Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/218

 214 of pity and terror." Scott handles incident with the matchless skill of a great story-teller. He shows the same instinctive art in his situations that a great painter like Rembrandt shows in his grouping. Every figure falls so inevitably into his right place that it is impossible for us to imagine him in any other. Henry Bertram's return to Ellengowan is one of the most artistic and charming scenes in fiction, though it is described with such careless simplicity. Perplexed and fascinated by the childish memories tugging at his heartstrings, the young laird gazes at his ancestral home, and listens with rapture—which we share—to the fragment of a long-forgotten yet familiar song:

There may be people who are in no way moved by this home-coming, and who feel no joy when Queen Mary's boat glides over the dark waters of Lochleven, and no horror at that ill-omened churchyard gossip which ushers in the