But it is in the _Bride of Lammermoor_ more particularly that the use of the supernatural is not only blameless but indispensable. We begin to rise to it in that scene in which the Master of Ravenswood meets Alice. “Begone from among them,” she says, “and if God has destined vengeance on the oppressor’s house, do not you be the instrument. . . . If you remain here, her destruction or yours, or that of both, will be the inevitable consequence of her misplaced attachment.” A little further on, with great art, Scott having duly prepared us by what has preceded, adds intensity and colour. He apologises for the “tinge of superstition,” but, not believing, he evidently believes, and we justly surrender ourselves to him. The Master of Ravenswood after the insult received from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden’s Well on his way to Wolf’s Crag and sees the wraith of Alice. Scott makes horse as well as man afraid so that we may not immediately dismiss the apparition as a mere ordinary product of excitement. Alice at that moment was dying, and had “prayed powerfully that she might see her master’s son and renew her warning.” Observe the difference between this and any vulgar ghost story. From the very first we feel that the Superior Powers are against this match, and that it will be cursed. The beginning of the curse lies far back in the hereditary temper of the Ravenswoods, in the intrigues of the Ashtons, and in the feuds of the times. When Love intervenes we discover in an instant that he is not sent by the gods to bring peace, but that he is the awful instrument of destruction. The spectral appearance of Alice at the hour of her departure, on the very spot “on which Lucy Ashton had reclined listening to the fatal tale of woe . . . holding up her shrivelled hand as if to prevent his coming more near,” is necessary in order to intimate that the interdict is pronounced not by a mortal human being but by a dread, supernal authority. SEPTEMBER, 1798. “THE LYRICAL BALLADS.” THE year 1798 was a year of great excitement: England was alone in the struggle against Buonaparte; the mutiny at the Nore had only just been quelled: the 3 per cent. Consols had been marked at 49 or 50; the Gazettes were occupied with accounts of bloody captures of French ships; Ireland may be said to have been in rebellion, and horrible murders were committed there; the King sent a message to Parliament telling it that an invasion might be expected and that it was to be assisted by “incendiaries” at home; and the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven bishops passed a resolution declaring that if the French should land, or a dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the duty of the clergy to take up arms against an enemy whom the Bishop of Rochester described as “instigated by that desperate malignity against the Faith he has abandoned, which in all ages has marked the horrible character of the vile apostate.”