Edinburgh was an illustrated edition of a great deal of Scotch history, and Scott left no part of the old town unvisited. He spent so much time exploring the country within reach that his father protested that he was becoming a strolling peddler. "Show me an old castle or a battlefield," he wrote, "and I was at home at once, filled it with its combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed my hearers by the enthusiasm of my description." So he came to know not only the spirit but the "form and presence" of feudalism and the ideals and code of manners of chivalry. [Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT From the painting by J. P. Knight] [Illustration: ABBOTSFORD A near view] His education went a step farther when he saw the Highlands for the first time in 1787. The traditions of 1715 and 1745, when the Highland chiefs had engaged in brave but futile attempts to restore the exiled Stuarts to the throne which those ill-starred Kings had forfeited by their inability to understand the English people, were still fresh on the Border. Men who had taken part in the rising of 1745 were still living, and Scott was fortunate enough to be the guest of one of them. He was to write the stories of wild Scotland as no historian had or could write them, and on this memorable visit he was to hear the tales of stirring and romantic deeds from one who had played a part in them, and he was to see with the eyes of youth the landscape on which they had been enacted. It was a happy hour in which the boy who was to write "Waverley" and "Rob Roy" heard from a veteran the stories of battle, of dashing foray, of daring deeds and hairbreadth escapes. "To know men who had known Rob Roy, to hear the story of the two risings which had shaken Scotland like an earthquake, to be a guest in remote and lonely castles, to be guided through wild defiles and over vast mountain ranges by kilted clansmen whose speech was only Gaelic and whose claymores were still at the service of their chiefs--this was the real education of the writer who was to be the scribe of his country, the truest of her historians." This first-hand education in romantic history was supplemented by the eager reading of military exploits, of medieval romance and legend, of the songs of the Border, of Ariosto and Cervantes. The author of "Don Quixote," he said later, "first inspired him with the ambition to excel in fiction." He was also fortunate in the possession of a memory which held tenaciously everything that contributed to his future work and let unrelated things slip through its meshes. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY, ABBOTSFORD]