ving committed the
slightest solecism in politeness, whether real or imaginary, was agony
to him; for perhaps even guilt itself does not impose upon some minds
so keen a sense of shame and remorse, as a modest, sensitive, and
inexperienced youth feels from the consciousness of having neglected
etiquette, or excited ridicule. Where we are not at ease, we cannot be
happy; and therefore it is not surprising, that Edward Waverley supposed
that he disliked and was unfitted for society, merely because he had
not yet acquired the habit of living in it with ease and comfort, and of
reciprocally giving and receiving pleasure.

The hours he spent with his uncle and aunt were exhausted in listening
to the oft-repeated tale of narrative old age. Yet even there his
imagination, the predominant faculty of his mind, was frequently
excited. Family tradition and genealogical history, upon which much of
Sir Everard's discourse turned, is the very reverse of amber, which,
itself a valuable substance, usually includes flies, straws, and other
trifles; whereas these studies, being themselves very insignificant and
trifling, do nevertheless serve to perpetuate a great deal of what is
rare and valuable in ancient manners, and to record many curious and
minute facts, which could have been preserved and conveyed through no
other medium. If, therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over
the dry deduction of his line of ancestors, with their various
intermarriages, and inwardly deprecated the remorseless and protracted
accuracy with which the worthy Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees
of propinquity between the house of Waverley-Honour and the
doughty barons, knights, and squires, to whom they stood allied; if
(notwithstanding his obligations to the three ermines passant) he
sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry, its griffins,
its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons with all the bitterness of
Hotspur himself, there were moments when these communications interested
his fancy and rewarded his attention.

The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and
perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return in the evening
when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected
her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with
which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring
cloister that peace which passeth not away; [1]--to these
and sim