subscribe to that. But how about the second
best? It, speaks well for their general average
that there is hardly one among them which
might not find some admirers who would vote
it to a place of honour. To the Scottish-born
man those novels which deal with Scottish life
and character have a quality of raciness which
gives them a place apart. There is a rich
humour of the soil in such books as ``Old Mortality,''
``The Antiquary,'' and ``Rob Roy,''
which puts them in a different class from the
others. His old Scottish women are, next to
his soldiers, the best series of types that he has
drawn. At the same time it must be admitted
that merit which is associated with dialect has
such limitations that it can never take the same
place as work which makes an equal appeal to
all the world. On the whole, perhaps, ``Quentin
Durward,'' on account of its wider interests,
its strong character-drawing, and the European
importance of the events and people described,
would have my vote for the second place. It
is the father of all those sword-and-cape novels
which have formed so numerous an addition
to the light literature of the last century. The
pictures of Charles the Bold and of the unspeakable
Louis are extraordinarily vivid. I
can see those two deadly enemies watching the
hounds chasing the herald, and clinging to each
other in the convulsion of their cruel mirth,
more clearly than most things which my eyes
have actually rested upon.

  The portrait of Louis with his astuteness, his
cruelty, his superstition and his cowardice is
followed closely from Comines, and is the more
effective when set up against his bluff and war-like
rival. It is not often that historical characters
work out in their actual physique exactly
as one would picture them to be, but in the
High Church of Innsbruck I have seen effigies
of Louis and Charles which might have walked
from the very pages of Scott-Louis, thin, ascetic,
varminty; and Charles with the head of
a prize-fighter. It is hard on us when a portrait
upsets all our preconceived ideas, when,
for example, we see in the National Portrait
Gallery a man with a noble, olive-tinted, poetic
face, and with a start read beneath it that it is
the wicked Judge Jeffreys. Occasionally, however,
as at Innsbruck, we are absolutely satisfied. 
I have before me on the mantelpiece yonder a
portrait of a painting which represents Queen
Mary's Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. 
Mark the big head, fit to conceive large schemes;
the strong animal face, made to captivate a sensitive,
feminine woman; the brutally forceful
features---the mouth with a suggestion of wild
boars' tusks behind it, the beard which could
bristle with fury: the whole man and his life-history
are revealed in that picture. I wonder
if Scott had ever seen the original which hangs
at the Hepburn family seat?

  Personally, I have always had a very high
opinion of a novel which the critics have used
somewhat harshly, and which came almost the
last from his tired pen. I mean ``Count Robert
of Paris.'' I am convinced that if it had been
the first, instead of the last, of the series it would
have attracted as much attention as ``Waverley.''
I can understand the state of mind of the expert,
who cried out in mingled admiration and despair:
``I have studied the conditions of Byzantine
Society all my life, and here comes a
Scotch lawyer who makes the whole thing clear
to me in a flash!'' Many men could draw
with more or less success Norman England, or
medival France, but to reconstruct a whole
dead civilization in so plausible a way, with
such dignity and such minuteness of detail, is,
I should think, a most wonderful tour de force. 
His failing health showed itself before the end
of the novel, but had the latter half equalled the
first, and contained scenes of such humour as
Anna Comnena reading aloud her father's exploits,
or of such majesty as the account of the
muster of the Crusaders upon the shores of the
Bosphorus, then the book could not have been
gainsaid its rightful place in the very front rank
of the novels.

  I would that he had carried on his narrative,
and given us a glimpse of the actual progress of
the First Crusade. What an incident! Was
ever anything in the world's history like it? It
had what historical incidents seldom have, a
definite beginning, middle and end, from the
half-crazed preaching of Peter down to the Fall
of Jerusalem. Those leaders! It would take