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MISS WARDOUR.
101

rarely creates a character; he is not given to subtle analysis, and we never come upon those remarks which seem like a window suddenly thrown open, that we had never seen unclosed before; but he is the great master of the outward and the actual. Every observation that he makes is rational and rightminded, but they never come like new discoveries; the reader applauds them as the echo of what he has already known to be right, but they never startle him into thinking. All Scott's qualities were opposed to the metaphysical; he and his cotemporary, Goëthe, were the antipodes of each other. The German looked within, the Scotchman looked without: to the one was assigned the province of thought—to the other that of action. The genius of the one stands as much alone as the genius of the other.

As a story teller, Scott is unrivalled; he would have made the fortune of a cafe at Damascus. The common conversation of every day may show how rare such a talent is; one person will give you a little narrative of some recent event, and politeness alone will compel attention; while, perhaps, one in a hundred will keep you amused while recounting a seemingly trivial accident. In the present novel there is a situation—a great favourite with our author, it is that of a father and daughter left dependant on each other's mutual affection. Rose Bradwardine, Julia Mannering, Lucy Ber-