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Today's Featured Biography
Sir Walter Scott
 The life of an author who took no active part in public affairs, but sent forth from his own fireside those marvels of imagination which have afforded delight and instruction to millions, furnishes interest of a different kind from the biographies of those whose names are associated with great events. We look more to the man than to his age; we endeavor to trace the circumstances by which his mind was moulded and his tastes formed, and we feel anxious to discover the connection between his literary and his personal history and character. There have been few authors in whose career this connection was more strongly apparent than in Sir Walter Scott; his life is, to a great extent, identified with his writings, and this appears to be the source of that feeling of truth and reality which is forced upon us while perusing his fictions. He was born at Edinburgh, August 15, 1771. His father was one of that respectable class of attorneys called, in Scotland, writers to the signet, and was the original from whom his son subsequently drew the character of Mr. Saunders Fairford, in "Redgauntlet." His mother was a lady of taste and imagination. An accidental lameness and a delicate constitution procured for Walter a more than ordinary portion of maternal care, and the influence of his mother's instructions was strongly impressed on his character. In early childhood he was sent for change of air to the country seat of his maternal grandfather, where he first developed his extrao...
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