the differences between the long and the short sheep.

As is well known, the main incident of "The Heart of Midlothian" is strictly founded on fact. A Galloway Jeanie Deans, having refused to risk her soul to save a sister by perjury, made the pilgrimage to London to solicit and obtain her pardon. Jeanie had her first home at St. Leonards, where Scott had gone to dine with the old Bluegown. If Laird Nippie (Mr. Laidlaw) did not actually sit for Milnwood, "the dry, demure, and taciturn Presbyterian" was assuredly the original of douce David Deans. Perhaps

the meetings by moonlight at Muschat's Cairn are the most dramatic incidents in the novel. They impress us, like that weird masterpiece in the supernatural — "Wandering Willie's Tale."

The noblest figure in the novel is the Duke of Argyll. Lockhart quotes the high praise bestowed on it by a writer whom for some reason he leaves anonymous. "You have drawn it to the very life," is the verdict of one who declares himself almost as good a judge as if he had seen and lived with the Duke. Faithful to the historical reality as Scott's Argyll may be, we cannot help fancying that the lofty patriotism, the sturdy independence towards the great, the kindly condescension to the humble, were all borrowed from Scott's dear friend and "generous patron" of Buccleuch, on whose death with the loss to the country he pronounced so feeling an elegy.

The tragedy of "The Bride of Lammermoor' was likewise taken from a Galloway romance. Lucy Ashton was the daughter of the first Lord Stair; she had plighted her troth to the young Lord Rutherfurd, but her parents insisted on her marriage with Dunbar of Baldoon, a substantial laird like Bucklaw. Rutherfurd, like Ravenswood, insisted on a parting interview. It came off in the presence of Janet Dalrymple's parents; but, as her overbearing mother knew, the girl's spirit had been crushed, and she returned to her lover the half of the coin they had broken by way of seal to a solemn engagement. The only difference is in the dénoûment of the drama,-in the doubt whether the bridegroom was stabbed in the nuptial chamber by the bride or the rejected lover. For the idea of Caleb Balderstone he was indebted to

the humorous stories of Lord Haddington, an admirable raconteur; but he confessed that he might have run into caricature and "sprinkled too much parsley over the chicken.”

There are few more delightful personages in the novels than Major Dugald Dalgetty. The drawing of the soldier of fortune, equally ready to take service under the colors of Dutchman or Turk, but punctilious to life or death on points of military honor, is simply perfect. And perhaps nothing illustrates more forcibly what we have said of Scott's memory and methods than the fact that the original of the immortal Rittmeister was an acquaintance of his childhood. We read in the fragment of autobiography of

"The old military veteran, Dalgetty by name, who had pitched his tent in that little village (Prestonpans), after all his campaigns, subsisting upon an ensign's half-pay, though called by courtesy a captain. As this old gentleman, who had been in all the German wars, found very few to listen to his tales of military feats, he formed a sort of alliance with me, and I used invariably to attend him for the pleasure of hearing those communications."

"The

Lockhart directs attention to Abbot" as illustrating a noteworthy trait in the author's character. "Scott never considered any amount of literary distinction as entitled to be spoken of in the same breath with mastery in the higher departments of practical lifeleast of all, with the glory of a first-rate captain." He adds in a note: 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."

"I

"Such was the personage before whom Roland Graeme now presented himself with a feeling of breathless awe. . . . 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 felt overawed in the presence of the eminent soldier and statesman, the wielder of a nation's power and the leader of her armies."

As the plot of "The Pirate" was suggested by the love-affair of the sea-rover Gow with a young lady of the Shetlands, so the groundwork of all the details is anticipated in the Diary of the northern cruise, and to those to whom the pages of that Diary were submitted, the author

ship of the novels could have been no mystery. Often the language and the anecdotes of the Diary are almost literally reproduced, as when rioters were brought up before the sheriff, not only unabashed but grossly insolent. Norna, Norna, when treating Minna for the love-sickness, employed the familiar charms and spells, and the cruel superstition still passed current on these storm-beaten shores which warned Mordaunt against his folly in snatching Cleveland from the surf. At Kirkwall, Scott had visited the old recluse who was sublimated into the poetical Norna of the Fitful Head-pace Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, who objected that Norna was only a fantastic revival of Meg Merrilies. Bessie Miller inhabited a cabin on the heights, looking far abroad as from the Fitful Head over land and ocean, gaining a precarious subsistence by selling winds to credulous sailors. Bessie might have seemed an unpromising subject from which to extract materials for romance; but the sheriff took her in hand for cross-examination, and heard much to his advantage as to the pirate Gow.

