ancommon in the restrained emotions which the young lady testified at the advances he hazarded; bat, assured by the prudent Countess that they were the natural effects of a retired education, the sacrifice might have been completed, as doubtless has happened in many similar instances, had it not been for the courage of an elder sister, who revealed to the wealthy suitor that Lady Emily's affections were fixed upon a young soldier of fortune, a near relation of her own. Sir Everard manifested great emotion on receiving this intelligence, which was confirmed to him, in a private interview, by the young lady herself, although under the most dreadful apprehensions of her father's indignation. Honour and generosity were hereditary attributes of the house of Waverley. With a grace and delicacy worthy the hero of a romance, Sir Everard withdrew his claim to the hand of Lady Emily. He had even, before leaving Blandeville Castle, the address to extort from her father a consent to her union with the object of her choice. What arguments he used on this point cannot exactly be known, for Sir Everard was never supposed strong in the powers of persuasion; but the young officer, immediately after this transaction, rose in the army with a rapidity far surpassing the usual pace of unpa|tronised professional merit, although, to outward appearance, that was all he had to depend upon. The shock which Sir Everard encountered upon this occasion, although diminished by the consciousness of having acted virtuously and generously, had its effect upon his future life. His resolution of marriage had been adopted in a fit of indignation; the labour of courtship did not quite suit the dignified indolence of his habits; he had but just escaped the risk of marrying a woman who could never love him, and his pride could not be greatly flattered by the termination of his amour, even if his heart had not suffered. The result of the whole matter was his return to Waverley-Honour without any transfer of his affections, notwithstanding the sighs and languishments of the fair tell-tale, who had revealed, in mere sisterly affection, the secret of Lady Emily's attachment, and in despite of the nods, winks, and inuendoes of the officious lady mother, and the grave eulogiums which the Earl pronounced successively on the prudence, and good sense, and admirable dispositions, of his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth daughters. The memory of his unsuccessful amour was with Sir Everard, as with many more of his temper, at once shy, proud, sensitive, and indolent, a beacon against exposing himself to similar mortification, pain, and fruitless exertion for the He continued to live at WaverleyHonour in the style of an old English gentleman, of an ancient descent and opulent fortune. His sister, Miss Rachel Waverley, presided at his table; and they became, by degrees, an old bachelor and an ancient maiden lady, the gentlest and kindest of the votaries of celibacy. time to come. The vehemence of Sir Everard's resentment against his brother was but short-lived; yet his dislike to the Whig and the placeman, though unable to stimulate him to resume any active measures prejudicial to Richard's interest in the succession to the family estate, continued to maintain the coldness between them. Richard knew enough of the world, and of his brother's temper, to believe that by any ill-considered or precipitate advances on his part, he might turn passive dislike into a more ac [tive principle. It was accident, therefore, which length occasioned a renewal of their intercourse. Richard had married a young woman of rank, by whose family interest and private fortune he hoped to advance his career. In her right, he became possessor of a manor of some value, at the distance of a few miles from Waverley-Honour. Little Edward, the hero of our tale, then in his fifth year, was their only child. It chanced that the infant with his maid had strayed one morning to a mile's distance from the avenue of Brere-wood Lodge, his father's seat. Their attention was attracted by a carriage drawn by six stately longtailed black horses, and with as much carving and gilding as would have done honour to my lord mayor's. It was waiting for the owner, who was at a little distance inspecting the progress of a halfbuilt farm-house. I know not whether the boy's nurse had been a Welsh or a Scotch-woman, or in what manner he associated a shield emblazoned with three ermines with the idea of personal property, but he no sooner beheld this family emblem, than he stoutly determined on vindicating his right to the splendid vehicle on which it was displayed. The Baronet arrived while the boy's maid was in vain endeavouring to make him desist from his determination to appropriate the gilded coach and six. The rencontre was at a happy moment for Edward, as his uncle had been just eyeing wistfully, with something of a feeling like envy, the chubby boys of the stout yeoman whose mansion was building by his direction. In the round-faced rosy cherub before him, bearing his eye and his name, and vindicating a hereditary title to his family, affection, and patronage, by means of a tie which Sir Everard held as sacred as either Garter or Blue-mantle, Providence seemed to have granted to him the very object best calculated to fill up the void in his hopes and affections. Sir Everard returned to Waverley-Hall upon a led horse, which was kept in readiness for him, while the child and his attendant were sent home in the carriage to Brere-wood Lodge, with such a message as opened to Richard Waverley a door of reconciliation with his elder brother. Their intercourse, however, though thus renewed, continued to be rather formal and civil, than partaking of brotherly cordiality; yet it was sufficient to the wishes of both parties. Sir Everard obtained, in the frequent society of his little