What he might have been had he never contracted his fatal habit of opium eating, it is perhaps useless to conjecture; but in his youth he was thought to be one who might do anything,--all things. What he really did do, of permanent value, is very little compared to the expectations of his friends. Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the pity of this weakness seems infinitely great, and we mourn over his lot with the same unavailing sorrow with which we weep over the graves of other men of great gifts, but some fatal defect of will, which allows them to be bound and held captive all their lives in the chains of some darling vice. Mingled with the rosemary of our remembrance for such, must be the fennel and the rue. [Illustration] WALTER SCOTT. "Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone. The battled towers, the donjon keep, The loop-hole grates, where captives weep, The flanking walls that round it sweep, In yellow lustre shone. The warriors on the turrets high, Moving athwart the evening sky, Seemed forms of giant height; Their armor, as it caught the rays, Flashed back again the western blaze, In lines of dazzling light." Who does not remember the ring of the opening lines of "Marmion,"--pronounced by Horace Greeley to be the finest verse of descriptive writing in the language? How often were they declaimed from the school rostrums in the days, dear reader, when you and I were young! What do school boys and girls declaim now, we wonder, equal to the selections from Scott, which formed the greatest part of our stock in trade? Have "Marmion," and "The Lady of the Lake," and the immortal "Lay" been superseded by the trivialities and inanities of modern poetasters? or do the good old lines still hold their own? Does the orator of the class still rise and electrify the whole school, as in the former days, by drawing his cloak around him, like the noble Douglas, and declaring:-- "My manors, halls, and bowers shall still Be open to my Sovereign's will,-- To each one whom he lists, howe'er Unmeet to be the owner's peer. My castles are my King's alone, From turret to foundation-stone: The hand of Douglas is his own; And never shall in friendly grasp The hand of such as Marmion clasp." And is the whole school lost in breathless admiration still as he continues:-- "Burned Marmion's swarthy cheek like fire, And shook his very frame for ire, And--'This to me!' he said; 'An 'twere not for thy hoary beard, Such hand as Marmion's had not spared To cleave the Douglas' head!'" We wonder does the-- "Minstrel come once more to view The eastern ridge of Benvenue." And if he still sees-- "the dagger-crest of Mar, Still sees the Moray's silver star, Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war, That up the lake comes winding far!"