Now the Scotch law
was full of vestiges and records of that period,--was indeed a great
standing monument of it; and in numbers of his writings Scott shows
with how deep an interest he had studied the Scotch law from this
point of view. He remarks somewhere that it was natural for a
Scotchman to feel a strong attachment to the principle of rank, if
only on the ground that almost any Scotchman might, under the Scotch
law, turn out to be heir-in-tail to some great Scotch title or estate
by the death of intervening relations. And the law which sometimes
caused such sudden transformations, had subsequently a true interest
for him of course as a novel writer, to say nothing of his interest in
it as an antiquarian and historian who loved to repeople the earth,
not merely with the picturesque groups of the soldiers and courts of
the past, but with the actors in all the various quaint and homely
transactions and puzzlements which the feudal ages had brought forth.
Hence though, as a matter of fact, Scott never made much figure as an
advocate, he became a very respectable, and might unquestionably have
become a very great, lawyer.
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