Such was the creation of Scott's Abbotsford, a real 'romance in stone and lime,' to use the Frenchman's hackneyed phrase. Never had Sir Walter deeper delight than when its walls were rising skywards, and the dream of his youth taking steady shape by the silvery side of the Tweed. But for Abbotsford he would not have been _our_ Scott--our man among men--our Immortal. If Abbotsford was his dream, it was also his Delilah. It is at once a reminder of his success, and of the most gigantic literary collapse of the century. So far as monuments to Scott go, there is none to equal it, not even the most splendid and costly pile which is one of Edinburgh's proudest adornments. Yet of all his creations, Abbotsford will be the soonest to perish, for 'Waverley' and its fellows are imperishable. Still, so long as it lasts, it will be the memorial of a pride, unjustifiable in many respects, but chivalrous withal, and of a fall to depths seldom touched, but., best of all, of a restoration than which there has been none more illustrious--none more heroic in literary craftsmanship. 'I have seen much, but nothing like my ain house,' he cried--a broken, dying man returned to Abbotsford, only to be borne forth again. Nor has history been slow to add its Amen. SCOTT AT ABBOTSFORD CHAPTER IV SCOTT AT ABBOTSFORD Of the Abbotsford life in the seven or eight brilliant seasons preceding the disaster of 1826 Lockhart's exquisite word-pictures are far the finest things in the Biography. Scott's dream was now fairly realized. He was not only a lord of acres, but a kind of mediæval chieftain as well. His cottage was transformed to a superb mansion, like some creation of the 'Arabian Nights,' and the whole estate, acquired at a cost far exceeding its real value, had grown to one of the trimmest and snuggest on Tweedside. A comparative failure at the Bar, Scott succeeded well otherwise in his professional career. His income from the Court Clerkship and Sheriffdom totalled £1,600, and from other sources he had an additional £400 a year. As the most prosperous book-producer of the period, he was netting an annual profit of no less than £10,000. His family was grown up, and his home life, notwithstanding some harsh things said about Lady Scott, was of the happiest. Unliterary, and Frenchified to a degree, Charlotte Carpenter was not the ideal helpmeet, perhaps, for a man of Scott's calibre and temperament. But that they lived comfortably together, that she made him an excellent wife, and that Scott was much attached to her, must be taken for granted, else Lockhart and the others are equivocating. There is at least one glimpse into Scott's heart which cannot savour of hypocrisy--the occasion of her death. Some of the most touching passages in the Diary belong to that event. As lover, husband, father, there is no question of the acuteness with which he felt her loss who had been his 'thirty years' companion.'