" IVANHOE."
[To rue EDITOR OF Tula " SPROTikTOR."] :SIR,—Rising from the perusal of your admirable notice of
Ivanhoe, I lighted upon the following entry in Sir Walter Scott's "Journal," under date Paris, October 31st, 1826 :—
" In the evening at the Od6on, whore wo saw Ivanhoe. It was :superbly got up, the Norman soldiers wearing pointed helmets and what resembled much hauberks of mail, which looked very well. The number of the attendants, and the skill with which -they were moved and grouped on the stage, wore well worthy of notice. It was an•opera, and of course the story greatly mangled, hand the dialogue in a great part nonsense. Yet it was strange to Piper anything like the words which I (then in an agony of pain "with spasms in my stomach) dictated to William Laidlaw at _Abbotsford, now recited in a foreign tongue, and for the amuse- .ment of a strange people. I little thought to have survived the
• completing of this novel."
The pathos of these last words, written sixty-five years ago, ,sounds .strange amidst the plaudits of to-da.y.—I am, Sir, &c., R. W. J.
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