LAST DAYS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

BY JOHN G. LOCKHART.

T

HE last jotting of Sir Walter's Diary-perhaps the

his handwriting

last specimen of his handwriting-records his starting from Naples on the 16th of April, 1832. After the 11th of May the story can hardly be told too briefly.

The irritation of impatience, which had for a moment been suspended by the aspect and society of Rome, returned the moment he found himself on the road, and seemed to increase hourly. His companions could with difficulty prevail on him to see even the Falls of Terni, or the Church of Santa Croce, at Florence. On the 17th, a cold and dreary day, they passed the Apennines, and dined on the top of the mountains. The snow and the pines recalled Scotland, and he expressed pleasure at the sight of them. That night they reached Bologna, and he would see none of the interesting objects there, and next day, hurrying in like manner through Ferrara, he proceeded as far as Monselice. On the 19th he arrived at Venice; and he remained there till the 23d; but showed no curiosity about anything except the Bridge of Sighs and the adjoining dungeons,-down into which he would scramble, though the exertion was exceeding painful to him. On the other historical features of that place. -one so sure in other days to have inexhaustible attractions for him—he would not even look; and it was the same with all that he

came within reach of- even with the fondly anticipated chapel at Inspruck-as they proceeded through the Tyrol, and so onwards, by Munich, Ulm, and Heidelberg, to Frankfort. Here (June 5) he entered a bookseller's shop; and the people seeing an English party, brought out among the first things a lithographed print of Abbotsford. He said, "I know that already, sir," and hastened back to the inn without being recognized. Though in some parts of the journey they had very severe weather, he repeatedly wished to travel all the night as well as all the day; and the symptoms of an approaching fit were so obvious, that he was more than once bled, ere they reached Mayence, by the hand of his affectionate domestic.

At this town they embarked on the 8th June in the Rhine steamboat; and while they descended the famous river through its most picturesque region, he seemed to enjoy, though he said nothing, the perhaps unrivalled scenery it presented to him. His eye was fixed on the successive crags and castles, and ruined monasteries, each of which had been celebrated in some German ballad familiar to his ear, and all of them blended in the immortal panorama of Childe Harold. But so soon as he resumed his carriage at Cologne, and nothing but flat shores, and here and there a grove of poplars and a village spire were offered to the vision, the weight of misery sunk down again upon him. It was near Nimeguen, on the evening of the 9th, that he sustained another serious attack of apoplexy, combined with paralysis. Nicolson's lancet restored, after the lapse of some minutes, the signs of animation; but this was the crowning blow. Next day he insisted on resuming his journey, and on the 11th was lifted from the carriage into a steamboat at Rotterdam.

He reached London about six o'clock on the evening of Wednesday the 13th of June. Owing to the unexpected rapidity of the journey his eldest daughter had had no

notice when to expect him; and fearful of finding her either out of town, or unprepared to receive him and his attendants under her roof, Charles Scott drove to the St. James's hotel, in Jermyn Street, and established his quarters there before he set out in quest of his sister and myself. When we reached the hotel, he recognized us with every mark of tenderness, but signified that he was totally exhausted; so no attempt was made to remove him further, and he was put to bed immediately. Dr. Ferguson saw him the same night, and next day Sir Henry Halford and Dr. Holland saw him also; and during the next three weeks the two former visited him daily, while Ferguson was scarcely absent from his pillow. The Major was soon on the spot. To his children, all assembled once more about him, he repeatedly gave his blessing in a very solemn manner, as if expecting immediate death, but he was never in a condition for conversation, and sunk either into sleep or delirious stupor upon the slightest effort.

Mrs. Thomas Scott came to town as soon as she heard of his arrival, and remained to help us. She was more than once recognized and thanked. Mr. Cadell, too, arrived from Edinburgh, to render any assistance in his power. I think Sir Walter saw no other of his friends except Mr. John Richardson, and him only once. As usual, he woke up at the sound of a familiar voice, and made an attempt to put forth his hand, but it dropped powerless, and he said, with a smile, "Excuse my hand." Richardson made a struggle to suppress his emotion, and after a moment, got out something about Abbotsford and the woods which he had happened to see shortly before. The eye brightened, and he said, "How does Kirklands get on?" Mr. Richardson had lately purchased the estate so called on the Teviot, and Sir Walter had left him busied with plans of building. His friend told him that his new house was begun, and that the Marquis of Lothian had very

kindly lent him one of his own, meantime, in its vicinity. "Ay, Lord Lothian is a good man," said Sir Walter; "he is a man from whom one may receive a favor, and that's saying a good deal for any man in these days." The stupor then sank back upon him, and Richardson never heard his voice again. This state of things continued till the beginning of July.

During those melancholy weeks great interest and sympathy were manifested. Allan Cunningham mentions that, walking home late one night, he found several workingmen standing together at the corner of Jermyn Street, and one of them asked him, as if there was but one death-bed in London, "Do you know, sir, if this is the street where he is lying?" The inquiries both at the hotel and at my house were incessant; and I think there was hardly a member of the Royal family who did not send every day. The newspapers teemed with paragraphs about Sir Walter; and one of these, it appears, threw out a suggestion that his travels had exhausted his pecuniary resources, and that if he were capable of reflection at all, cares of that sort might probably harass his pillow. This paragraph came from a very ill-informed, but, I dare say, a well-meaning quarter. It caught the attention of some members of the then government; and, in consequence, I received a private communication to the effect that, if the case were as stated, Sir Walter's family had only to say what sum would relieve him from embarrassment, and it would be immediately advanced by the Treasury. The then Paymaster of the Forces, Lord John Russell, had the delicacy to convey this message through a lady with whose friendship he knew us to be honored. We expressed our grateful sense of his politeness, and of the liberality of the government, and I now beg leave to do so once more; but his Lordship was of course informed that Sir Walter Scott was not situated as the journalist had represented.

Dr. Ferguson's memorandum on Jermyn Street will be acceptable to the reader. He says::

"When I saw Sir Walter he was lying in the second floor back-room of the St. James's Hotel, in Jermyn Street, in a state of stupor, from which, however, he could be roused for a moment by being addressed, and then he recognized those about him, but immediately relapsed. I think I never saw anything more magnificent than the symmetry of his colossal bust, as he lay on the pillow with his chest and neck exposed. During the time he was in Jermyn Street he was calm, but never collected, and in general either in absolute stupor or in a waking dream. He never seemed to know where he was, but imagined himself to be still in the steamboat. The rattling of carriages, and the noises of the street sometimes disturbed this illusion, and then he fancied himself at the polling-booth of Jedburgh, where he had been insulted and stoned.

"During the whole of this period of apparent helplessness, the great features of his character could not be mistaken. He always exhibited great self-possession, and acted his part with wonderful power whenever visited, though he relapsed the next moment into the stupor from which strange voices had roused him. A gentleman stumbled over a chair in his dark room;- he immediately started up, and though unconscious that it was a friend, expressed as much concern and feeling as if he had never been laboring under the irritability of disease. It was impossible even for those who most constantly saw and waited on him in his then deplorable condition to relax from the habitual deference which he had always inspired. He expressed his will as determinedly as ever, and enforced it with the same apt and good-natured irony as he was wont

to use.

"At length his constant yearning to return to Abbotsford induced his physicians to consent to his removal, and the