Of course the popularity of this novel, at that time, was chiefly confined to the upper classes.  In the first place the people could not afford to pay the price of the book; and, secondly, it was outside their sympathies and knowledge.  Indeed, I doubt if any commonplace person, without culture or extended knowledge, can enjoy so refined a work, with so many learned allusions, and such exquisite humor, which appeals to a knowledge of the world in its higher aspects.  It is one of the last books that an ignorant young lady brought up on the trash of ordinary fiction would relish or comprehend.  Whoever turns uninterested from “Waverley” is probably unable to see its excellencies or enjoy its peculiar charms.  It is not a book for a modern school-boy or school-girl, but for a man or woman in the highest maturity of mind, with a poetic or imaginative nature, and with a leaning perhaps to aristocratic sentiments.  It is a rebuke to vulgarity and ignorance, which the minute and exaggerated descriptions of low life in the pages of Dickens certainly are not.

In February, 1815, “Guy Mannering” was published, the second in the series of the Waverley Novels, and was received by the intelligent reading classes with even more eclat than “Waverley,” to which it is superior in many respects.  It plunges at once in medias res, without the long and labored introductory chapters of its predecessor.  It is interesting from first to last, and is an elaborate and well-told tale, written con amore, when Scott was in the maturity of his powers.  It is full of incident and is delightful in humor.  Its chief excellence is in the loftiness of its sentiments,—­being one of the healthiest and wholesomest novels ever written, appealing to the heart as well as to the intellect, to be read over and over again, like “The Vicar of Wakefield,” without weariness.  It may be too aristocratic in its tone to please everybody, but it portrays the sentiments of its age in reference to squires and Scottish lairds, who were more distinguished for uprightness and manly duties than for brains and culture.

The fascination with which Scott always depicts the virtues of hospitality and trust in humanity makes a strong impression on the imagination.  His heroes and heroines are not remarkable for genius, but shine in the higher glories of domestic affection and fidelity to trusts.  Two characters in particular are original creations,—­“Dominie Sampson” and “Meg Merrilies,” whom no reader can forget,—­the one, ludicrous for his simplicity; and the other a gypsy woman, weird and strange, more like a witch than a sibyl, but intensely human, and capable of the strongest attachment for those she loved.