XII. OTTERBURN 465

Bertram’s nurse, compare Waverley’s and Morton’s,¹ Dr. Brown’s Tibbie, my own father’s Mause, my Anne:-all women of the same stamp; my Saxon mother not altogether comprehending them; but when Dr. John Brown first saw my account of my mother and Anne in Fors,² he understood both of them, and wrote back to me of “those two blessed women,” as he would have spoken of their angels, had he then been beside them, looking on another Face.³

¹ [See Waverley, chaps. xxxvii. and lxv.; and for Alison Wilson (Morton’s nurse), Old Mortality, ch. v. For Ruskin’s father’s Mause, see above, i. § 71, and for Anne, i. § 31 (pp. 30, 64).]

² [Letter 28, § 15 (Vol. XXVII. p. 517).]

³ [The MSS. and proofs of Præterita show that from this point two different conclusions of the chapter were at one time or another intended. One of these introduced letters from Ruskin’s father and mother, lest he “should not be able to carry on the story”: these letters are now given in the Introduction to Vol. XXXVI. The other conclusion (itself, however, incomplete) was as follows:-

“The ‘Let us give thanks’ is spoken by his Father in the strength at utmost strain of a Scottish heart trained in the purity of the Old Covenant, and among the men who were the offspring of its Martyrs, alike in body and soul. There has been no such religious testimony as theirs borne in this world-no sacrifice of love so great-no rendering of obedience so true. The Scottish intellect and heart in their fight for Faith or Clanship are as far above those of other nations under the same trials-Vaudois or Swiss-as the Scottish basalt is stronger than Swiss Nagelfluhe. But in their strength, full of fearful error, issuing in bitter pain and withering pride.

“In this very instance of the victory over mortal agony, the victory is in false thoughts of God-and of Death. ‘The cup that my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’ Yes-but not thinking of it as of the cup that runneth over with mercy in the 23rd Psalm. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ But the taking away is nevertheless by Him who ‘hath the power of Death.’

“The bereaved priest married again. But who shall measure what the loss of his mother was to the child? The fixed melancholy which mingled with all Dr. John Brown’s power of just thought, and gave the tone of a passing bell to his brightest joys, dated from that hour. Yet this pathetic temper it was which made him more perfectly representative of what is most sacred in his country. It is the sorrow of Scotland which is her real diadem.

“I cannot go on in this chapter to what I meant of my dearest friend: being disturbed by instant troubles which take away my powers of tranquil thought, whether of the Dead or Living who have been and are yet dear to me. But this volume of Præterita may fitly close with so much general account of the opposite influences on me of my Catholic friends and of their border line of arrest, as may in future (if yet a future be granted me) explain my interest in the interpretation of Catholic Art, and yet prevent the recurrence of any such mean accusations of secret adherence to the Catholic Church as of late have found their way into the small portion of the public mind that at all concerns itself about me.”

For the “accusations” referred to, see Vol. XXXIV. p. 618. The general account of his Catholic friends was not written; but the subject was taken up in a different form in ch. i. of vol. iii. (“The Grande Chartreuse”).]

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