it through all their windings. His "own romantic town" glories in his memory; every city, village and hamlet of the Lowlands, with strath, meadow and moorland, echo his praise. The Genius of his country has crowned him with the same wild wreath which erst she hung upon the head of Burns, and the world has acknowledged the consecration. It was in the year 1826 that Ballantyne and Company became insolvent, and Sir Walter Scott, in the very midst of his splendid career, found himself involved to the amount of $600,000. But he nobly refused to become a bankrupt, considering, says Allan Cunningham, "like the elder Osbaldistone of his own immortal pages, commercial honor as dear as any other honor." All he asked for was time; and in seven years he paid off more than the half of this sum by the labors of his pen. His efforts to accomplish this sublime purpose were gigantic, but they broke down his constitution. "Sometime in the beginning of the year 1831," says his friend Cunningham, "a sore illness came upon him; his astonishing efforts to satisfy his creditors, began to exhaust a mind apparently exhaustless; and the world heard with concern that a paralytic stroke had affected his speech and his right hand, so much as to render writing a matter of difficulty. One of his letters to me at this period, is not written with his own hand: the signature is his, and looks cramped and weak. I visited him at Abbotsford, about the end of July, 1831: he was a degree more feeble than I had ever seen him, and his voice seemed affected; not so his activity of fancy, and surprising resources of conversation. He told anecdotes and recited scraps of verse, old and new, always tending to illustrate something passing. He showed me his armory, in which he took visible pleasure; and was glad to hear me commend the design of his house, as well as the skill with which it was built. * * * In a small room, half library and half armory, he usually sat and wrote: here he had some remarkable weapons, curious pieces of old Scottish furniture, such as chairs and cabinets, and an antique sort of a table, on which lay his writing materials. A crooked headed staff of Abbotsford oak or hazel usually lay beside him to support his steps as he went and came." "When it was known," continues Cunningham, "that Sir Walter Scott's health declined, the deep solicitude of all ranks became manifest; strangers came from far lands to look on the house which contained the great genius of our times; inquirers flocked around, of humble and of high degree, and the amount of letters of inquiry or condolence was, I have heard, enormous. Amongst the visitors, not the least welcome was Wordsworth, the poet, who arrived when the air of the northern hills was growing too sharp for the enfeebled frame of Scott, and he had resolved to try if the fine air and climate of Italy would restore him to health and strength.