For the Spa of St. Ronan's, we fancy Scott drew freely on old reminiscences of the provincial Gilsand, where he made acquaintance with his wife, with its plain or vulgar local frequenters, who welcomed with unsophisticated indiscrimination fashionable or pseudo-fashionable strangers. For the sporting laird and the shattered fortunes of the last representative of "an ancient and honourable house," the author had no need to search far for originals. Before the improvements in agriculture, and the "boom" in shootings of all kinds, the smaller gentry of Scotland were chronically impecunious. Debts accumulated, and lands were sold up. We remember Scott's lament on the fall of the Riddells, who had been settled in their ancestral seats" centuries before the names of Soulis and Douglas had been heard in these glens."

With its obvious faults, "Redgauntlet" would take a foremost place among the novels, were it only for the grand episode in "Wandering Willie's Tale."

But its

chief interest is that, as Lockhart remarks, "it contains more of the author's personal experiences than, perhaps, all the rest put together." The experiences and feelings of the young law-student are

embodied in Alan; the light-hearted Darsie Latimer was Will Clerk, the man whom, next to himself, Scott knew best. It was in Clerk's tiny cutter on the Firth that Scott picked up the sea-terms and knowledge of navigation he used with the sinugglers of the Solway, and the pirates in the Shetlands.

The worthy Quakers of Mount Sharon were the precise but hospitable Waldies of Kelso, with whom Scott had passed some days in the summer of 1783. His acquaintance with the Misses Arthuret must have dated back to 1790; they were the Misses Ramsay, "two of the best of old ladies," residing at Kippilaw, in a seclusion resembling that of Fairladies. But we cannot doubt that blending with their traits were those of the Misses Ferguson of Huntleyburn, with which Abbotsford kept up daily. visiting acquaintance. He loved the old spinsters for themselves, though he laughs at their amiable eccentricities. Following up the train of associations which led him back to the orderly household in George's Square, the dull drudgery of the desk, and the golf in Bruntsfield Links, he takes the early incidents of "Redgauntlet" from those youthful days. Walter himself, soon after passing at the Bar, had a mysterious visit from a Lady Green Mantle, and Redgauntlet inviting himself to dinner, an unwelcome guest, was suggested by the elder Scott's melodramatic interview with Murray of Broughton, when the frugal lawyer tossed from the window the cup the traitor's lips had touched.

The

In the first series of "The Chronicles of the Canongate," we have a melancholy sequel in the historical personalities of father and son. The painfully touching death-bed or last days of the fretful invalid to whom the prodigal Croftangry had been indebted, was perhaps too faithfully borrowed from that which Walter had witnessed ere his father died. feelings of the reformed prodigal who had lost his lands, and who was doomed to confinement in the sanctuary of Holyrood, were depicted when Scott, at the mercy of his Jewish creditors, feared some similar fate for himself. In the self-reproaches of Croftangry, the curtain drops, in darkness and depression, on himself, though more suo, the similarity is only in generalities, and the reasons for the self-blame were very different.

IFE is always interesting when one has a purpose and lives in its fulfillment. It is then possibilities stir within and clamor for expression. Hope looks out of her watch-tower and paints her victory-pictures with bright and positive colors. Faith rouses the faculties into intense activity. Purpose

opens definite plans and paths. Then it is that achievements crown toil, and from these successes, new inspiration comes for larger and better things. This is ideal, but many make it real; for toil and triumph are twins. Others dream of it, but, because of difficulties, despair and drift helplessly on. Alas! so many drift, though possessed of a splendid craft and thoroughly appointed - are helpless in the midst of a wealth of opportunities. They do not lay hold on life with a definite interest and a definite purpose.

Too often young men do not go to college they are sent; they do not push their way into life's callings, but are waiting to be led. Indeed the sacred word "calling" seems to have lost its meaning, for they hear no inward, no divine voice calling them to appointed fields and kingdoms. Theirs is the downward look, limited in range and lacking in inspiration. And so the currents and under-currents carry them at will, up and down, back and forth- derelicts, useless and dangerous.

