But it was the outside of it that he saw; the noise, bustle, colour,
stirring action that delighted him. Into its spiritualities he did not
penetrate far; its scholasticisms, strange casuistries, shuddering
faiths, grotesque distortions of soul, its religious mysticisms,
asceticisms, agonies; the ecstactic reveries of the cloister, terrors of
hell, and visions of paradise. It was the literature of the knight, not
of the monk, that appealed to him. He felt the awfulness and the beauty
of Gothic sacred architecture and of Catholic ritual. The externalities
of the mediaeval church impressed him, whatever was picturesque in its
ceremonies or august in its power. He pictured effectively such scenes
as the pilgrimage to Melrose in the "Lay"; the immuring of the renegade
nun in "Marmion"; the trial of Rebecca for sorcery by the Grand Master of
the Temple in "Ivanhoe." Ecclesiastical figures abound in his pages,
jolly friars, holy hermits, lordly prelates, grim inquisitors, abbots,
priors, and priests of all descriptions, but all somewhat conventional
and viewed _ab extra_. He could not draw a saint.[47] Significant,
therefore, is his indifference to Dante, the poet _par excellence_ of the
Catholic Middle Age, the epitomizer of mediaeval thought. "The plan" of
the "Divine Comedy," "appeared to him unhappy; the personal malignity and
strange mode of revenge presumptuous and uninteresting." Scott's genius
was antipathetic to Dante's; and he was as incapable of taking a lasting
imprint from his intense, austere, and mystical spirit, as from the
nebulous gloom of the Ossianic poetry. Though conservative, he was not
reactionary after the fashion of the German "throne-and-altar"
romanticists, but remained always a good Church of England man and an
obstinate opponent of Catholic emancipation.[48] "Creeds are data in his
novels," says Bagehot; "people have different creeds but each keeps his
own."

Scott's interest in popular superstitions was constant. As a young