Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. Walter Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ that Edward was now (the intermediate steps of cornet and lieutenant being overleapt with great agility) Captain Waverley, of Gardiner's regiment of dragoons, which he must join in their quarters at Dundee in Scotland, in the course of a month.

      Sir Everard Waverley received this intimation with a mixture of feelings. At the period of the Hanoverian succession he had withdrawn from Parliament, and his conduct, in the memorable year 1715, had not been altogether unsuspected. There were reports of private musters of tenants and horses in Waverley-Chase by moonlight, and of cases of carbines and pistols purchased in Holland, and addressed to the Baronet, but intercepted by the vigilance of a riding officer of the excise, who was afterwards tossed in a blanket on a moonless night, by an association of stout yeomen, for his officiousness. Nay, it was even said, that at the arrest of Sir William Wyndham, the leader of the Tory party, a letter from Sir Everard was found in the pocket of his night-gown. But there was no overt act which an attainder could be founded on; and government, contented with suppressing the insurrection of 1715, felt it neither prudent nor safe to push their vengeance further than against those unfortunate gentlemen who actually took up arms.

      Nor did Sir Everard's apprehensions of personal consequences seem to correspond with the reports spread among his Whig neighbours. It was well known that he had supplied with money several of the distressed Northumbrians and Scotchmen, who, after being made prisoners at Preston in Lancashire, were imprisoned in Newgate and the Marshalsea; and it was his solicitor and ordinary counsel who conducted the defence of some of these unfortunate gentlemen at their trial. It was generally supposed, however, that, had ministers possessed any real proof of Sir Everard's accession to the rebellion, he either would not have ventured thus to brave the existing government, or at least would not have done so with impunity. The feelings which then dictated his proceedings, were those of a young man, and at an agitating period. Since that time Sir Everard's jacobitism had been gradually decaying, like a fire which burns out for want of fuel. His Tory and High Church principles were kept up by some occasional exercise at elections and quarter-sessions: but those respecting hereditary right were fallen into a sort of abeyance. Yet it jarred severely upon his feelings, that his nephew should go into the army under the Brunswick dynasty; and the more so, as, independent of his high and conscientious ideas of paternal authority, it was impossible, or at least highly imprudent, to interfere authoritatively to prevent it. This suppressed vexation gave rise to many poohs and pshaws, which were placed to the account of an incipient fit of gout, until, having sent for the Army List, the worthy Baronet consoled himself with reckoning the descendants of the houses of genuine loyalty, Mordaunts, Granvilles, and Stanleys, whose names were to be found in that military record; and, calling up all his feelings of family grandeur and warlike glory, he concluded, with logic something like Falstaff's, that when war was at hand, although it were shame to be on any side but one, it were worse shame to be idle than to be on the worst side, though blacker than usurpation could make it. As for Aunt Rachel, her scheme had not exactly terminated according to her wishes, but she was under the necessity of submitting to circumstances; and her mortification was diverted by the employment she found in fitting out her nephew for the campaign, and greatly consoled by the prospect of beholding him blaze in complete uniform.

      Edward Waverley himself received with animated and undefined surprise this most unexpected intelligence. It was, as a fine old poem expresses it, 'like a fire to heather set,' that covers a solitary hill with smoke, and illumines it at the same time with dusky fire. His tutor, or, I should say, Mr. Pembroke, for he scarce assumed the name of tutor, picked up about Edward's room some fragments of irregular verse, which he appeared to have composed under the influence of the agitating feelings occasioned by this sudden page being turned up to him in the book of life. The doctor, who was a believer in all poetry which was composed by his friends, and written out in fair straight lines, with a capital at the beginning of each, communicated this treasure to Aunt Rachel, who, with her spectacles dimmed with tears, transferred them to her commonplace book, among choice receipts for cookery and medicine, favourite texts, and portions from High Church divines, and a few songs, amatory and jacobitical, which she had carolled in her younger days, from whence her nephew's poetical TENTAMINA were extracted, when the volume itself, with other authentic records of the Waverley family, were exposed to the inspection of the unworthy editor of this memorable history. If they afford the reader no higher amusement, they will serve, at least, better than narrative of any kind, to acquaint him with the wild and irregular spirit of our hero:—

      Late when the Autumn evening fell

       On Mirkwood-Mere's romantic dell,

       The lake returned, in chastened gleam,

       The purple cloud, the golden beam:

       Reflected in the crystal pool,

       Headand and bank lay fair and cool;

       The weather-tinted rock and tower,

       Each drooping tree, each fairy flower,

       So true, so soft, the mirror gave,

       As if there lay beneath the wave,

       Secure from trouble, toil, and care,

       A world than earthly world more fair.

       But distant winds began to wake,

       And roused the Genius of the Lake!

       He heard the groaning of the oak,

       And donned at once his sable cloak,

       As warrior, at the battle-cry,

       Invests him with his panoply:

       Then as the whirlwind nearer pressed,

       He 'gan to shake his foamy crest

       O'er furrowed brow and blackened cheek,

       And bade his surge in thunder speak.

       In wild and broken eddies whirled,

       Flitted that fond ideal world,

       And, to the shore in tumult tost,

       The realms of fairy bliss were lost.

       Yet, with a stern delight and strange,

       I saw the spirit-stirring change,

       As warred the wind with wave and wood.

       Upon the ruined tower I stood,

       And felt my heart more strongly bound,

       Responsive to the lofty sound,

       While, joying in the mighty roar,

       I mourned that tranquil scene no more.

       So, on the idle dreams of youth,

       Breaks the loud trumpet-call of truth,

       Bids each fair vision pass away,

       Like landscape on the lake that lay,

       As fair, as flitting, and as frail,

       As that which fled the Autumn gale.—

       For ever dead to fancy's eye

       Be each gay form that glided by,

       While dreams of love and lady's charms

       Give place to honour and to arms!

      In sober prose, as perhaps these verses intimate СКАЧАТЬ