sceptical--of a distinct class or order of human beings, from the Monarch to the Mendicant, from the Queen to the Gypsy, from the Bruce to the Moniplies, from Mary Stuart to Jenny Dennison. We shall never say that Scott is Shakespeare: but we shall say that he has conceived and created--you know the meaning of these words--as many characters--real living flesh-and-blood human beings--naturally, truly, and consistently, as Shakespeare; who, always transcendently great in pictures of the passions--out of their range, which surely does not comprehend all rational being--was--nay, do not threaten to murder us--not seldom an imperfect delineator of human life. All the world believed that Sir Walter had not only exhausted his own genius in his poetry, but that he had exhausted all the matter of Scottish life--he and Burns together--and that no more ground unturned-up lay on this side of the Tweed. Perhaps he thought so too for a while--and shared in the general and natural delusion. But one morning before breakfast it occurred to him, that in all his poetry he had done little or nothing--though more for Scotland than any other of her poets, except the Ploughman--and that it would not be much amiss to commence a New Century of Inventions. Hence the Prose Tales--Novels--and Romances--fresh floods of light pouring all over Scotland--and occasionally illumining England, France, and Germany, and even Palestine--whatever land had been ennobled by Scottish enterprise, genius, valour, and virtue.