SIR WALTER SCOTT.
THE Author of Waverley, alas ! is lying at the St. James's Hotel ill 3ermyn Street, in the last stage of paralysis—" past cure, past hope, past help !" In a few days the country will mourn the extinction of one of her most shining lights, the loss of one of her greatest benefactors. Sir WALTER SCOTT has had political enemies, as every distinguished individual must have who has taken so marked a political part as he has done—and of this sort of enmity we think he has experienced too large a share, for no such decidedTory ever neutralized his theoretical errors by so strong an infusion of practical liberality : but apersonal enemy he has never had. His unaffected simplicity, his benevolence of hea rt, his integrity of character (which the latter circumstances of his life showed to be heroic), have made him the object of universal affection as well as re- spect. Heroic his integrity may well be called ; for there is no doubt that he is now cut off, at only sixty years of age, a victim to exertions beyond human strength, not for the benefit of himself or his family, but of individuals who but for those exertions would have been sufferers from the commercial embarrassments in which he had the unhappiness to be involved. On the completion of the last of his labours he was compelled to seek for a renewal of health and strength in foreign climes. His search has been vain; and he is not even permitted to revisit the cherished scenes and " familiar faces" of his native land. But his memory will never die; and if ever man bequeathed to posterity a name as pure and spotless as it is great, that man is Sir WALTER SCOTT.
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