nephew, something on which his hereditary pride might found the anticipated pleasure of a continuation of his lineage, and where his kind and gentle affections could at the same time fully exercise themselves. For Richard Waverley, he beheld in the growing attachment between the uncle and nephew the means of securing his son's, if not his own, succession to the hereditary estate, which he felt would be rather endangered than promoted by any attempt on his own part towards a closer intimacy with a man of Sir Everard's habits and opinions. Thus, by a sort of tacit compromise, little Edward was permitted to pass the greater part of the year at the Hall, and appeared to stand in the same intimate relation to both families, although their mutual intercourse was otherwise limited to formal messages, and more formal visits. The education of the youth was regulated alternately by the taste and opinions of his uncle and of his father. But more of this in a subsequent chapter. CHAPTER III. Education. THE education of our hero, Edward Waverley, was of a nature somewhat desultory. In infancy, his health suffered, or was supposed to suffer (which is quite the same thing), by the air of London. As soon, therefore, as official duties, attendance on Parliament, or the prosecution of any of his plans of interest or ambition, called his father to town, which was his usual residence for eight months in the year, Edward was transferred to Waverley-Honour, and experienced a total change of instructors and of lessons, as well as of residence. This might have been remedied, had his father placed him under the superintendence of a permanent tutor. But he considered that one of his choosing would probably have been unacceptable at Waverley-Honour, and that such a selection as Sir Everard might have made, were the matter left to him, would have burdened him with a disagreeable inmate, if not a political spy, in his family. He therefore prevailed upon his private secretary, a young man of taste and accomplishments, to bestow an hour or two on Edward's education while at Brere-wood Lodge, and left his uncle answerable for his improvement in literature while an inmate at the Hall. logy, upon the difference of idiom, the beauty of I am aware I may be here reminded of the n (cessity of rendering instruction agreeable to yout 1, and of Tasso's infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating ! method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards,-the problems of mathematics to puzzles and riddles,-and the doctrines of arithmetic may, we are assured, be sufficiently acquired, by spending a few hours a-week at a new and complicated edition of the Royal Game of the This was in some degree respectably provided Goose. There wants but one step further, and the for. Sir Everard's chaplain, an Oxonian, who had Creed and Ten Commandents may be taught in the lost his fellowship for declining to take the oaths same manner, without the necessity of the grave at the accession of George I., was not only an ex- face, deliberate tone of recital, and devout attention, cellent classical scholar, but reasonably skilled in hitherto exacted from the well-governed childhood science, and master of most modern languages. He of this realm. It may, in the meantime, be subject was, however, old and indulgent, and the recurring of serious consideration, whether those who are interregnum, during which Edward was entirely accustomed only to acquire instruction through the freed from his discipline, occasioned such a relaxa- medium of amusement, may not be brought to reject tion of authority, that the youth was permitted, in that which approaches under the aspect of study; a great measure, to learn as he pleased, what he whether those who learn history by the cards, may pleased, and when he pleased. This slackness of not be led to prefer the means to the end; and wherule might have been ruinous to a boy of slow un-ther, were we to teach religion in the way of sport, derstanding, who, feeling labour in the acquisition of knowledge, would have altogether neglected it, save for the command of a task-master; and it might have proved equally dangerous to a youth whose animal spirits were more powerful than his imagination or his feelings, and whom the irresistible influence of Alma would have engaged in field-sports from morning till night. But the cha- influence his character, happiness, and utility. racter of Edward Waverley was remote from either Edward's power of imagination and love of literaof these. His powers of apprehension were so un- ture, although the former was vivid, and the latter commonly quick, as almost to resemble intuition, ardent, were so far from affording a remedy to this and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent peculiar evil, that they rather inflamed and increased him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from over- its violence. The library at Waverley-Honour, a running his game, that is, from acquiring his know- large Gothic room, with double arches and a gallery, ledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. contained such a miscellaneous and extensive colAnd here the instructor had to combat another lection of volumes as had been assembled together, propensity too often united with brilliancy of fancy during the course of two hundred years, by a family and vivacity of talent,-that indolence, namely, of which had been always wealthy, and inclined, of disposition, which can only be stirred by some course, as a mark of splendour, to furnish their strong motive of gratification, and which renounces shelves with the current literature of the day, withstudy as soon as curiosity is gratified, the pleasure out much scrutiny, or nicety of discrimination. of conquering the first difficulties exhausted, and Throughout this ample realm Edward was permitthe novelty of pursuit at an