to attain, and which would ensure his son’s obtaining the most rapid promotion, should he remain in the military service.  Sir Everard’s letters were of a different tenor.  They were short; for the good Baronet was none of your illimitable correspondents, whose manuscript overflows the folds of their large post paper, and leaves no room for the seal; but they were kind and affectionate, and seldom concluded without some allusion to our hero’s stud, some question about the state of his purse, and a special inquiry after such of his recruits as had preceded him from Waverley-Honour.  Aunt Rachel charged him to remember his principles of religion, to take care of his health, to beware of Scotch mists, which, she had heard, would wet an Englishman through and through, never to go out at night without his great-coat, and, above all, to wear flannel next to his skin.

Mr. Pembroke only wrote to our hero one letter, but it was of the bulk of six epistles of these degenerate days, containing, in the moderate compass of ten folio pages, closely written, a precis of a supplementary quarto manuscript of addenda, delenda, et corrigenda in reference to the two tracts with which he had presented Waverley.  This he considered as a mere sop in the pan to stay the appetite of Edward’s curiosity until he should find an opportunity of sending down the volume itself, which was much too heavy for the post, and which he proposed to accompany with certain interesting pamphlets, lately published by his friend in Little Britain, with whom he had kept up a sort of literary correspondence, in virtue of which the library shelves of Waverley-Honour were loaded with much trash, and a good round bill, seldom summed in fewer than three figures, was yearly transmitted, in which Sir Everard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, Bart., was marked Dr. to Jonathan Grubbet, bookseller and stationer, Little Britain.  Such had hitherto been the style of the letters which Edward had received from England; but the packet delivered to him at Glennaquoich was of a different and more interesting complexion.  It would be impossible for the reader, even were I to insert the letters at full length, to comprehend the real cause of their being written, without a glance into the interior of the British cabinet at the period in question.

The ministers of the day happened (no very singular event) to be divided into two parties; the weakest of which, making up by assiduity of intrigue their inferiority in real consequence, had of late acquired some new proselytes, and with them the hope of superseding their rivals in the favour of their sovereign, and overpowering them in the House of Commons.  Amongst others, they had thought it worth while to practise upon Richard Waverley.  This honest gentleman, by a grave mysterious demeanour, an attention to the etiquette of business rather more than to its essence, a facility in making long dull speeches, consisting of truisms and commonplaces, hashed up with a technical