But his spirit was slow to break. "Duty to God and to my children," he said, "must teach me patience." Once he speaks of "the loneliness of these watches of the night." Not until his debts were paid and his duties fulfilled would that great soul yield. "I may be bringing on some serious disease," he remarks, "by working thus hard; if I had once justice done to other folks, I do not much care, only I would not like to suffer long pain." A little later the old spirit shows itself: "I do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be beaten.... Let us use the time and faculties which God has left us, and trust futurity to His guidance.... I want to finish my task, and then good-night. I will never relax my labour in these affairs either for fear of pain or love of life. I will die a free man, if hard working will do it.... My spirits are neither low nor high--grave, I think, and quiet--a complete twilight of the mind.... God help--but rather God bless--man must help himself.... The best is, the long halt will arrive at last and cure all.... It is my dogged humour to yield little to external circumstances.... I shall never see the three-score and ten, and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter either." In the mood of mingled submission and resolve denoted by these sentences (which occur at long intervals in the story), he wrought at his task until it was finished. By _Woodstock_ he earned £8000; by the _Life of Napoleon_ £18,000; by other writings still other sums. The details of his toil appear day by day in these simple pages, tragic through all their simplicity. He was a heart-broken man from the hour when his wife died, but he sustained himself by force of will and sense of honour, and he endured and worked till the last, without a murmur; and when he had done his task he laid down his pen and so ended. The lesson of Scott's _Journal_ is the most important lesson that experience can teach. It is taught in two words: honour and duty. Nothing is more obvious, from the nature and environment and the consequent condition of the human race, than the fact that this world is not, and was not intended to be, a place of settled happiness. All human beings have troubles, and as the years pass away those troubles become more numerous, more heavy, and more hard to bear. The ordeal through which humanity is passing is an ordeal of discipline for spiritual development. To live in honour, to labour with steadfast industry, and to endure with cheerful patience is to be victorious. Whatever in literature will illustrate this doctrine, and whatever in human example will commend and enforce it, is of transcendent value; and that value is inherent in the example of Sir Walter Scott. CHAPTER XXI ELEGIAC MEMORIALS IN EDINBURGH