end. Edward would ted to roam at large. His tutor had his own stuthrow himself with spirit upon any classical author dies; and church politics and controversial divinity, of which his preceptor proposed the perusal, make together with a love of learned ease, though they himself master of the style so far as to understand did not withdraw his attention at stated times from the story, and, if that pleased or interested him, he the progress of his patron's presumptive heir, infinished the volume. But it was in vain to attempt duced him readily to grasp at any apology for not fixing his attention on critical distinctions of philo-extending a strict and regulated survey towards our pupils may not thereby be gradually induced to make sport of their religion. To our young hero, who was permitted to seek his instruction only according to the bent of his own mind, and who, of consequence, only sought it so long as it afforded him amusement, the indulgence of his tutors was attended with evil consequences, which long continued "his general studies. Sir Everard had never been, to man, and qualifies him to support and adorn an elevated situation in society. The occasional attention of his parents might indeed have been of service, to prevent the dissipation of mind incidental to such a desultory course of reading. But his mother died in the seventh year after the reconciliation between the brothers, and Richard Waverley himself, who, after this event, resided more constantly in London, was too much interested in his own plans of wealth and ambition, to notice more respecting Edward, than that he was of a very bookish turn, and probably destined to be a bishop. If he could have discovered and analyzed his son's waking dreams, he would have formed a very different conclusion. CHAPTER IV. I HAVE already hinted, that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged. pensities, by engaging his nephew in field-sports, which had been the chief pleasure of his own youthful days. But although Edward eagerly carried the gun for one season, yet when practice had given him some dexterity, the pastime ceased to afford him amusement. In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton's fascinating volume determined Edward to become "a brother of the angle." But of all diversions which ingenuity ever devised for the relief of idleness, fishing is the worst qualified to amuse a man who is at once indolent and impatient; and our hero's rod was speedily flung aside. Society and example, which, more than any other motives, master and sway the natural bent of our passions, might have had their usual effect upon the youthful visionary. But the neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, and the home-bred young squires whom it afforded, were not of a class fit to form Edward's usual companions, far less to excite him to emulation in the practice of those pastimes which composed the serious business of their lives. He was in his sixteenth year, when his habits of abstraction and love of solitude became so much Ere he attained this indifference, however, he had marked, as to excite Sir Everard's affectionate apread, and stored in a memory of uncommon tena-prehension. He tried to counterbalance these procity, much curious, though ill-arranged and miscellaneous information. In English literature he was master of Shakspeare and Milton, of our earlier dramatic authors, of many picturesque and interesting passages from our old historical chronicles, and was particularly well acquainted with Spenser, Drayton, and other poets who have exercised themselves on romantic fiction, of all themes the most fascinating to a youthful imagination, before the passions have roused themselves, and demand poetry of a more sentimental description. In this respect his acquaintance with Italian opened him yet a wider range. He had perused the numerous romantic poems, which, from the days of Pulci, have been a favourite exercise of the wits of Italy, and had sought gratification in the numerous collections of novelle, which were brought forth by the genius of that elegant though luxurious nation, in emulation of the Decameron. In classical literature, Waverley had made the usual progress, and read the usual authors; and the French had afforded him an almost exhaustless collection of memoirs, scarcely more faithful than romances, and of romances so well written as hardly to be distinguished from memoirs. The splendid pages of Froissart, with his heartstirring and eye-dazzling descriptions of war and of tournaments, were among his chief favourites; and from those of Brantome and de la Noue he learned to compare the wild and loose yet superstitious cha-, racter of the nobles of the League, with the stern, rigid, and sometimes turbulent disposition of the Huguenot party. The Spanish had contributed to his stock of chivalrous and romantic lore. The earlier literature of the northern nations did not escape the study of one who read rather to awaken the imagination than to benefit the understanding. And yet, knowing much that is known but to few, Edward Waverley might justly be considered as ignorant, since he knew little of what adds dignity There were a few other youths of better education, and a more liberal character; but from their society also our hero was in some degree excluded. Sir Everard had, upon the death of Queen Anne, resigned his seat in Parliament, and, as his age increased and the number of his contemporaries diminished, had gradually withdrawn himself from society; so that when, upon any particular occasion, Edward mingled with accomplished and well-educated young men of his own rank and expectations, he felt an inferiority in their company, not so much from deficiency of information, as from the want of the skill to command and to arrange that which he possessed. A deep and increasing sensibility added to this dislike