tion of those
scenes which are passing daily before our eyes, and are interesting
from their novelty. Thus the coat-of-mail of our ancestors, and
the triple-furred pelisse of our modern beaux, may, though for very
different reasons, be equally fit for the array of a fictitious
character; but who, meaning the costume of his hero to be impressive,
would willingly attire him in the court dress of George the Second's
reign, with its no collar, large sleeves, and low pocket-holes? The
same may be urged, with equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with its
darkened and tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and massive
oaken table garnished with boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and
peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in fictitious
description. Much may also be gained by a lively display of a modern
fete, such as we have daily recorded in that part of a newspaper
entitled the Mirror of Fashion, if we contrast these, or either of them,
with the splendid formality of an entertainment given Sixty Years since;
and thus it will be readily seen how much the painter of antique or
of fashionable manners gains over him who delineates those of the last
generation.

Considering the disadvantages inseparable from this part of my subject,
I must be understood to have resolved to avoid them as much as possible,
by throwing the force of my narrative upon the characters and passions
of the actors;--those passions common to men in all stages of society,
and which have alike agitated the human heart, whether it throbbed under
the steel corselet of the fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the
eighteenth, or the blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present
day. [Alas! that attire, respectable and gentlemanlike in 1805, or
thereabouts, is now as antiquated as the Author of Waverley has himself
become since that period! The reader of fashion will please to fill up
the costume with an embroidered waistcoat of purple velvet or silk,
and a coat of whatever colour he pleases.] Upon these passions it is
no doubt true that the state of manners and laws casts a necessary
colouring; but the bearings, to use the language of heraldry, remain
the same, though the tincture may be not only different, but opposed in
strong contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was
coloured GULES; it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary violence
against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings, which must