Thus the alien may be vexed by what he thinks the mere clannish enthusiasm of praise, in Scott's countrymen.
Every little sketch of a passing face is exquisite in Scott's work, when he is at his best.

For example, Dandie Dinmont's children are only indicated "with a dusty roll of the brush;" but we recognize at once the large, shy, kindly families of the Border.

Dandie himself, as the "Edinburgh Review" said (1817), "is beyond all question the best rustic portrait that has ever yet been exhibited to the public,--the most honourable to rustics, and the most creditable to the heart as well as to the genius of the Author, the truest to nature, the most complete in all its lineaments." Dandie is always delightful,--whether at Mumps's Hall, or on the lonely moor, or at home in Charlieshope, or hunting, or leistering fish, or entering terriers at vermin, or fighting, or going to law, or listening to the reading of a disappointing will, or entertaining the orphan whom others neglect; always delightful he is, always generous, always true, always the Border farmer.

There is no better stock of men, none less devastated by "the modern spirit." His wife is worthy of him, and has that singular gentleness, kindliness, and dignity which prevail on the Border, even in households far less prosperous than that of Dandie Dinmont .-- [Dr.John Brown's Ailie, in "Rab and his Friends," will naturally occur to the mind of every reader.] Among Scott's "character parts," or types broadly humorous, few have been more popular than Dominie Sampson.

His ungainly goodness, unwieldy strength, and inaccessible learning have made great sport, especially when "Guy Mannering" was "Terryfied" for the stage.
As Miss Bertram remarks in that singular piece,--where even Jock Jabos "wins till his English," like Elspeth in the Antiquary,--the Dominie "rather forces a tear from the eye of sentiment than a laugh from the lungs of ribaldry." In the play, however, he sits down to read a folio on some bandboxes, which, very naturally, "give way under him." As he has just asked Mrs.Mac-Candlish after the health of both her husbands, who are both dead, the lungs of ribaldry are more exercised than the fine eye of sentiment.