among any other peasantry. It loses none of its raciness in the hands of their great painter.
The female character is always a softened reflection of the male; whatever are the peculiarities of the one, are, as Moore says of his lover and mistress—
"The changes of his face
In her's reflected with still lovelier grace,
Like echo sending back sweet music, fraught
With twice the aerial sweetness it had wrought."
Scott's female portraits are as life-like as those of his men. Take the fisherman's wife—why you can in fancy hear the "flyting" between her and Miss Grizzy, the maiden lady—starch, grave, but "weel respeckit;" or, again, Alison Wilson, the housekeeper in this very tale: there is the lofty generosity! It does not even appear to cross her imagination that she may retain house and lands when the rightful heir appears; she at once talks of them as his own; and in her anxiety to conform even to the prodigal habits which he may have acquired in foreign parts, she allows that he may "eat meat three times a week." I know few passages that affect me so much as the meeting between the faithful creature and her youthful, nay, no longer youthful, master—
"But when return 'd the boy, the boy no more
Return'd exulting to his native shore,"
