shall be found unable to mix them with
amusement--a task not quite so easy in this critical generation as it was
'Sixty Years Since.'

CHAPTER II

WAVERLEY-HONOUR--A RETROSPECT

It is, then, sixty years since Edward Waverley, the hero of the following
pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment of dragoons in
which he had lately obtained a commission. It was a melancholy day at
Waverley-Honour when the young officer parted with Sir Everard, the
affectionate old uncle to whose title and estate he was presumptive heir.

A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet from
his younger brother Richard Waverley, the father of our hero. Sir Everard
had inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory or High-Church
predilections and prejudices which had distinguished the house of
Waverley since the Great Civil War. Richard, on the contrary, who was ten
years younger, beheld himself born to the fortune of a second brother,
and anticipated neither dignity nor entertainment in sustaining the
character of Will Wimble. He saw early that, to succeed in the race of
life, it was necessary he should carry as little weight as possible.
Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the existence of compound
passions in the same features at the same moment; it would be no less
difficult for the moralist to analyse the mixed motives which unite to
form the impulse of our actions. Richard Waverley read and satisfied
himself from history and sound argument that, in the words of the old
song,

Passive obedience was a jest,
And pshaw! was non-resistance;

yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove
hereditary prejudice could Richard have anticipated that his elder
brother, Sir Everard, taking to heart an early disappointment, would have
remained a bachelor at seventy-two. The prospect of succession, however
remote, might in that case have led him to endure dragging through the
greater part of his life as 'Master Richard at the Hall, the Baronet's
brother,' in the hope that ere its conclusion he should be distinguished
as Sir Richard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, successor to a princely
estate, and to extended political connections as head of the county
interest in the shire where it lay.

But this was a consummation of things not to be expected at Richard's
outset, when Sir Everard was in the prime of life, and certain to be an
acceptable suitor in almost any family, whether wea