Something that should
"tame the glaring white" of that broad sunshine, was needed; and in
the years of reverse, when one gift after another was taken away, till
at length what he called even his "magic wand" was broken, and the old
man struggled on to the last, without bitterness, without defiance,
without murmuring, but not without such sudden flashes of subduing
sweetness as melted away the anger of the teacher of his
childhood,--that something seemed to be supplied. Till calamity came,
Scott appeared to be a nearly complete natural man, and no more. Then
first was perceived in him something above nature, something which
could endure though every end in life for which he had fought so
boldly should be defeated,--something which could endure and more than
endure, which could shoot a soft transparence of its own through his
years of darkness and decay. That there was nothing very elevated in
Scott's personal or moral, or political or literary ends,--that he
never for a moment thought of himself as one who was bound to leave
the earth better than he found it,--that he never seems to have so
much as contemplated a social or political reform for which he ought
to contend,--that he lived to some extent like a child blowing
soap-bubbles, the brightest and most gorgeous of which--the Abbotsford
bubble--vanished before his eyes, is not a take-off from the charm of
his career, but adds to it the very speciality of its fascination.
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