He does not deal in embraces and effusions, his taste is too manly; he does not dwell much on Love, because, like the shepherd in Theocritus, he has found him an inhabitant of the rocks.

Moreover, when Scott began novel-writing, he was as old as Thackeray when Thackeray said that while at work on a love-scene he blushed so that you would think he was going into an apoplexy.

"Waverley" stands by its pictures of manners, of character, by its humour and its tenderness, by its manly "criticism of life," by its touches of poetry, so various, so inspired, as in Davie Gellatley with his songs, and Charles Edward in the gallant hour of Holyrood, and Flora with her high, selfless hopes and broken heart, and the beloved Baron, bearing his lot "with a good-humoured though serious composure." "To be sure, we may say with Virgilius Maro, 'Fuimus Troes' and there 's the end of an auld sang.

But houses and families and men have a' stood lang eneugh when they have stood till they fall with honour." "Waverley" ends like a fairy-tale, while real life ever ends like a Northern saga.

But among the good things that make life bearable, such fairy-tales are not the least precious, and not the least enduring..