It was only eight years thereafter, when this poet manager of the great Scotch jubilee--who seemed good for the work of a score of years--sailed, by royal permission (an act redeeming and glorifying royalty) upon a Government ship--seeking shores and skies which would put new vigor (if it might be) into a constitution broken by toil, and into hopes that had been blighted by blow on blow of sorrow. Never was a royal favor more worthily bespoken; never one more vainly bestowed. ’Twas too late. No human eye--once so capable of seeing--ever opened for a first look so wearily upon the blue of the Mediterranean--upon the marvellous fringed shores of lower Italy--upon Rome, Florence, and the snowy Swiss portals of the Simplon. Royalty (in person of William IV., then on the throne) asked kindly after the sick magician--who was established presently on a sick bed in London; while the cabmen on street corners near by talked low of the “great mon” who lay there a-dying. A little show of recovery gave power to reach home--Abbotsford and Tweed-side--once more. There was no hope; but it took time for the great strength in him to waste. Withal there was a fine glint of royalty at the end. “Be virtuous, my dear,” he said to Lockhart; “be a good man.” And that utterance--the summing up of forty years of brilliant accomplishment, and of baffled ambitions--emphasized by the trembling voice of a dying man--will dwell longer in human memories, and more worthily, than the empty baronial pile we call Abbotsford, past which the scurrying waters of the Tweed ripple and murmur--as they did on the day Sir Walter was born, and on the day he was buried at Dryburgh. CHAPTER III. Our last chapter was opened by a rather full sketch of Professor Wilson, and a briefer one of Thomas Campbell--who though of higher repute as a poet, was a far less interesting man. We then entered upon what may have seemed a very inadequate account of the great author of Waverley--because I presumed upon the reader’s full and ready knowledge; and because the Minstrel’s grand stride over all the Scottish country that is worth the seeing, and over all that domain in English Lands and Letters, which he made his own, has been noted by scores of tourists, and by scores of admiring commentators. You may believe me in saying--that his story was not scrimped for lack of love; indeed, it would have been easy to riot in talk about the lively drum-beat of his poems, or the livelier and more engaging charms of his prose Romance--through two chapters or through ten. But we must get on; there is a long road before us yet. _A Start in Life._