of romances so well written as hardly to be distinguished from memoirs. The splendid pages of Froissart, with his heart-stirring and eye dazzling descriptions of war and of tournaments, were among his chief favourites; and from those of Brantome and De la Noue he learned to compare the wild and loose, yet superstitious character of the nobles of the League, with the stern, rigid, and sometimes turbulent disposition of the Huguenot party. The Spa nish had contributed to his stock of chivalrous and romantic lore. The earlier literature of the northern nations did not escape the study of one who read, rather to awaken the imagination than to benefit the understanding. And yet, knowing much that is known but to few, Edward Waverley might justly be considered as ignorant, since he knew little of what adds dignity to man, and qualifies him to support and adorn an elevated situation in society.

The occasional attention of his parents might indeed have been of service to prevent the dissipation of mind incidental to such a desultory course of reading. But Mrs Richard Waverley died in the seventh year after the reconciliation between the brothers, and Waverley himself, who after this event resided more constantly in London, was too much interested in his own plans of wealth and ambition, to notice more respecting Edward, than that he was of a very bookish turn, and probably destined to be a bishop. If he could have discovered and analyzed his son's waking dreams, he would have formed a very dif ferent conclusion,

CHAPTER IV.

Castle Building.

I HAVE already hinted that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only ren dered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, but had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had hithers to indulged. He was in his sixteenth year when his habits of abstraction and love of solitude became so much marked as to excite Sir Everard's affectionate apprehension. He tried to counterbalance these propensities, by engaging his nephew in field-sports, which had been the chief pleasure of his own youth. But although Edward eagerly carried the gun for one season, yet when practice had given him some dexterity, the pastime ceased to afford him

amusement. In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton's fascinating volume determined Edward to become, "a brother of the angle." But of all diversions which ingenuity ever devised for the re lief of idleness, fishing is the worst qua lified to amuse a man who is at once indo, lent and impatient, and our hero's rod was speedily flung aside. Society and example, which, more than any other motives, master and sway the natural bent of our passions, might have had their usual effect upon our youthful visionary. But the neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, and the homebred young squires whom it afforded, were not of a class fit to form Edward's usual companions, far less to excite him to emulate them in the practice of those pastimes which composed the serious business of their lives. Sir Everard had, upon the death of Queen Anne, resigned his seat in par-liament, and, as his age increased and the number of his contemporaries diminished, gradually withdrawn himself from society;

so that, when upon any particular occasion Edward mingled with accomplished and well-educated young men of his own rank and expectations, he felt an inferiority in their society, not so much from deficiency of information, as from the want of the skill to command and to arrange that which he possessed. A deep and increasing sensibility added to this dislike of society. The idea of having committed the slightest solecism in politeness, whether real or imaginary, was agony to him; for perhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some minds so keen a sense of shame and remorse as a modest, sensitive, and inexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of having neglected etiquette, or excited ridicule."> Where we are not at ease, we cannot be happy; and therefore it is not surprising, that Edward Waverley supposed that he disliked and was unfitted for society, merely because he had not yet acquired the habit of living in it with ease and comfort, and of reciprocally giving and receiving plea