of society. The idea of having committed the slightest solecism in politeness, whether real or imaginary, was agony to him; for perhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some minds so keen a sense of shame and remorse, as a modest, sensitive, and inexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of having neglected etiquette, or excited ridicule. Where we are not at ease, we cannot be happy; and therefore it is not surprising, that Edward Waverley supposed that he disliked and was unfitted for society, merely because he had not yet acquired the habit of living in it with ease and comfort, and of reciprocally giving and receiving pleasure. down to die at his mother's feet. But there was com The hours he spent with his uncle and aunt were exhausted in listening to the oft-repeated tale of narrative old age. Yet even there his imagination, the predominant faculty of his mind, was frequently excited. Family tradition and genealogical history, upon which much of Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which, itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and other trifles; whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant and trifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and minute facts, which could have been preserved and conveyed through no other medium. If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over the dry deduction of his line of ancestors, with their various intermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless and protracted accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires, to whom they stood allied; if (notwithstand-array the splendour of the bridal feast at Waverleying his obligations to the three ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons, with all the bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were moments when these communications nterested his fancy and rewarded his attention. The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return in the evening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring cloister that peace which passeth not away;1to these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eye glistened. Nor was he less affected, when his aunt, Mrs Rachel, narrated the sufferings and fortitude of Lady Alice Waverley during the Great Civil War. The benevolent features of the venerable spinster kindled into more majestic expression, as she told how Charles had, after the field of Worcester, found a day's refuge at Waverley-Honour, and how, when a troop of cavalry were approaching to search the mansion, Lady Alice dismissed her youngest son with a handful of domestics, charging them to make good with their lives an hour's diversion, that the king might have that space for escape. "And, God help her," would Mrs Rachel continue, fixing her eyes upon the heroine's portrait as she spoke, "full dearly did she purchase the safety of her prince with the life of her darling child. They brought him here a prisoner, mortally wounded; and you may trace the drops of his blood from the great hall door along the little gallery, and up to the saloon, where they laid him 1 See, at end of Waverley, Note A,―The Crusader's Return. From such legends our hero would steal away to indulge the fancies they excited. In the corner of the large and sombre library, with no other light than was afforded by the decaying brands on its ponderous and ample hearth, he would exercise for hours that internal sorcery, by which past or imaginary events are presented in action, as it were, to the eye of the muser. Then arose in long and fair and Castle; the tall and emaciated form of its real lord, as he stood in his pilgrim's weeds, an unnoticed spectator of the festivities of his supposed heir and intended bride; the electrical shock occasioned by the discovery; the springing of the vassals to arms; the astonishment of the bridegroom; the terror and confusion of the bride; the agony with which Wilibert observed, that her heart as well as consent was in these nuptials; the air of dignity, yet of deep feeling with which he flung down the half-drawn sword, and turned away for ever from the house of his ancestors. Then would he change the scene, fancy would at his wish represent Aunt Rachel's tragedy. He saw the Lady Waverley seated in her bower, her ear strained to every sound, her heart throbbing with double agony, now listening to the decaying echo of the hoofs of the king's horse, and when that had died away, hearing in every breeze that shook the trees of the park, the noise of the remote skirmish. A distant sound is heard like the rushing of a swoln stream; it comes nearer, and Edward can plainly distinguish the galloping of horses, the cries and shouts of men, with straggling pistol-shots between, rolling forwards to the hall. The lady starts up-a terrified menial rushes inbut why pursue such a description? As living in this ideal world became daily more delectable to our hero, interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain that sur rounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was usually termed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, and still, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer were sporting, retained its pristine and savage character. It was traversed by broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brush-wood, where the beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag coursed with grey-hounds, or to gain an aim at him with the cross-bow. In one spot, distinguished by a moss-grown Gothic monument, which retained the name of Queen's Standing, Elizabeth herself was said have pierced seven bucks with her own arrows. This was a very favourite haunt of Waverley. At other times, with his gun and his spaniel, which served as an apology to others, and with a book in his pocket, which perhaps