and we find ourselves carried away as before. Our choice has changed, perhaps, as to favourite passages, but we still find favourites. Scott is the epic poet of England; he does for chivalry what Homer did for the heroic age. He caught it just fading into dim oblivion, living by tradition, veiled by superstition, uncertain and exaggerated; yet not less the chaos from whence sprang the present, which must trace to that morning-checquered darkness the acquisitions and the characteristics of to-day. What constitutes the great epic poet? his power of revifying the past. It is not till a nation has gained a certain point in civilization that it desires to look back; but when action allows a breathing time for thought, and the mechanical and customary has succeeded to the adventurous and unexpected, then we desire to trace the Nile of our moral progress to its far and hidden fountains. It is this desire which is the inspiration of Walter Scott. From the dim waters he evokes the shining spirit, and from scattered fragments constructs the glorious whole. We cannot sympathize with the regret that he expresses in one of the exquisite introductions to "Marmion," when but for want of kingly countenance—
"Dryden, in immortal strain,
Had raised the Table Round again."
Dryden lived in an age when the political and
