His severe literary toils were not intermitted even amid the heavy financial disasters which overtook him in connection' with the failure of his publishers; but with heroic determination he persevered in the noble purpose of discharging these obligations. Having accomplished the herculean task, his physical strength began to fail; and after a tour to Italy, he returned to Abbotsford, totally exhausted. When he arrived there, his dogs came about his knees, and he sobbed over them till he was reduced to a state of stupefaction. After lingering for two months, his mind became more clear, when he would ask to be placed at his desk, but the fingers refused to grasp the pen, and he sunk back, weeping. On the 21st of September, 1832, Sir Walter breathed his last. Not long before he died, he said: "I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day, and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that I have written nothing which, on my death-bed, I should wish blotted." Melrose he has consecrated by his genius, Abbotsford by his living presence, and Dryburgh is made sacred by his sleeping dust while Nature herself may be said, in his own beautiful lines, to do homage to the memory of his muse :— Call it not vain; they do not err, Who say that when the poet dies, And rivers teach the rushing wave Allen-a-Dale has no fagot for burning, The Baron of Ravensworth prances in pride, Allen-a-Dale was ne'er belted a knight, Though his spur be as sharp, and his blade be as bright; Yet twenty tall yeomen will draw at his word; And the best of our nobles his bonnet will vail, Who at Rere-cross on Stanmore meets Allen-a-Dale. Allen-a-Dale to his wooing is come; The mother, she asked of his household and home: The father was steel, and the mother was stone; He had laughed on the lass with his bonnie black eye, And she fled to the forest to hear a love-tale, And the youth it was told by was—Allen-a-Dale! Let us now note the interview of the Last Minstrel with the Duchess : He passed where Newark's stately tower The Minstrel gazed with wistful eye- With hesitating step at last The embattled portal-arch he passed, The Duchess marked his weary pace, Though born in such a high degree ;— He had played it to King Charles the Good, And much he wished, yet feared to try Hear his tribute to the Worth of Woman :— O woman! in our hours of ease, By the light quivering aspen made, We all remember his fine lines on Patriotism : Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, This is my own, my native land? Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, And doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung. Scattered through his prose writings, we occasionally meet with |