book in his pocket, which perhaps
served as an apology to himself, he used to pursue one of these long
avenues, which, after an ascending sweep of four miles, gradually
narrowed into a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody
pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon a deep, dark, and
small lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood Mere. There stood,
in former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the
water, which had acquired the name of the Strength of Waverley, because,
in perilous times, it had often been the refuge of the family. There, in
the wars of York and Lancaster, the last adherents of the Red Rose
who dared to maintain her cause, carried on a harassing and predatory
warfare, till the stronghold was reduced by the celebrated Richard of
Gloucester. Here, too, a party of cavaliers long maintained themselves
under Nigel Waverley, elder brother of that William whose fate Aunt
Rachel commemorated. Through these scenes it was that Edward loved to
'chew the cud of sweet and bitter fancy,' and, like a child among his
toys, culled and arranged, from the splendid yet useless imagery and
emblems with which his imagination was stored, visions as brilliant and
as fading as those of an evening sky. The effect of this indulgence upon
his temper and character will appear in the next chapter.

CHAPTER V

CHOICE OF A PROFESSION

From the minuteness with which I have traced Waverley's pursuits, and
the bias which these unavoidably communicated to his imagination, the
reader may perhaps anticipate, in the following tale, an imitation of
the romance of Cervantes. But he will do my prudence injustice in the
supposition. My intention is not to follow the steps of that inimitable
author, in describing such total perversion of intellect as misconstrues
the objects actually presented to the senses, but that more common
aberration from sound judgement, which apprehends occurrences indeed in
their reality, but communicates to them a tincture of its own romantic
tone and colouring. So far was Edward Waverley from expecting general
sympathy with his own feelings, or concluding that the present state of
things was calculated to exhibit the reality of those visions in which
he loved to indulge, that he dreaded nothing more than the detection
of such sentiments as were dictated by his musings, he neither had nor
wished to have a confidant, with whom to communicate his reveries; and
so sen