Purpose is better than impulse: impulse is fickle and fussy, purpose is determined and dogged. It is the character of the purpose that reveals the character of the man back of it and in it, or, better, it is the character of the man that determines the power of the purpose.

Purpose however tenaciously held and vigorously worked may not always carry one to the goal, but it will carry him further on towards what he longed for than if he had never cherished and practiced it. But, on the other hand, it often does more for one than he dreamed or planned. Shakespeare went to London to retrieve his fortune, but the ardor with which he flung himself into the struggle carried him far out and up to the achievement of greatest fame and power. Saul of Tarsus determined to

crush out Christianity: into this purpose he poured the vital energies of his great nature and overshot the mark and through divine direction won his lifecrown in the very ways he fought so desperately to close.

A purpose is the necessary condition of success. Nothing can take its place: nor friends, nor wealth, nor talent, nor genius, nor education, nor office. They are alike powerless. They will do some things, prepare the way and lend a helping-hand. But purpose must be there and be there strong and determined or ever great achievement crowns the life.

Two men went into the woods: one with a purpose to study bird-life, its habits, its dress, and its song. So intent was he to catch every flash of wing and trill of song he hardly noticed the flies and mosquitoes. The other went with no special motive or purpose, and saw and felt nothing but the intolerable flies and mosquitoes and fled in utter disgust.

The motived-mind finds employment and joy in the task, and hardly heeds the difficulties. Purpose tunnels the mountain, bridges the chasm, uses difficulties and obstructions as stepping-stones and marches on. The men who have filled the largest space in the eyes of the world, and who have achieved the most striking results, have been those who were actuated by some master-passion. Their

souls were occupied with one great purpose, which subordinated everything else to itself. Men of "one idea." Though their souls may have contained many ideas, yet a single purpose directed, employed, and animated them all. The great master-passion appropriated them to itself, and on the inner throne of the heart wielded an undisputed sceptre.

"Not in the clamor of the crowded street,

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the
throng,
But in ourselves are triumphs and defeat."
F. C. HUBBARD.

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."

STUDIES IN LITERATURE:

THE PATH OF THE NOVEL

ROM the earliest times people have been fond of hearing about strange events. Long

before books were written or letters dreamed of stories were told of the daring deeds of brave men.

When one pictures the early ancestors of the race dwelling insecurely in rude huts and caves, and then thinks of the wild animals that roamed through the forests and crouched in the thickets and jungles, an estimate may be made of the great danger that beset human life in the dim long-ago. Let it be remembered too that man at this period had no weapons except clubs and sharp stones. When, alone, he met his savage foe, it was either to fall a hopeless victim, or to fight fiercely at close range. No wonder then that strength and courage were the qualities most esteemed in one another by those ancient men. These were the qualities most needed for the preservation of the race. The man that could slay a lion or fearlessly strike to death some monster of the forest was, therefore, and most rightly, the hero of the hour. Such a deed would thrill the nerves and quicken the pulses of every one that heard of it. Men would gather around tent doors and camp-fires to talk about the hero's prowess. Parents would tell the story of the battle to their children and grandchildren, and these again would repeat it to their descendants, thus keeping the hero's name and deed fresh, it may be, for hundreds of years. Such was fame in the very early times, and this was the beginning of story-telling.

But after a while people learned the use of weapons. Brute force now received its first great blow. The sword had come. No more did man meet his deadly foes of the forest in equal combat, so that the slaughter of wild animals gradually came to be regarded in the light of sport.

Still, man continued to be a fighter. But he found his most dangerous foes now in men armed like himself. The hero, therefore, or the model man, was still required to be a person of rare strength, agility, and courage. If, in addition to these qualities, he possessed sagacity and quick intelligence, being able to plan and lead an attack, or to take advantage

of a foe stronger than himself, so much the better. Such a man would naturally be chosen for the leader or chief of his tribe. Among the ancestors of the Germans a person of this kind was distinguished as the can-man, from which expressive term our word king (the man who can) is held by some philologists to be derived.

The fact that some persons can describe things better than others tended, as people became more intelligent and critical, to develop a class of story-tellers. Sometimes these story-tellers were bards or poets, who, like Homer, sung or chanted the brave deeds of their heroes. The desire of the bards to excel one another in pleasing their audiences probably led many of them to exaggerate the merits of their heroes, and to lengthen their stories by thrilling scenes from their own imaginations. In this way, we may presume, story-telling grew to be an art, while the real hero or leader began to give place, more or less, to the fictitious one in the songs and stories of the people. This was the dawn of literary fiction.

