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LEGENDS.
The character of a place is often most perfectly expressed in its associations.

An event strikes root and grows into a legend, when it has happened amongst congenial surroundings.

Ugly actions, above all in ugly places, have the true romantic quality, and become an undying property of their scene.

To a man like Scott, the different appearances of nature seemed each to contain its own legend ready made, which it was his to call forth: in such or such a place, only such or such events ought with propriety to happen; and in this spirit he made the _Lady of the Lake_ for Ben Venue, the _Heart of Midlothian_ for Edinburgh, and the _Pirate_, so indifferently written but so romantically conceived, for the desolate islands and roaring tideways of the North.