Edinburgh is a beautiful city. Those who belong to it love their romantic town with devotion. But it was fortunate for Walter Scott, and for us also, that he spent some of his early years on a farm. What he saw and learned at that time influenced all his future life. A story is told that when he was three years old, and unable to help himself, because he was so lame, he was left alone {29} in the open air at some distance from the farmhouse, as his aunt often wisely left him. A thunder storm came up and when they hastened to the little fellow they found him lying on his back, clapping his hands at each flash of lightning, and crying out, "Bonny! bonny!" There was never anything lacking in Walter Scott's happy courage, or in his tranquil enjoyment of the beauties he saw in nature or read about in books. His aunt used to read aloud to him. Like some other boys one has known, he played out by himself the battles described as he imagined they might have been fought. He was fascinated by old tales, old ballads and by history. From his early manhood he had a passion for all kinds of antiquarian research. When he was a lad he was sent to Edinburgh High School, a famous school, and here after school hours and during recess he became known to the other boys as a wonderful adept at relating stories. His audiences were closely attentive and delighted. He says of himself in a short fragment of autobiography that he was not a dunce, "but an incorrigibly idle imp". Perhaps his chief pursuit was reading. Some of the books he read were Ossian, which is compact of Highland myth and story, Spenser, an exquisite English poet, many novelists and other Poets, and the great collection of ballads known as Percy's _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_. These are all manly books, and stir the reader's blood and imagination, as Sir Philip Sidney said, like the sound of a trumpet. After Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University, where boys went at that time when {30} they were very young, Scott became a lawyer. The study of Scots law was to him an unending source of interest. But when he was a young lawyer without much to do, he was in the habit of telling romances to other young lawyers like himself who were waiting for clients. As the boys at school used to be fascinated, so the young lawyers later came under the same spell. We have by this time the origins of Scott's great work, a natural and unconquerable genius for writing and romance, love for romantic Edinburgh and all Scotland, the farm at Sandy Knowe, ballads, tales and history, Scots law, old customs, the characters and the people whom he knew and loved.