s, all leaning to virtue's side. It is a
description of manners peculiar to the Scottish gentry in the middle of
the eighteenth century, especially among the Jacobite families then
passing away.

Of course the popularity of this novel, at that time, was chiefly
confined to the upper classes. In the first place the people could not
afford to pay the price of the book; and, secondly, it was outside their
sympathies and knowledge. Indeed, I doubt if any commonplace person,
without culture or extended knowledge, can enjoy so refined a work, with
so many learned allusions, and such exquisite humor, which appeals to a
knowledge of the world in its higher aspects. It is one of the last
books that an ignorant young lady brought up on the trash of ordinary
fiction would relish or comprehend. Whoever turns uninterested from
"Waverley" is probably unable to see its excellencies or enjoy its
peculiar charms. It is not a book for a modern school-boy or
school-girl, but for a man or woman in the highest maturity of mind,
with a poetic or imaginative nature, and with a leaning perhaps to
aristocratic sentiments. It is a rebuke to vulgarity and ignorance,
which the minute and exaggerated descriptions of low life in the pages
of Dickens certainly are not.

In February, 1815, "Guy Mannering" was published, the second in the
series of the Waverley Novels, and was received by the intelligent
reading classes with even more _eclat_ than "Waverley," to which it is
superior in many respects. It plunges at once _in medias res_, without
the long and labored introductory chapters of its predecessor. It is
interesting from first to last, and is an elaborate and well-told tale,
written _con amore_, when Scott was in the maturity of his powers. It is
full of incident and is delightful in humor. Its chief excellence is in
the loftiness of its sentiments,--being one of the healthiest and
wholesomest novels ever written, appealing to the heart as well as to
the intellect, to be read over and over again, like "The Vicar of
Wakefield," without weariness. It may be too aristocratic in its tone to
please everybody, but it portrays the sentiments of its age in reference
to squires and Scottish lairds, who were more distinguished for
uprightness and manly duties than for brains and culture.

The fascination with which Scott always depicts the virtues of
hospitality and trust in humanity makes a strong impression on the
imagination. His heroes and heroines