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
seek gratification through more indirect channels, and undermine the
obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be rather said to be
tinctured SABLE. But the deep-ruling impulse is the same in both cases;
and the proud peer who can now only ruin his neighbour according to law,
by protracted suits, is the genuine descendant of the baron who wrapped
the castle of his competitor in flames, and knocked him on the head as
he endeavoured to escape from the conflagration. It is from the great
book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions, whether of
black-letter, or wire-wove and hot-pressed, that I have venturously
essayed to read a chapter to the public. Some favourable opportunities
of contrast have been afforded me, by the state of society in the
northern part of the island at the period of my history, and may serve
at once to vary and to illustrate the moral lessons, which I would
willingly consider as the most important part of my plan; although I
am sensible how short these will fall of their aim, if I shall be found
unable to mix them with amusement,--a task not quite so easy in this
critical generation as it was 'Sixty Years since.'



CHAPTER II

WAVERLEY-HONOUR---A RETROSPECT

It is, then, sixty years since Edward Waverley, the hero of the