impenetrable darkness, which it is the pleasure of the Creator it
should offer to them. Were everything to happen in the ordinary
train of events, the future would be subject to the rules of
arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary events,
and wonderful runs of luck, defy the calculations ox mankind, and
throw impenetrable darkness on future contingencies.

To the above anecdote, another, still more recent, may be here
added. The author was lately honoured with a letter from a
gentleman deeply skilled in these mysteries, who kindly undertook
to calculate the nativity of the writer of Guy Mannering, who might
be supposed to be friendly to the divine art which he professed.
But it was impossible to supply data for the construction of a
horoscope, had the native been otherwise desirous of it, since all
those who could supply the minutiae of day, hour, and minute have
been long removed from the mortal sphere.

Having thus given some account of the first idea, or rude sketch,
of the story, which was soon departed from, the author, in
following out the plan of the present edition, has to mention the
prototypes of the principal characters in Guy Mannering.

Some circumstances of local situation gave the author, in his
youth, an opportunity of seeing a little, and hearing a great deal,
about that degraded class who are called gipsies; who are in most
cases a mixed race, between the ancient Egyptians who arrived in
Europe about the beginning of the fifteenth century, and vagrants
of European descent.

The individual gipsy, upon whom the character of Meg Merrilies