at night without his great-coat; and, above all, to wear flannel near his skin.

Mr Pembroke only wrote to our hero one letter, but it was of the bulk of six epistles of these degenerate days, containing, in the moderate compass of ten folio pages, closely written, a precis of a supplementary quarto manuscript of addenda, delenda, et corrigenda, in reference to the two tracts with which he had presented Waverley. This he considered as a mere sop in the pan to stay the appetite of Edward's curiosity, until he should find an opportunity of sending down the volume itself, which was much too heavy for the post, and which he proposed to accompany with certain interesting pamphlets, lately published by his friend in Little Britain, with whom he had kept up a sort of literary correspondence, in virtue of which the library shelves of WaverleyHonour were loaded with much trash, and a good round bill, seldom summed in fewer than three figures, was yearly transmit

ted, in which Sir Edward Waverley of Waverley-Honour, Bart., was marked Dr. to Jonathan Grubbet, bookseller and stationer, Little Britain. Such had hitherto been the style of the letters which Edward had received from England; but the packet delivered to him at Glennaquoich was of a different and more interesting com-plexion. It would be impossible for the reader, even were I to insert the letters at full length, to comprehend the real cause of their being written, without a glance into the interior of the British Cabinet at. the period in question.

The ministers of the day happened (no very singular event) to be divided into two parties; the weakest of which, making up by assiduity of intrigue their inferiority in real consequence, had of late acquired some new proselytes, and with them the hope of superseding their rivals in the favour of the sovereign, and overpowering them in the House of Commons. Amongst others, they had thought it

worth while to practise upon Richard Waverley. This honest gentleman, by a grave mysterious demeanour, an attention to the etiquette of business, as well as to its essence, a facility in making long dull speeches, consisting of truisms and common-places, hashed up with a technical jargon of office, which prevented the inanity of his orations from being discovered, acquired a certain name and credit in public life, and even established, with many, the character of a profound politi cian; none of your shining orators, indeed, whose talents evaporate in tropes of rhetoric and flashes of wit, but one possessed of steady parts for business, which would wear well, as the ladies say in chusing their silks, and ought in all reason to be good for common and every-day use, since they were confessedly formed of no holiday texture.

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This faith had become so general, that the party in the cabinet of which we have made mention, after sounding Mr Richard

Waverley, were so satisfied with his sentiments and abilities, as to propose, that, in case of a certain revolution in the ministry, he should take an ostensible place in the new order of things, not indeed of the first rank, but greatly higher in point both of emolument and influence, than that which he now enjoyed. There was no resisting so tempting a proposal, notwithstanding that the Great Man, under whose patronage he had enlisted, and by whose banner he had hitherto stood firm, was the principal object of the proposed attack by the new allies. Unfortunately, this fair scheme of ambition was blighted in the very bud, by a premature movement. All the official gentlemen concerned in it, who hesitated to take the part of a voluntary resignation, were informed that the king had no farther occasion for their services; and, in Richard Waverley's case, which the minister considered as aggravated by ingratitude, dismissal was accompanied by some

thing like personal contempt and contumely. The public, and even the party of whom he shared the fall, sympathised little in the disappointment of this selfish and interested statesman, and he retired to the country under the comfortable reflection, that he had lost, at the same time, character, credit, and, what he at least equally deplored,-emolument.

Richard Waverley's letter to his son upon this occasion was a masterpiece of its kind. Aristides himself could not have made out a harder case. An unjust monarch, and an ungrateful country, were the burthen of each rounded paragraph. He spoke of long services, and unrequited sacrifices, though the former had been over paid by his salary, and nobody could guess' in what the latter consisted, unless it were in his deserting, not from conviction, but for the lucre of gain, the tory principles of his family. In the conclusion, his resentment was wrought to such an excess by the force of his own oratory, that he