outside, and fair apparel, are not a bad foundation for fancy. Sir Percie's discourse, garnished with its pearls of rhetoric, seems to us marvellous nonsense, but we must remember that the miller's daughter had the great advantage of not understanding it. Now, the generality of people are very much in the situation of the courtiers in the story of Princess Sable, over whose cradle an old fairy pronounced some mysterious prediction. "The courtiers and nurses did not comprehend one word that she said; they, therefore, concluded it was something very fine, or very terrible." After all, the instinct of the heart did not deceive her—the knight of the three-piled velvet and the embroidered satin, proves brave, generous, and true. We cannot hold the delineation of Sir Percie, to be the complete failure which even its author admits it to be. This candour is one of Scott's most remarkable qualities; but, like a rich merchant, his general ventures are successful enough to admit of occasional failure. He can afford a loss. The view that he takes of the fruitlessness of an attempt to make a delineation popular, founded solely on gone-by affectation, is to a great degree true; but we must also add that the light airy cavalier required a degree of playfulness which is not one of Scott's qualities. He is, too, entirely Scotch, and wit is not a Scottish characteristic; they want the brightness, the abandon, the ready repartee so pe-
