"Her last Half-crown" is another study
of the honesty that survived in a starving and outcast Scotch girl, when
all other virtues, as we commonly reckon virtue, had gone before her
character to some place where, let us hope, they may rejoin her; for if
we are to suffer for the vices which have abandoned us, may we not get
some credit for the virtues that we have abandoned, but that once were
ours, in some heaven paved with bad resolutions unfulfilled? "The Black
Dwarf's Bones" is a sketch of the misshapen creature from whom Scott
borrowed the character that gives a name to one of his minor Border
stories. The real Black Dwarf (David Ritchie he was called among men)
was fond of poetry, but hated Burns. He was polite to the fair, but
classed mankind at large with his favourite aversions: ghosts, fairies,
and robbers. There was this of human about the Black Dwarf, that "he
hated folk that are aye gaun to dee, and never do't." The village
beauties were wont to come to him for a Judgment of Paris on their
charms, and he presented each with a flower, which was of a fixed value
in his standard of things beautiful. One kind of rose, the prize of the
most fair, he only gave thrice. Paris could not have done his dooms more
courteously, and, if he had but made judicious use of rose, lily, and
lotus, as prizes, he might have pleased all the three Goddesses; Troy
still might be standing, and the lofty house of King Priam.
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