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104 the many; he has himself shown to what such a study might lead, when it has not been made a mania for collecting "toys and trifles," whose chief value was their age. He set no undue value on relics, perhaps as valid as "the two tears of Queen Niobe kept in a glass bottle" of the Xavre. But the spirit in which Scott collected was that of the historian, and of the poet. The spur, the drinking-cup, the inscription on the mouldering stone, and the black-lettered manuscript, served to illustrate those daily manners, without whose knowledge any attempt to depict national character must be incomplete. The information thus gathered was the material of the historian, and the inspiration of the poet. The sword might be broken, the spur rusted, and the marble grey and defaced, yet not the less would the days hover round them, when the sword was that of some noble baron, and the graven letters told of honour cut short in some brief and bright career, or of loveliness laid low, even in the hour of summer.

Monkbarns is an antiquarian of another kind; he dreams no dreams, he sees no visions; his pursuits are those of an active mind, which from some chance circumstance has received its bent—a mind active yet narrow, and circumscribed by bodily indolence, while the possession of knowledge, though of a kind generally denominated "learned lumber," is sufficient to keep alive a sufficient stock of