entreaty procured an exception in favor of the "Scottish Chiefs". It
was the bright summer, and we read it by moonlight, only disturbed
by the murmur of the distant ocean. We read it, crouched in the deep
recess of the nursery-window; we read it until moonlight and morning
met, and the breakfast-bell ringing out into the soft air from the
old gable, found us at the end of the fourth volume. Dear old times!
when it would have been deemed little less than sacrilege to crush a
respectable romance into a shilling volume, and our mammas considered
_only_ a five-volume story curtailed of its just proportions.

Sir William Wallace has never lost his heroic ascendancy over us,
and we have steadily resisted every temptation to open the "popular
edition" of the long-loved romance, lest what people will call "the
improved state of the human mind", might displace the sweet memory of
the mingled admiration and indignation that chased each other, while
we read and wept, without ever questioning the truth of the absorbing
narrative.

Yet the "Scottish Chiefs" scarcely achieved the popularity of
"Thaddeus of Warsaw"--the first romance originated by the active
brain and singularly constructive power of Jane Porter--produced at an
almost girlish age.

The hero of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" was really Kosciuszko, the beloved
pupil of George Washington, the grandest and purest patriot the modern
world has known. The enthusiastic girl was moved to its composition by
the stirring times in which she lived, and a personal observation
of and acquaintance with some of those brave men whose struggles for
liberty only ceased with their exile or their existence.