Waverley exerted his powers of fancy, intelligence, and eloquence, and attracted the general admiration. of the company. The conversation gradually assumed the tone best qualified for the display of his talents and acquisitions. The gayety of the evening was exalted in character, rather than checked, by the approaching dangers of to-morrow. All nerves were

strung for the future, and prepared to enjoy the present. This mood of mind is highly favourable for the exercise of the powers of imagination, for poetry, and for that eloquence which is allied to poetry. Waverley, as we have elsewhere observed, possessed at times a wonderful flow of rhetoric; and, on the present occasion, he touched more than once the higher notes of feeling, and then again ran off in a wild voluntary of fanciful mirth. He was supported and excited by kindred spirits, who felt the same impulse of mood and time; and even those of more cold and calculating habits were hurried along by the torrent. Many ladies declined the dance, which still went forward, and, under various pretences, joined the party to which the "handsome young Englishman" seemed to have attached himself. He was presented to several of the first rank, and his manners, which for the present were altogether free from the bashful restraint by which, in a moment of less excitation, they were usually clouded, gave universal delight.

Flora Mac-Ivor appeared to be the only female present who regarded him with a degree of coldness and reserve; yet even she could not suppress a sort of wonder at talents which, in the course of their acquaintance, she had never seen displayed with equal brilliancy and impressive effect. I do not know whether she might not feel a momentary regret at having taken so decisive a resolution upon the addresses of a lover, who seemed fitted so well to fill a high place in the highest stations of society. Certainly she had hiterto accounted among the incurable deficiences of Edward's disposition, the mauvaise

honte, which, as she had been educated in the first foreign circles, and was little acquainted with the shyness of English manners, was, in her opinion, too nearly related to timidity and imbecility of disposition. But if a passing wish occurred that Waverley could have rendered himself uniformly thus amiable and attractive, its influence was momentary; for circumstances had arisen since they met, which rendered, in her eyes, the resolution she had formed respecting his addresses, final and irrevocable.

With opposite feelings Rose Bradwardine bent her whole soul to listen. She felt a secret triumph at the public tribute paid to one, whose merit she had learned to prize too early and too fondly. Without a thought of jealousy, without a feeling of fear, pain, or doubt, and undisturbed by a single selfish consideration, she resigned herself to the pleasure of observing the general murmur of applause. When Waverley spoke, her ear was exclusively filled with his voice; when others answered, her eye took its turn of observation, and seemed to watch his reply. Perhaps the delight which she experienced in the course of that evening, though transient, and followed by much sorrow, is in its nature the most pure and disinterested which the human mind is capable of enjoying.

"Baron," said the chevalier, "I would not trust my mistress in the company of your young friend. He is really, though somewhat romantic, one of the most fascinating young men whom I have ever seen,'

"And by my honour, sir," said the baron, “the lad can sometimes be as dowff as a sexagenary like myself. If your royal highness had seen him dreaming and dozing about the banks of Tully-Veolan like a hypochondriac person, or, as Burton's Anatomia hath it, a phrenesiac or lethargic patient, you would wonder where he had sae suddenly acquired all this fine sprack festivity and jocularity."

't

Truly," said Fergus Mac-Ivor, "I think it can

only be the inspiration of the tartans; for though Waverley be always a man of sense and honour, I have hitherto often found him a very absent and inattentive companion."

"We are the more obliged to him," said the chevalier," for having reserved for this evening quali. ties which even such intimate friends had not discovered. But come, gentlemen, the night advances, and the business of to-morrow must be early thought upon. Each take charge of his fair partner, and hoơnour a small refreshment with your company."

He led the way to another suite of apartments, and assumed the seat and canopy at the head of a long range of tables, with an air of dignity, mingled with courtesy, which well became his high birth and lofty pretensions. An hour had hardly flown away when the musicians played the signal for parting so well known in Scotland.

"Good night, then," said the chevalier, rising; "Good night and joy be with you!-Good night, fair ladies, who have so highly honoured a proscribed and banished prince. Good night, my brave friends; may the happiness we have this evening experienced be an omen of our return to these our paternal halls, speedily and in triumph, and of many and many future meetings of mirth and pleasure in the palace of Holy-Rood!"

When the Baron of Bradwardine afterwards mentioned this adieu of the chevalier, he never failed to repeat in a melancholy tone,

"Audiit, et voti Phoebus succedere partem

Mente dedit; partem volucres dispersit in auras;

"which," as he added, "is weel rendered into English metre by my friend Bangour;

'Ae half the prayer wi' Phoebus grace did find, The t'other half he whistled down the wind.'" VOL. II.

5

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CHAPTER VI.

The March.

THE Conflicting passions and exhausted feelings of Waverley had resigned him to late but sound repose. He was dreaming of Glennaquoich, and had transferred to the halls of Ian nan Chaistel the festal train which so lately graced those of Holy-Rood. The pibroch too was distinctly heard; and this at least was no delusion, for the "proud step of the chief piper" of the "chlain Mac-Ivor" was preambulating the court before the door of his chieftain's quarters, and, as Mrs. Flockhart, apparently no friend to his minstrelsy, was pleased to observe, "garring the very stane and lime wa's dinnle wi' his screeching." Of course it soon became too powerful for Waverley's dream, with which it had at first rather harmonized.

The sound of Callum's brogues in his apartment (for Mac-Ivor had again assigned Waverley to his care) was the next note of parting. "Winna yere honour bang up? Vich Ian Vohr and ta prince are awa' to the lang green glen ahint the clachan as they ca' the King's Park, and mony ane's on his own shanks the day that will be carried on either folks' ere night."

Waverley sprung up, and, with Callum's assistance and instructions, adjusted his tartans in proper costume. Callum told him also, tat his leather dorloch wi' the lock on her was come frae Doune, and she was awa' again in the wain wi' Vich Ian Vohr's walise.

By this periphrasis Waverley readily apprehended his portmanteau was intended. He thought upon the mysterious packet of the maid of the cavern, which

seemed always to escape him when within his very grasp. But this was no time for indulgence of curiosity, and having declined Mrs. Flockhart's compliment of a morning, i. e. a matutinal dram, being probably the only man in the chevalier's army by whom such a courtesy would have been rejected, he made his adieus, and departed with Callum.

Callum," said he, as they proceeded down a dirty close to gain the southern skirts of the Canongate, "what shall I do for a horse?"

"Ta deil ane ye maun think of," said Callum: "Vich Ian Vohr's marching on foot at the head o' his kin, (no to say the prince, wha does the like,) wi' his target on his shoulder, and ye maun e'n be neighbour like."

And so I will, Callum-give me my target;-so, there we are fixed. How does it look?"

"Like the bra' Highlander at's painted on the board afore the mickle change-house they ca' Luckie Middlemass's," answered Callum; meaning, I must observe, a high compliment, for in his opinion, Luckie Middlemass's sign was an exquisite specimen of art. Waverley, however, not feeling the full force of this polite simile, asked him no farther questions.

Upon extricating themselves from the mean and dirty suburbs of the metropolis, and emerging into the open air, Waverley felt a renewal both of health and spirits, and turned his recollection with firmness upon the events of the preceding evening, and with hope and resolution towards those of the approaching day.

When he had surmounted a small craggy eminence, called St. Leonard's Hill, the King's Park, or the hollow between the mountain of Arthur's Seat and the rising grounds on which the southern part of Edinburgh is now built, lay beneath him, and displayed a singular and animating prospect. It was occupied by the army of the Highlanders, now in the act of preparing for their march. Waverley had already seen something of the kind at the hunting