if truly reported, is one of those singular coincidences which
occasionally appear, differing so widely from ordinary calculation, yet
without which irregularities human life would not present to mortals,
looking into futurity, the abyss of impenetrable darkness which it is the
pleasure of the Creator it should offer to them. Were everything to
happen in the ordinary train of events, the future would be subject to
the rules of arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary
events and wonderful runs of luck defy the calculations of mankind and
throw impenetrable darkness on future contingencies.

To the above anecdote, another, still more recent, may be here added. The
author was lately honoured with a letter from a gentleman deeply skilled
in these mysteries, who kindly undertook to calculate the nativity of the
writer of Guy Mannering, who might be supposed to be friendly to the
divine art which he professed. But it was impossible to supply data for
the construction of a horoscope, had the native been otherwise desirous
of it, since all those who could supply the minutiae of day, hour, and
minute have been long removed from the mortal sphere.

Having thus given some account of the first idea, or rude sketch, of the
story, which was soon departed from, the Author, in following out the
plan of the present edition, has to mention the prototypes of the
principal characters in Guy Mannering.

Some circumstances of local situation gave the Author in his youth an
opportunity of seeing a little, and hearing a great deal, about that
degraded class who are called gipsies; who are in most cases a mixed race
between the ancient Egyptians who arrived in Europe about the beginning
of the fifteenth century and vagrants of European descent.

The individual gipsy upon whom the character of Meg Merrilies was founded
was well known about the middle of the last century by the name of Jean
Gordon, an inhabitant of the village of Kirk Yetholm, in the Cheviot
Hills, adjoining to the English Border. The Author gave the public some
account of this remarkable person in one of the early numbers of
Blackwood's Magazine, to the following purpose:--

'My father remembered old Jean Gordon of Yetholm, who had great sway
among her tribe. She was quite a Meg Merrilies, and possessed the savage
virtue of fidelity in the same perfection. Having been often hospitably
received at the farmhouse of Lochside, near Yetholm, she had carefully
abs