Thrilling and romantically beautiful as _Rob Roy_, _Kenilworth_ and _Ivanhoe_ are, and exciting as it is to read them, Scott has achieved even greater scenes in some of the novels appearing in the list above. Rob Roy, Die Vernon, Locksley, Rebecca of York, are splendid and memorable characters, but they are not as wonderful as Edie Ochiltree in _The Antiquary_, or as Jeanie Deans in _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_. We delight in Rob Roy and Locksley and we love Die Vernon dearly, and yet somehow we know that Edie Ochiltree and Jeanie Deans are greater. We respect them profoundly, and think more of human nature because of what they say and do. We wonder why this should be so. Puzzling out the way we feel about Edie Ochiltree and Jeanie Deans, we come to a conclusion somewhat like the following. In the case of the first dearly loved characters, Scott was writing about people he had never met or known. He was in reality describing the beautiful dreams we have of romantic people who do not actually belong to everyday life. But Edie Ochiltree is such a man as Scott himself must have known. He is alive and so vivid in his not too highly coloured perfection, that one can imagine him strolling along a country road in Scotland. Edie is a wandering beggar and wears a blue gown. The neighbours give him food and shelter, and in return he does for them various little services. But Edie {26} at the same time is a remarkable man. When greatness comes in ordinary people, they are greater than it is possible to make a romantic character. We cannot tell why this is so; but so it is. Turn to chapter seven in _The Antiquary_ and read what Edie says in answer to Sir Arthur Wardour's offer of a reward if he will save his daughter and himself from drowning. Such a character as Edie shows himself to be is an example of Sir Walter's genius at its highest. You will find other remarkable scenes in which Edie speaks in chapter twenty. But from his final appearance in chapter forty-four we must quote a few lines. There is a rumour that the country is to be invaded, and someone says to Edie that he has not much to fight for. Read carefully what follows for it is written in one of the dialects of Scotland, as is the case with a good part of what Sir Walter has written. "_Me_ no muckle to fight for, sir?--isna there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that I gang daundering beside, and the hearths of the gudewives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o' weans that come toddling to play wi' me when I come about a landward town?--"