No.4.—LUCY BERTRAM.
Lucy Bertram's story is that of many others where nature and fortune are at variance—the one as slavish as the other is niggard. Nature gave Lucy Bertram the lovely face and the sweet disposition, but fortune surrounded her with difficulties and sorrows. From her cradle, whose companion was the coffin of her mother, her young life must have been one of anxiety and of struggle. Her natural good sense would soon show the embarrassments which were daily thickening around her ruined father, while she must see the fruitlessness of her own efforts to retrieve or assist. From the time that she could think at all her thoughts must have been sad and careful ones ; and what strength, yet sweetness of character, they gradually developed! A quick perception of propriety is the chief characteristic of her mind, while warm, but timid affection, is that of her heart. I know no circumstances so melancholy as those of a decayed family: the very fact of having known better days only aggravates the privations of the present—and pride inflicts—
"Tortures the poor alone can know,
The proud alone can feel."
Scott has skilfully surrounded the falling house of Ellangowan with every possible circumstance that could excite interest in its fortunes. There is the long descent, coupled with stirring traditions of love and war; and call it prejudice or fantasy, the pride of birth has a hold on our respect, linked half by habit, half by that subtle influence which the past has over the mind. Truly, as Schiller beautifully says—
"Time consecrates;
And what is grey with age, becomes religion."
Then there is the pity for the kind-hearted master turned from his homestead in his old age—a man, too, who has been "nobody's enemy but his own," though certainly he had better have been an enemy to some one else. Next our justice is enlisted on his behalf—his own imprudence is merged in generous indignation against the ungrateful dependant who has thus requited confidence. Last, is the interest felt for youth and loveliness left alone in this bleak and bitter world. "Guy Mannering" is, like its companions, filled with pictures. What a picture is that of the old man, seated for the last time in his arm-chair, removed from its accustomed place by the fireside, to the sunny bank, waiting to leave the home of his forefathers, though all see that "a darker departure is near," while his child, his patient, affectionate child, watches at his side. Almost every appearance, too, of Meg Merrilies is a stage effect, as dramatic in situation as it is in language. There are some exquisite touches of poetry. In her well-known denunciation, what can be finer than the—"This day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths—see if the fire in your ain parlour burn the brighter for that:"—or, again, what can be more pathetic than her lament over the Cairn of Dernclough.
"Do you see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling? there my kettle boiled for forty years—there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters—where are they now?—where are the leaves that were on that auld ash tree at Martinmas? the west wind has laid it bare, and I am stripped too. . . . It will ne'er be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye'll no forget her, and ye'll gar build up the old wa's for her sake!!". . . Mixed with the romantic and the pathetic, how much too there is in "Guy Mannering" of the amusing and the humorous. Pleydell is a comedy in himself, and now a relic of the olden time. Strange how manners change, and how to-morrow alters all it can of yesterday; but an acute and kind-hearted lawyer with peculiarities which, like a touch of sharp sauce, give flavour to the viand, might and will be longer found than the sturdy and honest farmer of Charlie's Hope. When civilization comes to a certain point, the changes in the higher classes are little more than those of fancies and of fashions; but those operating on the classes below are changes of character.
Never did book end more satisfactorily than "Guy Mannering." We are glad of Julia's marriage, but we have even a kindlier interest in that of the sweet and timid Lucy. The work has only one sin of omission. Mr. Pleydell declares that Mrs. Allan's sauce to the wild duck, of lemon, claret, and cayenne, was beyond all praise. Truly, for the benefit of future generations, Mrs. Allan's receipt ought to have been given.