embalmed forever in the pages of Walter Scott. Against that half-magical
background his heroes stand out in vivid relief; and justly so. It was not
put there by him for stage purposes; it was there as a fact; and the men
of whom he wrote were conscious of it, were moulded by it, were not
ashamed of its influence. Nature among the mountains is too fierce, too
strong, for man. He cannot conquer her, and she awes him. He cannot dig
down the cliffs, or chain the storm-blasts; and his fear of them takes
bodily shape: he begins to people the weird places of the earth with weird
beings, and sees nixes in the dark linns as he fishes by night, dwarfs in
the caves where he digs, half-trembling, morsels of copper and iron for
his weapons, witches and demons on the snow-blast which overwhelms his
herd and his hut, and in the dark clouds which brood on the untrodden
mountain-peak. He lives in fear: and yet, if he be a valiant-hearted man,
his fears do him little harm. They may break out, at times, in
witch-manias, with all their horrible suspicions, and thus breed cruelty,
which is the child of fear; but on the whole they rather produce in man
thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused yet precious, of the
boundless importance of the unseen world. His superstitions develop his
imagination; the moving accidents of a wild life call out in him sympathy
and pathos; and the mountaineer becomes instinctively a poet.

The lowlander, on the other hand, has his own strength, his own "virtues,"
or manfulnesses, in the good old sense of the word: but they are not for
the most part picturesque or even poetical.

He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, that he is stronger
than Nature; and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over her,
clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He knows of no
natural force greater than himself, save an occasional thunder-storm; and
against that, as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. Why should