And here let it be said that the Jeanie Deans of the novel is by no means so attractive a heroine as Scott wished to make her. There is heroism in her walk from Scotland to London, and we rejoice when she is fortunate enough to obtain a “cast in a wagon,” or pity her when she falls in with thieves and murderers at Gonerby Hill foot; but when we find her “conforming to the national (that is to say, the English) extravagance of wearing shoes and stockings for the whole day,” we can scarce subdue a snort of contempt at the very superior manner in which she thus yields to the popular prejudice in favour of this extravagance in shoe-leather. Nor is she a particularly lovable figure when she disputes theology with the rector of Willingham, with all the assurance of a Doctor of Divinity and all the narrow-minded bigotry of a Covenanter; coming in these things perilously near the ideal of the perfect prig. We must here quote the landlord of the “Saracen’s Head” at Newark on Gonerby Hill. He spoke of it as though it were some beetling eminence, resembling at the very least a Snowdon or an Helvellyn. He called it a “high mountain,” and indeed Scott has in putting this phrase into mine host’s mouth made him characteristic of his age. The year of Jeanie Deans’ romantic expedition was 1737, and then, and for long afterwards, travellers and all who had business with the roads magnified hills in this manner. They disliked hills, and so for that matter did most people, for the appreciation of scenery was not yet born. “When I was young,” said Wordsworth, many years later, “there were no lakes nor mountains,” and it was Thomas Gray, the author of the _Elegy_, who really was the first to discover beauty instead of terror and desolation in them. Jeanie Deans, on the other hand, was pleased to hear of Gonerby Hill. Not, mark you, that she was educated up to an appreciation of the picturesque. We know, in fact, that she was not, because when she and the Duke of Argyle stood looking down upon the lovely expanse of woods, meads, and waters seen from Richmond Hill, all she could find to say was that “It’s braw feeding for the cows.” No, when she learned with pleasure of the “mountain” she was to cross, it was only for association’s sake: “I’m glad to hear there’s a hill, for baith my sight and my very feet are weary o’ sic tracts o’ level ground—it looks a’ the way between this and York as if a’ the land had been trenched and levelled, whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of a muckle blue hill they ca’ Ingleboro’, I thought I hadna a friend left in this strange land.” “As for the matter of that, young woman,” said mine host, “an you be so fond o’ hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in thy lap, for it’s a murder to post-horses. But here’s to thy journey, and mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass.”