We hear of occasional excursions to the country seats of Scottish friends of his north of Edinburgh; and twice we follow him on leisurely posting journeys into England, for the purpose of a week or two in London again, and a round of calls and engagements in the busy whirl of London society. Once he crosses the Channel, revisits Paris, and spends some time amid the gaieties of that capital. Hardly from the entries in his Diary relating to those journeys,—so modest always are his mentions of himself,—should we learn what a pressure of admiring curiosity, rising sometimes into tumults of enthusiasm and applause, gathered about him wherever he went. Whosoever else might be present,—ambassador, statesman, peer, scion of royalty, or even (as happened several times) the great Duke of Wellington himself,—it was always to Sir Walter Scott in chief, the contemporary memoirs tell us, that the eyes of the assembly were turned. New veneration for him, by reason of the diffused knowledge of the heroic contest which he had begun and was still maintaining with adverse fortune, mingled now, it seems, with all the former feelings which his name and recollections of his writings called up; and for thousands on thousands, whether at home or abroad, he was the most interesting man in all Europe. What need to continue this sketch farther? The rest is known, in a general way, to every one. He had reached his sixtieth year,—not absolutely victorious as yet over the whole of the mass of debt against which he had been exerting himself, but with absolute victory within sight if he should live but a few years longer,—when it became evident that no such extension of his life was to be looked for. Signs of premature old age had become manifest in the complete whitening of his hair and the worn aspect of his visage; there had been distinct premonitions of failing powers in the inferior literary quality of some of his later productions; and three paralytic or apoplectic seizures in rapid succession, the last in April 1831, finished the process of wreck. A journey to the Mediterranean was recommended; and thither he went,—conveyed first to London by land, and then, by sea-voyage in a Government frigate, to Malta. From Malta, which he reached late in November 1831, he removed, about the middle of December, to Naples; whence the proposal was that he should pass northwards through the rest of Italy, visiting Rome and other famous Italian cities. All in vain! He grew worse and worse; brain and speech lost their normal functions; his restlessness and impatience became ungovernable. The Mediterranean, Italy, Rome, blue skies and classical cities,—what are they all to _me_? Give me back one hour of Scotland; Let me see it ere I die.