The wars and struggles for power that took place among the nations of Europe during the earlier centuries have given us such heroes as Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, and Hamlet; and it is pleasing to note, when comparing characters like these with heroes of an earlier date, that a great improvement must have been effected in public opinion. While the hero of the ancient Greek and Roman is frequently represented as cruel, treacherous, and revengeful, the hero of the Middle Ages, though a warrior still and brave in battle as the Greek or Roman, is distinguished for his honor, his truthfulness, his noble purposes, his sense of justice, and his tender regard for the weak and the defenceless.

This was an important step in the development of the hero type in fiction. Retaining these new and higher human qualities, the hero has steadily grown in the direction in which we find him now on the pages of the best modern stories. Here, as we know, he is not often a warrior at all, nor necessarily a person distinguished by strange experiences and

adventures; but a being so much like ourselves and our acquaintances that one is often almost ready to regard him and his charming companion, the heroine, as veritable friends. In proportion as women have emerged from obscurity and dependence the heroine has become an important factor in fiction. Indeed so

important is the feminine element in these modern times that no one ventures to write a story without a heroine, though a very good one has been given us "Without a Hero."

Comparing the warrior hero of the early ages with the peaceable, businesslike hero of modern stories, there does not appear to be much in common between the two types. One feels that their manners, ideas, and purposes are as strikingly different as the styles of their clothing and the conditions of their lives. And yet, we must not decide too hastily or picture the difference between the past and the present as greater than it is. Old things do not pass away without leaving things very like them in their places. Underlying all the new ideas that enter into our notion of a story there is still the old idea of a fight-a struggle. Methods of narration have changed with the opening up by civilization of new outlets for personal ability and the creation of new besetting dangers. But heroes and heroines are still can-men and can-women-kings and queens of circumstance, who endure and struggle and succeed where others would falter and fail. The battles have not all been fought, nor have the great deeds all been done. Hercules subduing wild animals and performing great labors is strikingly related to many a modern hero struggling with difficulties and overcoming temptation. While the beautiful heroine-goddess Athene refusing to buckle on the armor of a warrior going out to fight for a wrong cause has much about her characteristic of hundreds of familiar modern heroines using their influence on the side of right and peace.

Nor do the oldest stories differ in essentials from the stories of to-day. In both there are difficulties to be overcome by human effort. Our heroes and heroines, no more than those of long ago, enjoy lives of uninterrupted happiness and ease. Who would wish to read of such a hero? Who would sympathize with a heroine that was not beset by

trouble of some kind? No, we do not care for a vapid story now any more than did our early ancestors sitting around their flaring torches before a word of history was written. We still expect our heroes to do something. The conflict is still the attractive feature of the story. We realize as we follow the printed page that the battle is none the less a battle because the enemy is something in the hero's heart; the struggle none the less a trial of gianthood because it may be a struggle with the hero's own weak resolution; and the overcoming none the less a victory because the things overcome are adverse circumstances and the little daily happenings that vex people's lives.

Strange this persistent passion for the unreal. Librarians of public libraries tell us that by far the greater number of books borrowed from their institutions are novels. Fiction forms the great bulk of published books. The essay, as we all know, has languished; and of the higher sort of poetry, less and less of it seems to be wanted by publishers every year. Strange, that in this so-called practical age, full of ripe history, startling invention and thrilling incidents, the storyreading habit should retain its strong hold. For the explanation one need not go out of one's way. We are all artists in a sense. We love the dramatic-the picturesque. We are fond of having nature interpreted for us, and of seeing the world and society epitomized in a book.

It will be generally admitted that a class of novels written for a purposeas some of the novels of Dickens which aimed to correct abuses- have exerted an immense influence for good in softening the austerities of men and women. But we think one may go a step further, and claim that the great bulk of reputable novels - even of books written without any purpose other than that of interesting the reader-make for the betterment and happiness of the race.

Subtly this great mass of reading matter accomplishes this end by helping us to understand the beginnings of wrong and failure, and the power of circumstance; and so broadens our sympathies and incites us to charitable attitudes of mind. To put one's self in another's place, especially the place of an unfortunate one, is wholesome and humanizing. Even the silly novel, of which so much com