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PUBLISHED IN CONNECTION WITH THE SERIES OF WAVERLEY
NOVELS, WHICH WERE REVISED, CORRECTED, AND
ILLUSTRATED, BY

THE AUTHOR.

BOSTON:

SAMUEL H. PARKER, WASHINGTON STREET.

19435% 6.51

HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MAR 5 1941

49.69

43

PREFATORY LETTER.

TO HUGH LITTLEJOHN, ESQ.

MY DEAR CHILD,

I HAVE now finished the task I had imposed on myself, of giving you an opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the past events of Scottish History; and a bloody and tragic tale it has been. The generation of which I am an individual, and which, having now seen the second race of their successors, must soon prepare to leave the scene, have been the first Scotsmen who appear likely to quit the stage of life, without witnessing either foreign or domestic war within their country. Our fathers beheld the civil convulsion of 1745-6,-the race who preceded them saw the commotions of 1715, 1718, and the war of the Revolution in 1688-9. A third and earlier generation witnessed the two insurrections of Pentland Hills and Bothwell Bridge, and a fourth lived in the bloody times of the great Civil War; a fifth had in memory the civil contests of James the Sixth's minority; and a sixth race carries us back to the long period when the blessings of peace were totally unknown, and the state of constant hostility between England and Scotland, was only interrupted by insecure and ill-kept truces of a very few years' endurance.

And even in your Grandfather's own time, though this country was fortunate enough to escape becoming the

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PREFATORY LETTER.

theatre of bloody conflict, yet we had only to look abroad to witness such extensive scenes of war and slaughter, such subversion of established states, and extinction of ancient dynasties, as if the European world was again about to return to the bondage of an universal empire. We have, therefore, had an unexpected, and almost unhoped for escape from the evils of war in our own country, at the expense of beholding from our island the general devastation of the Continent, with the frequent alarm that we ourselves were about to be involved in it.

It is with sincere joy that I see a period arrived, in which the rising generation may for a time at least be less likely either to hear of, or to witness, the terrors of actual war. Even in the history of this small and barren country of Scotland, men may read enough of its miseries, to make them regret how often they have been oc"casioned by the explosions of party spirit. I have avoided, particularly in this small publication, every attempt to prejudice your mind in favour of any of those speculative opinions, which have been frequently the cause of unsheathing the sword of civil discord. Some years hence you will, I hope, study with accuracy the history of Scotland, with a view to form your own opinion which of the contending parties were right or wrong; and I hope you will then possess enough of judgment to perceive, that in political disputes, which, above all others, interest the passions, you are not to expect that either the one party or the other are to be regarded as infallible; and that you will remember that each particular action is to be judged of by its own circumstances, and the motives of the actors,-not approved or condemned in the gross, because it is a measure of any particular faction. The present is not intended to be a controver

PREFATORY LETTER.

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sial work. Indeed, if disputed points should be stated here as subjects of discussion, there is no space to argue them; and all that could be brought forward would be the assertion of the author's own opinion, for which he is not entitled to claim any particular deference from other readers, and certainly is not disposed to require it from you, or to desire that you should take upon his authority what should be the subject of your own investigation.

Like most men of some experience in life, I entertain undoubtedly my own opinions upon the great political questions of the present and of future times; but I have no desire to impress these on my juvenile readers. What I have presumed to offer is a general, and, it is hoped, not an uninteresting selection of facts, which may at a future time form a secure foundation for political senti

ments.

I am more anxious that the purpose of this work should be understood, because a friendly and indulgent critic, whose general judgment has been but too partially pronounced in favour of the author, has in one point misunderstood my intentions. My friendly Aristarchus, for such I must call him, has paid me the great compliment, (which I may boast of having to my utmost ability deserved,) that my little work contains no fault of commission; that is to say, he admits that I have not either concealed or falsified the truth of history in controverted points, which, in my opinion, would have been, especially in a work designed for the use of youth, a most unpardonable crime. But he charges me with the

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