Mr Andrew Lang's noble "Border Edition of the Waverley Novels"
(Nimmo) has reached its final and forty-eighth volume, which contains the Chronicles of the Canongate. The last four volumes of the series, which include Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous, have a painful and yet not wholly depressing
influence, for Scott's moral greatness was never more manifested than in the days of his mental decay. His power failed ; his courage and high sense of duty never. "I have suffered terribly," he wrote in May, 1831, but "I will light it out if I can." And undaunted by the terrible seizures which laid him low, he fought it out to the last. It cannot be said of him, to apply his own words, that he had "missed the discipline of noble hearts." Truly does Mr. Lang say that "among Sir Walter's lavish gifts to men, the most glorious is his example." We trust that this fine edition of our greatest and most poetical of novelists will attain, if it has not already done so, the high popularity it deserves. To all Scott's lovers it is a pleasure to know that despite the daily and weekly inrush of ephemeral fiction, the sale of his works is said by the booksellers to rank next below Tennyson's in poetry, and above that of everybody else in prose.
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