minister's levee being negotiated, his success became rapid. Sir Everard learned from the public News Letter,-first, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, was returned for the ministerial borough of Barterfaith; next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had taken a distinguished part in the debate upon the Excise Bill in the support of government; and lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been honored with a seat at one of those boards, where the pleasure of serving the country is combined with other important gratifications, which, to render them the more acceptable, occur regularly once a quarter.

Although these events followed each other so closely, that the sagacity of the editor of a modern newspaper would have presaged the two last even while he announced the first, yet they came upon Sir Everard gradually, and drop by drop, as it were, distilled through the cool and procrastinating alembic of Dyer's Weekly Letter. For it may be observed in passing, that, instead of those mail-coaches, by means of which every mechanic at his sixpenny club may nightly learn from twenty contradictory channels the yesterday's news of the capital, a weekly post brought in those days, to Waverley-Honour, a Weekly Intelligencer, which, after it had gratified Sir Everard's curiosity, his sister's, and that of his aged butler, was regularly transferred from the hall to the rectory, from the rectory to Squire Stubb's at the Grange, from the squire to the baronet's steward at his neat white house on the heath, from the steward to the bailiff, and from him through a huge circle of honest dames and gaffers, by whose hard and horny hands it was generally worn to pieces in about a month after its arrival.

This slow succession of intelligence was of some advantage to Richard Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of his enormities reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can be no doubt that the new commissioner would have had little reason to pique himself on the success of his politics. The baronet, although the mildest of human beings, was not without sensitive points in his character; his brother's conduct had wounded these deeply; the Waverley estate was fettered by no entail (for it never entered into the head of any of its former possessors that one of their progeny could be guilty of the atrocities laid by Dyer's Letter to the door of Richard), and if it had, the marriage of the proprietor might have been fatal to a collateral heir. These various ideas floated through the brain of Sir Everard, without, however, producing any determined conclusion.

He examined the tree of his genealogy, which, emblazoned with many an emblematic mark of honor and heroic achieve.

ment, hung upon the well-varnished wainscot of his hall. The nearest descendants of Sir Hildebrand Waverley, failing those of his eldest son Wilfred, of whom Sir Everard and his brother were the only representatives, were, as this honored register informed him (and indeed, as he himself well knew), the Waverleys of Highley Park, com. Hants; with whom the main branch, or rather stock, of the house had renounced all connection, since the great law-suit in 1670. This degenerate scion had committed a further offence against the head and source of their gentility, by the intermarriage of their representative with Judith, heiress of Oliver Bradshawe, of Highley Park, whose arms, the same with those of Bradshawe the regicide, they had quartered with the ancient coat of Waverley. These offences, however, had vanished from Sir Everard's recollection in the heat of his resentment, and had Lawyer Clippurse, for whom his groom was dispatched express, arrived but an hour earlier, he might have had the benefit of drawing a new settlement of the lordship and manor of Waverley-Honour, with all its dependencies. But an hour of cool reflection is a great matter, when employed in weighing the comparative evil of two measures, to neither of which we are internally partial. Lawyer Clippurse found his patron involved in a deep study, which he was too respectful to disturb, otherwise than by producing his paper and leathern ink-case, as prepared to minute his honor's commands. Even this slight manœuvre was embarrassing to Sir Everard, who felt it as a reproach to his indecision. He looked at the attorney with some desire to issue his fiat, when the sun, emerging from behind a cloud, poured at once its checkered light through the stained window of the gloomy cabinet in which they were seated. The baronet's eye, as he raised it to the splendor, fell right upon the central scutcheon, impressed with the same device which his ancestor was said to have borne in the field of Hastings; three ermines passant, argent, in a field azure, with its appropriate motto, sans tache. "May our name rather perish," exclaimed Sir Everard," than that ancient and loyal symbol should be blended with the dishonored insignia of a traitorous round-head!"

All this was the effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam just sufficient to light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The attorney was dismissed, with direc tions to hold himself in readiness on the first summons.

The apparition of Lawyer Clippurse at the Hall occasioned much speculation in that portion of the world to which WaverleyHonour formed the centre; but the more judicious politicians of this microcosm augured yet worse consequences to Richard

Waverley from a movement which shortly followed his apostasy This was no less than the excursion of the baronet in his coach and six, with four attendants in rich liveries, to make a visit of some duration to a noble peer on the confines of the shire, of untainted descent, steady tory principles, and the happy father of six unmarried and accomplished daughters. Sir Everard's reception in this family was, as it may be easily conceived, sufficiently favorable; but of the six young ladies, his taste unfortunately determined him in favor of Lady Emily, the youngest, who received his attentions with an embarrassment which showed at once that she durst not decline them, and that they afforded her anything but pleasure. Sir Everard could not but perceive something uncommon in the restrained emotions which the young lady testified at the advances he hazarded; but 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. Honor 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 power of persuasion; but the young officer, immediately after this transaction, rose in the army with a rapidity far surpassing the usual pace of unpatronized professional merit, although, to outward appearance, that was all he had to depend upon.

The shock which Sir Everard encountered upon this occa sion, 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 indigna tion; the labor 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 determination 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 innuendoes 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 time to come. He continued to live at Waverley-Honour in the style of an old English gentlemen, 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.

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 active principle. It was accident, therefore, which at 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 Brerewood Lodge, his father's seat. Their attention was attracted by a carriage drawn by six stately long-tailed black horses, and with as much carving and gilding as would have done honor 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 endeavoring to make him desist from his determination to appropriate the gilded coach and six. The rencontre was at a happy moment for Ed. ward, 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 Brerewood 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 litttle 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 per mitted to pass the greater part of the year at the Hall, and ap peared 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 subse quent chapter.