A tear mingled with the wine which the Baron filled, as he proposed a cup of gratitude to Colonel Talbot, and ’The Prosperity of the united Houses of Waverley-Honour and Bradwardine!’—­

It only remains for me to say, that as no wish was ever uttered with more affectionate sincerity, there are few which, allowing for the necessary mutability of human events, have been, upon the whole, more happily fulfilled.

CHAPTER LXXII

A POSTSCRIPT, WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN A PREFACE

Our journey is now finished, gentle reader; and if your patience has accompanied me through these sheets, the contract is, on your part, strictly fulfilled.  Yet, like the driver who has received his full hire, I still linger near you, and make, with becoming diffidence, a trifling additional claim upon your bounty and good nature.  You are as free, however, to shut the volume of the one petitioner, as to close your door in the face of the other.

This should have been a prefatory chapter, but for two reasons:—­First, that most novel readers, as my own conscience reminds me, are apt to be guilty of the sin of omission respecting that same matter of prefaces;—­secondly, that it is a general custom with that class of students, to begin with the last chapter of a work; so that, after all, these remarks, being introduced last in order, have still the best chance to be read in their proper place.

There is no European nation, which, within the course of half a century, or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this kingdom of Scotland.  The effects of the insurrection of 1745,—­the destruction of the patriarchal power of the Highland chiefs,—­the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions of the Lowland nobility and barons,—­the total eradication of the Jacobite party, which, averse to intermingle with the English, or adopt their customs, long continued to pride themselves upon maintaining ancient Scottish manners and customs,—­commenced this innovation.  The gradual influx of wealth, and extension of commerce, have since united to render the present people of Scotland a class of beings as different from their grandfathers as the existing English are from those of Queen Elizabeth’s time, The political and economical effects of these changes have been traced by Lord Selkirk with great precision and accuracy.  But the change, though steadily and rapidly progressive, has, nevertheless, been gradual; and, like those who drift down the stream of a deep and smooth river, we are not aware of the progress we have made until we fix our eye on the now distant point from which we have been drifted.—­Such of the present generation as can recollect the last twenty or twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, will be fully sensible of the truth of this statement;—­especially if their acquaintance and connexions lay among those, who, in my younger time, were facetiously called ’folks