Wellington, I am not disposed to believe that he partook it with the
only man in whose presence he ever felt awe and abashment.[24]

[Footnote 24: I think it very probable that Scott had
his own first interview with the Duke of Wellington in
his mind when he described the introduction of Roland
Graeme to the Regent Murray, in the novel of _The Abbot_,
chap. xviii.:--"Such was the personage before whom
Roland Graeme now presented himself with a feeling of
breathless awe, very different from the usual boldness
and vivacity of his temper. In fact, he was, from
education and nature, ... much more easily controlled by
the moral superiority arising from the elevated talents
and renown of those with whom he conversed, than by
pretensions founded only on rank or external show. He
might have braved with indifference the presence of an
Earl merely distinguished by his belt and coronet; but
he felt overawed in that of the eminent soldier and
statesman, the wielder of a nation's power, and the
leader of her armies."]

A charming page in Mr. Washington Irving's Abbotsford and Newstead
affords us another anecdote connected with this return from Paris. Two
years after this time, when the amiable American visited Scott, he
walked with him to a quarry, where his people were at work.

"The face of the humblest dependent," he says, "brightened
at his approach--all paused from their labor to have a
pleasant {p.068} 'crack wi' the laird.' Among the rest was
a tall straight old fellow, with a healthful complexion and
silver hairs, and a small round-crowned white hat. He had
been about to shoulder a hod, but paused, and stood looking
at Scott with a slight sparkling of his blue eye as if
waiting his turn