Served too in hastier swell to show
Short glimpses of a breast of snow :
What though no rule of courtly grace
To measured mood had trained her pace,-
A foot more light, a step more true,

Ne'er from the heath-flower dashed the dew;
E'en the slight harebell raised its head,
Elastic from her airy tread:

What though upon her speech there hung
The accents of the mountain tongue,-
Those silver sounds, so soft, so dear,
The list ner held his breath to hear!

There, again, if there is little or no sense of the fastidious and dainty delight with which the artist in words selects and shades and softens the colours with which to convey his picture, there is at least ample evidence of the rapture with which Scott dwells upon his theme,-nay, that he was hardly able to tear himself away from it. Indeed, the extract tells very imperfectly what the poem itself proceeds to delineate with innumerable touches. It is only in the expression of Scott's feeling that there is a certain carelessness, as if the poet somewhat despaired of conveying it by speech at all, and passed from one trait to another in impatience of his own imperfect utterances.

There was, however, at the heart of Scott's poetry not only this unstudied frankness of utterance, but a passionate sympathy with all masculine emotion which gives buoyancy and grandeur to his studies of love, wrath, and revenge. It is not simply the poet who is great-it is the man whom the poet only half delineates. What can be more descriptive of a suppressed element in Scott's own nature than the haughty and vindictive passion in

the noble ballad on the assassination of the Regent Murray ?--

Sternly he spoke-""Tis sweet to hear

In good greenwood the bugle blown,
But sweeter to Revenge's ear,

To drink a tyrant's dying groan.

Your slaughtered quarry proudly trode,
At dawning morn, o'er dale and down,
But prouder base-born Murray rode

Through old Linlithgow's crowded town.

From the wild Border's humbled side,
In haughty triumph marched he,
While Knox relaxed his bigot pride,

And smiled, the traitorous pomp to see.

But can stern Power, with all his vaunt,
Or Pomp, with all her courtly glare,
The settled heart of Vengeance daunt,

Or change the purpose of Despair ?"

And again, how passionate is Scott's reverence for the past-the main secret, no doubt, of Cardinal Newman's great delight in him. How stately, for instance, is the image by which he tries to persuade his readers that the obsolete poetry of Thomas the Rhymer of Ercildoune was far superior to the bards of his own degenerate century:—

In numbers high, the witching tale

The prophet poured along ;

No after bard might e'er avail
Those numbers to prolong.

Yet fragments of the lofty strain
Float down the tide of years,
As, buoyant on the stormy main,
A parted wreck appears.

All that was left of Thomas the Rhymer was a "parted wreck" indeed; but it was the imagination of the modern poet which gave it its majestic impressiveness, much more than any trace of grandeur in the broken fragments which survived.

THE CHARM OF MISS AUSTEN

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH has added another to the not inconsiderable roll of eminent men who have found their delight in Miss Austen. His little book upon her just published by Walter Scott in the series on "Great Writers," edited by Professor Eric S. Robertson, is certainly a fascinating book to those who already know her and love her well; and I have little doubt that it will prove also a fascinating book to those who have still to make her acquaintance. Every one knows how enthusiastically her six novels were admired by Sir Walter Scott, by Sydney Smith, by Lord Macaulay, by George Eliot, by Walter Bagehot, and almost all the finest judges of delicate literary workmanship. Mr. Goldwin Smith proves himself to be one of the finest of these judges of delicate literary workmanship, though I protest against his view that Sir Walter Elliot's empty family pride and Lady Catherine de Bourgh's ill-bred insolence of station are overdone. That only means, I take it, that they would be less natural and credible now than they were in Miss Austen's time, which is true; but it is equally true that a good many other social features of that day, -for example, Mr. Collins's clerical servility, and Mrs. Jennings's unashamed vulgarity,—would be less

natural and credible now than in Miss Austen's time. But, on the whole, Mr. Goldwin Smith is as fine a critic of Miss Austen's slight imperfections as he is of her manifold perfections. He is more trustworthy, for instance, than Lord Macaulay, for he rightly denies to Miss Austen's men anything like the exquisite truth and finish which he finds in her women. Admirable as are many of her pictures of men, there are not a few very vaguely and indistinctly outlined,-Edward Ferrars, for example, and Edmund Bertram. The chief interest in this fresh delineation of Miss Austen's wonderful literary power is the light it throws on the question of her secret charm for the few and her want of charm for the many, for it cannot be denied that for a very considerable number of remarkably able men, Miss Austen wields no spell at all, though for those over whom she does wield a spell, she wields a spell of quite curious force. I believe that the secret both of her great charm for those whom she does charm, and of her complete failure to fascinate a large class of able men, is in the fineness-and, indeed, I may say, the reduced scale of her exquisite pictures. It is not everybody who can appreciate the miniature; it is not everybody who can see life at all through a minifying instead of a magnifying medium. On the other hand, to those who can, there is a peculiar attraction in such life. You can get a glimpse of what it was in Sir Walter Scott's remark: "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any one now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me." That just hits the mark where it makes Scott disparage his own “big