6Q 



conduct, and enforced the obligations of virtue ? To the 

 entertainment of the world they have made a large contri- 

 bution. He has made Scotland classic ground. He has 

 converted her hills into mountains, her fresh ponds into mag- 

 nificent lakes, her rivulets into deep, flomng rivers. Every 

 thing he has robed with the colors of imagination ; but 

 when you come to look at the reality, you are astonished 

 to find that of all men, he has furnished in his descrip- 

 tions of men and things, the most striking, mai-vellous and 

 thoughtful exemplification of what his brother poet, Camp- 

 bell says, in the opening of his poem, on the Pleasures of 

 Hope ; 



" Tis distance lends enchantment to the view." 



His characters are unreal ; his estimate of the obligations 

 and standard of virtue, defective ; his exemplifications of 

 principles in practice, imaginary and very rarely such as 

 any judicious father could safely propose for the imitation 

 of his children. It is more than probable that there is not 

 a living man in the world, whose character has been fash- 

 ioned after the model which Sir Walter Scott has drawn of 

 the most brilliant conception which his iliind has realized 

 of human excellency. And herein lies the marked clifie- 

 rence between the practical teacher — the conscientious in- 

 structSr and trainer of the young, and the man whose con- 

 ceptions of life and its responsibilities are embodied in the 

 dreams of poetry, and in the thrilling and moving scenes 

 depicted in the descriptions of the writers of Romance and 

 Fiction. 



Wlien we stand by the grave of Professor Mitchell we 

 feel that we are near the ashes of one who has labored and 

 striven conscientiously in the noblest and holiest of the 

 causes of humanity. That cause was, and is, and must ever 

 be, to develop and strengthen the intellectual powers in 

 alliance with efforts to cultivate and cherish and bring 

 into healthy action the moral affections; in a word to 



