on his early evidences of talent, and fostered them, we may well
imagine; and the tenderness with which she regarded his early
compositions is indicated by the fact that a copy of verses, written in
a boyish scrawl, was carefully preserved by her, and found, after her
death, folded in a paper on which was inscribed, "My Walter's first
lines, 1782." That she gloried in his successes when they came, we
gather; for when speaking late in life to Dr. Davy about his brother Sir
Humphrey's distinction, Sir Walter, doubtless drawing on his own home
memories, remarked, "I hope, Dr. Davy, that your mother lived to see it;
there must have been great pleasure in that to her." But with whatever
zeal Mrs. Scott may have unfolded Sir Walter's mind by her training, by
her praise, by her motherly enthusiasm, it is certain that, from first
to last, she loved his soul, and sought its interest, in and above all.
Her final present to him before she died was not a Shakespeare or a
Milton, but an old Bible--the book she loved best; and for her sake Sir
Walter loved it too.

Happy was Mrs. Scott in having a son who in all things reciprocated the
affection of his mother. With the first five-guinea fee he earned at the
bar he bought a present for her--a silver taper-stand, which stood on
her mantle-piece many a year; when he became enamored of Miss Carpenter
he filially wrote to consult his mother about the attachment, and to beg
her blessing upon it; when, in 1819, she died at an advanced age, he was
in attendance at her side, and, full of occupations though he was, we
find him busying himself to obtain for her body a beautifully situated
grave. Thirteen years later he also rested from his labors. During the
last hours of his lingering life he desired to be read to from the New
Testament; and when his memory for secular poetry had entirely failed
him, the words and the import of the sacred volume were still in his
recollection, as were also some of the hymns of his childhood, which his