The following is a very pretty _morçeau_ of criticism: “The most objectionable thing, perhaps, about his influence is its sympathy with the war spirit. A person Christianly educated can hardly read some of his descriptions in the _Lady of the Lake_ and _Marmion_ without an emotion of disgust, like what is excited by the same things in Homer: and as the world comes more and more under the influence of Christ, it will recede more and more from this kind of literature.” We marvel that Mrs Stowe, who is a clever woman, does not perceive that the people of a country in which the spirit which she pleases to reprehend becomes extinct, must necessarily be in time succeeded by a race of unresisting slaves. The remark, too, comes with a peculiarly bad grace from a lady who is not only proud of the independence of her country, but affects intense enthusiasm for the struggles of the Puritans and Covenanters in Great Britain. However, we suppose she thought it polite to the members of the Peace Society, among whom she was moving, to give this little jog to their principles; and it may be that, after all, her intimacy with the writings of Scott is considerably less than one would conclude from the quantity of quotation. Certainly we were surprised to find it stated by a lady of so much literary pretension and apparent acquaintance with the personal history of Sir Walter, that Abbotsford “is at present the property of Scott’s only surviving daughter;” and we must also confess that some of her quotations unsettle our ancient ideas as to the limits of the Border. For example, she says with reference to a visit paid at the Earl of Carlisle’s—“I was also interested in a portrait of an ancestor of the family, the identical “Belted Will” who figures in Scott’s “Lay.”” “‘_Belted Will Howard_ shall come with speed, And _William of Deloraine_, good at need.’” Possibly Lord Carlisle was not previously aware that his ancestor was a Scotsman, and a retainer of the house of Buccleuch. With equal propriety might Omer Pasha be described as a hetman of the Cossacks, rushing to the rescue of Gortschakoff.