In casting about for a new abode, Scott seems at first to have thought of Broadmeadows, on the Yarrow, then in the market, a compact little domain which would have suited him well. Lockhart's one regret was that Scott did not purchase Broadmeadows. Here, surrounded by large landed proprietors, instead of a few bonnet-lairds, he would certainly have escaped the Abbotsford 'yerd-hunger,' and changed, possibly, the whole of his career. But the Broadmeadows Scott might have been very different from _our Sir Walter_. Of Newark, also, close by, the scene of the 'Lay,' he had some fancy, and would fain have fitted it up as a residence. The ancestral home of Harden itself was proposed to him, and indeed offered, and he would have removed thither but for its inconvenience for shrieval duties. After all, however, there was uppermost in Scott's mind the wish to have a house and land of his own--to be 'laird of the cairn and the scaur,' as in the case of Broadmeadows, or 'a Tweedside laird' at best, and later on, perhaps, to 'play the grand old feudal lord again.' Lockhart assures us that Scott was really aiming at higher game. His ambition was to found a new Border family, and to become head of a new branch of the Scotts, already so dominant. And did he not succeed? It is not strictly true to say that he failed. He realized his ambition, and he died in that belief. He built his 'castle,' as he playfully calls it, with more grandeur about it than he had, mayhap, dreamed of. Honours of the highest were heaped upon him. And at his death, at any rate, there was a prospect of his line being continued. Only one ugly shadow stood between--his monetary troubles. It is easy to say at this time of day that Scott was defeated in his most cherished hopes. He was defeated, as hundreds are, through the accidents of history. But in himself he was surely a noble success, and at his passing most of his plans had prospered. Scott towered so much above his fellows in intellectual strength, and he had such perfect faith in himself and the power of his own transcendent capabilities, that it is scarcely fair to pass censure on the ambitions and ideals which governed him, and the steady purpose that made him one of the truest and best of men--one of the world's greatest men. There is no occasion to bemoan Scott's career, no need to reflect on its 'might-have-beens.' His course he had mapped out for himself, and it was the only course destined to give us Scott as he wished to be, and as the generations should best remember him.