following pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment
of dragoons in which he had lately obtained a commission. It was a
melancholy day at Waverley-Honour when the young officer parted with
Sir Everard, the affectionate old uncle to whose title and estate he was
presumptive heir.

A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet
from his younger brother, Richard Waverley, the father of our hero.
Sir Everard had inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory or
High-Church predilections and prejudices, which had distinguished the
house of Waverley since the Great Civil War. Richard, on the contrary,
who was ten years younger, beheld himself born to the fortune of a
second brother, and anticipated neither dignity nor entertainment in
sustaining the character of Will Wimble. He saw early, that, to succeed
in the race of life, it was necessary he should carry as little weight
as possible. Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the existence
of compound passions in the same features at the same moment: it would
be no less difficult for the moralist to analyse the mixed motives which
unite to form the impulse of our actions. Richard Waverley read and
satisfied himself, from history and sound argument, that, in the words
of the old song,

Passive obedience was a jest,
And pshaw! was non-resistance;

yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove
hereditary prejudice, could Richard have anticipated that his elder
brother, Sir Everard, taking to heart an early disappointment, would
have remained a batchelor at seventy-two. The prospect of succession,
however remote, might in that case have led him to endure dragging