It would be wrong not to mention, however briefly, the confirmation furnished by the Journal of all our previous impressions of Scott’s high excellence among his fellow-men, not only in the general virtues of integrity, honour, courage, and persevering industry, but also in all those virtues which constitute what we call in a more particular sense _goodness_. “Great and good” is one of our common alliterative phrases; and it is a phrase which we seem to require when we would characterise the kind of human being that is entitled to supreme admiration. We feel that either adjective by itself would be inadequate in such a case, but that the doubling suffices. Another of our alliterative phrases, nearly the same in meaning at root, is “head and heart.” Only when there is a conjunction in a human being of what we call “heart” with what we call “intellect” are we quite satisfied even in cases of ordinary experience; and only when there is the conjunction of “great heart” with “great intellect” do we bow down with absolute veneration before this man or that man of historical celebrity. Common and simple though this word “heart” is, there is a world of unused applicability in it yet in many directions. In the criticism of literature, for example, it supplies a test that would make havoc with some high reputations. There have been, and are, writers of the most indubitable ability, and of every variety of ability, in whose writings, if you search them through and through, though you may find instruction in abundance, novelties of thought in abundance, and amusement in abundance, you will find very little of real “heart.” There is no such disappointment when you turn to Scott. Benevolence, charitableness, tolerance, sympathy with those about him in their joys and their sorrows, kindly readiness to serve others when he could, utter absence of envy or real ill-will,—these are qualities that shine out everywhere in his life and in the succession of his writings, and that receive, though they hardly need, additional and more intimate illustration in his Journal. Positively, when I contemplate this richness of heart in Scott, and remember also how free he was all through his life from those moral weaknesses which sometimes accompany and disfigure an unusually rich endowment in this species of excellence,—for, born though he was in an old Scottish age of roughish habits and not over-squeamish speech, and carrying though he did the strong Scottish build of that age, and somewhat of its unabashed joviality, to the very last, his life was exemplary throughout in most particulars of personal conduct,—positively, I say, with all this in my mind, I can express my feeling about Scott no otherwise than by declaring him to have been one of the very best men that ever breathed.