"Bonny! bonny!" at every flash. Walter's grandpapa, finding that he was fond of riding on the old cow-bailie's shoulder, bought him a darling little Shetland pony, hardly as large as a Newfoundland dog; in fact, he was so small that he used to walk into the parlour like a dog, and feed from the child's hand. He did not think then that one day he should have a little grandchild lame like himself, and that he should buy him just such a little pony, and name it like that-" Marion ; " but so it was.

Walter was a great reader. He read to his aunt, read to himself, and read to his mother. One day he was reading to his mother an account of a shipwreck, and became very much excited; .lifting his hands and eyes, and saying, "There's the mast gone! crash! now they'll all perish!" While he was reading, a lady had come in to see his mother. After he had recovered a little from his agitation, he turned to the lady visitor with a politeness quite remarkable in a child of only six years, and said, "This is too melancholy; had I not better read you something more amusing?" The lady thought, as well she might, that if she wanted to be "amused," she had better make him talk; so she said, knowing he had been reading Milton, "How did you like Milton, Walter?"

"I think," said he, " that it is very strange that Adam, who had just come newly into the world, should know everything. I suppose, though, it must be only the poet's fancy."

"You forget," said the lady, "that God created Adam quite perfect."

Walter reflected a moment, seemed satisfied, and yielded the point.

When his aunt Janet took him up to bed that night, he said, "Auntie, I like that lady: I think she is a virtuoso, like myself."

"Dear Walter!" exclaimed Aunt Janet, opening wide "what is a virtuoso?"

her eyes,

"Why, aunt, it is one who wishes to, and will, know everything."

Of course, you may believe that his aunt Janet tucked him up that night in the full belief that he would never live to grow up. Luckily for us all, she was mistaken.

One day, when Walter was sitting at the gate with an attendant, a woebegone old beggar came up and asked for charity. After he had received it, the attendant said, Walter, how thankful you should be that you are not obliged to beg your bread in that way!"

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Walter looked up wistfully, as if he did not comprehend; then replied, "Homer was a beggar."

"How do you know?" asked the attendant. "Why, don't you remember?—

'Seven Roman cities strove for Homer dead,

Through which the living Homer begged his bread.'”

3

4

1 Sandy Knowe, the name of a farm in Roxburghshire, Scotland. 2 bairn, child. cosy, comfortable; snug. woebegone, melan. choly; very sad.

THE BOY WALTER SCOTT.

proph'-e-sied

PART II.
ex-ceed'-ing-ly

dis'-ci-pline

How lucky that Walter was not kept in the city! I think nothing could have made him well but taking him just where he was taken-out on the crags, where the fresh wind blew, and the grass was so sweet, and everything about him tempted him to crawl on a little farther, and then a little farther; a tuft of moss, or a curious stone, or some little thing which he wished to take in his

hand and examine more closely. Oh, I am quite sure he must have died in the city : his poor lame leg would have shrunk more and more, for want of exercise; for a carpet ever so soft can never be like that which God has spread for the bare feet of the poorest country child. But you must not suppose, all this while, that he learnt nothing save that which the sky and the crags and the sheep taught him. Aunt Janet used to give him lessons when he was well enough, and as he could bear them. Ah! it is well that there are some good women who never marry. Else, what would so many sick children do for patient, careful, good, loving nurses? How many of them have been coaxed by such round the most dangerous point of childhood, where medicine was nothing, and good nursing everything, to the astonishment of all who prophesied an early death! Such women have their reward; for these little ones become almost as dear to them as if in name, as well as in self-forgetting love, they were mothers. God bless them all! as the silver threads gleam amid their tresses. They will not be lonely in heaven.

Children are full of funny whims; though I think, if we but follow them carefully, we shall, oftener than not, find good reason for them. Walter had a dislike almost amounting to terror of a statue. Very likely he might first have seen one by a dim light, which, to his startled vision, gave it a ghostly look. It might have been so, though I don't know that it was. When his uncle Robert, who was very fond of him, found this out, he did not laugh at him, or scold him, but he took him, whenever it was possible, to see fine statues; and he soon learned, not only to conquer his dislike, but to admire their beauty exceedingly.

By-and-by his friends thought it was time he went to school; he was growing so much stronger, though not

hours.

well of his lameness; in fact, I believe that all his after life he walked with a stick. So to school he went, I daresay with many misgivings. I daresay he wondered whether the boys would make fun of his lameness. I daresay he wondered what he should do with himself while they were running and leaping and playing all sorts of rough-and-tumble plays out of doors and out of school I suppose his grandpapa, and his uncle Robert, and his aunt Janet all felt anxious too; but, as it turned out, there was no great occasion for it, for he seemed quite able to manage his own little affairs. He commenced telling such wonderful tales and stories, that the boys were glad to crowd round him and listen. How they would have stared, had they then been told that this lame fellow was destined to set the whole world by the ears by the stories he should write! Ah! you don't know, boys, what famous pen you may be sharing your apples and cake with in the playground. And it is very well you don't know all this, because it would spoil your present fun and freedom; and it is very well "the master" does not know " a genius" when he is boxing his ears, because they might grow very long for the need of such discipline.

Well, like other boys, Master Walter was sometimes at the top and sometimes at the bottom of his class. On one occasion he made a sudden leap to the top. The master asked the boys, "Is with ever a substantive?" All were silent, until the question reached Walter, nearly at the bottom of the class, who instantly replied by quoting from the Book of Judges, "And Samson said unto Delilah, If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and as another man." Pretty keen! wasn't it? The other boys twiddled their thumbs, and looked foolish, and he went to the top.

But a smart answer does not stand a boy in the place of hard study, as you may have found out if you ever tried it; so Master Walter found himself at the bottom of the class again. This didn't suit the young man, and what suited him less was the fact that the boy who was at the head seemed to mean to stay there. Day after day. passed, and nobody could get his place. Walter 1 pondered deeply how he should manage. He looked sharply at him, to see if he could not accomplish by 2 stratagem what he could not gain fairly. At length he observed that when a question was asked, this boy always fumbled with his fingers at a particular button on the lower part of his waistcoat. If Walter could only succeed in cutting off that button! He watched his chance, knife in hand. When that boy was again questioned, he felt, as usual, for the friendly button. It was gone! He looked down for it, but it was no more to be seen than to be felt. He stuttered, he stammered, he missed his lesson; and that saucy, roguish Walter took his place. I can tell you he didn't feel happy about it; for he says he never passed him but his heart smote him for it, though the top boy never knew who stole his lesson button.

Walter's mother appears to have been a very intelligent, kind-hearted, well-educated woman. She died before Walter came to be the "Great Unknown" whom everybody was wondering about. But, after all, what matters it, so far as she was concerned? since it is love, not greatness, for which a mother's heart hungers; and Walter loved his mother.

3

After her death, among her papers was found a weak, boyish scrawl, with pencilled marks still visible, of a translation in verse from Horace and Virgil, by "her dear boy Walter." With all his glory, with all his troops of friends, seen and unseen, I doubt if he was ever so