served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of these long avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually narrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and small lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood-Mere. There stood, in former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, because, in perilous times, it had often been the refuge of the family. There, in the wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose who dared to maintain her cause, carried on a harassing and predatory warfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the celebrated Richard of Gloucester. Here, too, a party of cavaliers long maintained themselves under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt Rachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to "chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy," and, like a child among his toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery and emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant and as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this indulgence upon his temper and character will appear in the next chapter. CHAPTER V. Choice of a Profession. FROM the minuteness with which I have traced Waverley's pursuits, and the bias which these unavoidably communicated to his imagination, the reader may perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of the romance of Cervantes. But he will do my prudence injustice in the supposition. My intention is not to follow the steps of that inimitable author, in describing such total perversion of intellect as misconstrues the objects actually presented to the senses, but that more common aberration from sound judgment, which apprehends Occurrences indeed in their reality, but communicates to them a tincture of its own romantic tone and colouring. So far was Edward Waverley from expecting general sympathy with his own feelings, or concluding that the present state of things was calculated to exhibit the reality of those visions in which he loved to indulge, that he dreaded nothing more than the detection of such sentiments as were dictated by his musings. He neither had nor wished to have a confident, with whom to communicate his reveries; and so sensible was he of the ridicule attached to them, that, had he been to choose between any punishment short of ignominy, and the necessity of giving a cold and composed account of the ideal World in which he lived the better part of his days, think he would not have hesitated to prefer the former infliction. This secrecy became doubly pre | cious, as he felt in advancing life the influence of the awakening passions. Female forms of exquisite grace and beauty began to mingle in his mental adventures; nor was he long without looking abroad to compare the creatures of his own imagination with the females of actual life. The list of the beauties who displayed their hebdomadal finery at the parish church of Waverley was neither numerous nor select. By far the most passable was Miss Sissly, or, as she rather chose to be called, Miss Cecilia Stubbs, daughter of Squire Stubbs at the Grange. I know not whether it was by the "merest accident in the world," a phrase which, from female lips, does not always exclude malice prepense, or whether it was from a conformity of taste, that Miss Cecilia more than once crossed Edward in his favourite walks through WaverleyChase. He had not as yet assumed courage to accost her on these occasions; but the meeting was not without its effect. A romantic lover is a strange idolater, who sometimes cares not out of what log he frames the object of his adoration; at least, if nature has given that object any passable proportion of personal charms, he can easily play the Jeweller and Dervise in the Oriental tale, and supply her richly, out of the stores of his own imagination, with supernatural beauty, and all the properties of intel lectual wealth. But ere the charms of Miss Cecilia Stubbs had erected her into a positive goddess, or elevated her at least to a level with the saint her namesake, Mrs Rachel Waverley gained some intimation which determined her to prevent the approaching apotheosis. Even the most simple and unsuspicious of the female sex have (God bless them!) an instinctive sharpness of perception in such matters, which sometimes goes the length of observing partialities that never existed, but rarely misses to detect such as pass actually under their observation. Mrs Rachel applied herself with great prudence, not to combat, but to elude, the approaching danger, and suggested to her brother the necessity that the heir of his house should see something more of the world than was consistent with constant residence at Waverley-Honour. Sir Everard would not at first listen to a proposal which went to separate his nephew from him. Ed ward was a little bookish, he admitted; but youth, he had always heard, was the season for learning, and, no doubt, when his rage for letters was abated, and his head fully stocked with knowledge, his nephew would take to field sports and country business. He had often, he said, himself regretted that he had not spent some time in study during his youth: he would neither have shot nor hunted with less skill, and he might have made the roof of St Stephen's echo to longer orations than were comprised in those zealous Noes, with which, when a member of the House during Godolphin's administration, he encountered every measure of govern ment. Aunt Rachel's anxiety, however, lent her address to carry her point. Every representative of their house had visited foreign parts, or served his coun try in the army, before he settled for life at Waverley-Honour, and she appealed for the truth of her assertion to the genealogical pedigree; an authority which Sir Everard was never known to contra 1 See Hoppner's tale of The Seven Lovers. |