you know that Cook was at the siege of Quebec, with the glorious Wolfe, who fought under the Duke of Cumberland, whose royal father was a distinguished officer at Ramillies, before he commanded in chief at Dettingen?  Huzza!  Give it them, my lads!  My horse is down?  Then I know I shall not run away.  Do the French run? then I die content.  Stop.  Wo!  Quo me rapis?  My Pegasus is galloping off, goodness knows where, like his Majesty’s charger at Dettingen.

How do these rich historical and personal reminiscences come out of the subject at present in hand?  What is that subject, by the way?  My dear friend, if you look at the last essaykin (though you may leave it alone, and I shall not be in the least surprised or offended), if you look at the last paper, where the writer imagines Athos and Porthos, Dalgetty and Ivanhoe, Amelia and Sir Charles Grandison, Don Quixote and Sir Roger, walking in at the garden-window, you will at once perceive that novels and their heroes and heroines are our present subject of discourse, into which we will presently plunge.  Are you one of us, dear sir, and do you love novel-reading?  To be reminded of your first novel will surely be a pleasure to you.  Hush!  I never read quite to the end of my first, the “Scottish Chiefs.”  I couldn’t.  I peeped in an alarmed furtive manner at some of the closing pages.  Miss Porter, like a kind dear tender-hearted creature, would not have Wallace’s head chopped off at the end of Vol.  V. She made him die in prison,* and if I remember right (protesting I have not read the book for forty-two or three years), Robert Bruce made a speech to his soldiers, in which he said, “And Bannockburn shall equal Cambuskenneth."** But I repeat I could not read the end of the fifth volume of that dear delightful book for crying.  Good heavens!  It was as sad, as sad as going back to school.

* I find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died on the scaffold, not in prison.  His last words were, “’My prayer is heard.  Life’s cord is cut by heaven.  Helen!  Helen!  May heaven preserve my country, and—­’ He stopped.  He fell.  And with that mighty shock the scaffold shook to its foundations.”

** The remark of Bruce (which I protest I had not read for forty-two years), I find to be as follows:—­“When this was uttered by the English heralds, Bruce turned to Ruthven, with an heroic smile, ’Let him come, my brave barons! and he shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambuskenneth!’” In the same amiable author’s famous novel of “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” there is more crying than in any novel I ever remember to have read.  See, for example, the last page. . . .  “Incapable of speaking, Thaddeus led his wife back to her carriage. . . .  His tears gushed out in spite of himself, and mingling with hers, poured those thanks, those assurances, of animated approbation through her heart, which made it even ache with excess of happiness.” . . .  And a sentence