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them not . The king's evil of aristocracy was hereditary in his moral constitution , and the disease was incurable ; in fact , he died of it : the spirit of aristocracy was his murderer ; it made him undervalue those laurels which , had he rightly prized them , would have saved his brows from the flash which scathed him . He more gloried in being the laird of Abbotsford than the author of Waverley . His passion for becoming the connecting link of a broken feudal chain was his ruin . The purchase and improvement of his ct policy" outran even the unprecedented profits of
his publications . He became involved in the unfortunate speculations of Constable ' s house , and the tenacity with which he clung to the retention of Abbotsford , and the preservation of its entail , impelled him to the gigantic attempt of writing down a debt of one hundred thousand pounds . One-half of this mountain he did heave off , and then sunk , crushed beneath the remaining
portion . The laird destroyed the novelist . A popular journal has suggested a national subscription in order to free Abbotsford from the claims of the creditors , and entail it on the heirs of the baronetcy . This would be like honouring the memory of Achilles by raising the effigies of his vulnerable heel as a monument . Let the nation endow his family , if there be occasion , and amply too ; and let Abbotsford be purchased , but rather to be
preserved as the author ' s monument , than by being made an aristocratical appanage cherish the folly which hastened the extinction of so much mental energy and moral worth . That has already cost us enough , for it cost us Scott . It will be long ere aristocracy will balance that account . But for his healthy habits ,
his regularity of application , his cheerfulness of disposition , his good heart and conscience , it would have inflicted the loss upon us long before . The kingdom which he ruled in the regions of literature dissolves with his death . ' The age of chivalry is gone . ' The age of improvement is come , and futurity will now be the poet ' s inspiration . € Let byganes be byganes ; ' they have been nobly chronicled , and peace to the manes of the ultimus
Romanorum ; ' We ne'er shall look upon his like again ; ' that is too much to hope for . Let his toryism 'lie with him in his grave , but not remembered in his epitaph ; ' it did not mar his kindheartedness ; it did not disfigure , or but very faintly , his beautiful sketches . If he did not rightly estimate what a people is , collectively , he well appreciated what they had been individually ; he did them justice , and rendered them affection .
For this single cause That we have , all of us , one human heart . In theory he was no disciple of Bentham ; no advocate of the greatest happiness principle ; ' but practically , and considering only the immediate result , who is there of our times , either among the living or the dead , that has generated a greater amount of human enjoyment ?
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7 $ 8 On the Intellectual Character of Sir Walter Scott .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 728, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/8/
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