RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 479 



is not uninstructive to observe how completely the novelist 

 has appropriated and brought within the compass of one fic- 

 tion, in defiance of all those lower probabilities which the 

 lawyer who pleaded before a jury court would be compelled 

 to respect, almost every interesting scene and object in both 

 the Shetland and Orkney islands. There was but little in- 

 tercourse in those days between the two northern archipela- 

 gos. It is not yet thirty years since they communicated 

 with each other, chiefly through the port of Leith, where 

 their regular traders used to meet monthly ; but it was ne- 

 cessary, for the purposes of effect, that the dreary sublimities 

 of Shetland should be wrought up into the same piece of rich 

 tissue with the imposing antiquities of Orkney, Sumburgh 

 Head and Roost with the ancient Cathedral of St Magnus 

 and the earl's palace, and Fitful Head and the sand-enve- 

 loped kirk of St Ringan with the Standing Stones of Sten- 

 nis and the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy ; and so the little jury- 

 court probabilities have been sacrificed without scruple, and 

 that higher truth of character, and that exquisite portrait- 

 ure of external nature, which give such reality to fiction, 

 and make it sink into the mind more deeply than historic 

 fact, have been substituted instead. But such, considerably 

 to the annoyance of the lesser critics, has been ever the 

 practice of the greater poets. The lesser critics are all cri- 

 tics of the jury-court cast ; while all the great masters of 

 fiction, with Shakspeare at their head, have been asserters of 

 that higher truth which is not letter, but spirit, and contemn- 

 ers of the mere judicial probabilities. And so they have 

 been continually fretting the little men with their extrava- 

 gances, and they ever will. What were said to be the ori- 

 ginals of two of Sir Walter's characters in the " Pirate" were 

 living in the neighbourhood of Stromness only a few years 

 ago. An old woman who resided immediately over the town, 

 in a little cottage, of which there now remains only the roof- 



