d indeed summoned up every assistance which art could
afford to beauty; but, alas! hoop, patches, frizzled locks, and a new
mantua of genuine French silk, were lost upon a young officer of dragoons
who wore for the first time his gold-laced hat, jack-boots, and
broadsword. I know not whether, like the champion of an old ballad,--

His heart was all on honour bent,
He could not stoop to love;
No lady in the land had power
His frozen heart to move;

or whether the deep and flaming bars of embroidered gold, which now
fenced his breast, defied the artillery of Cecilia's eyes; but every
arrow was launched at him in vain.

Yet did I mark where Cupid's shaft did light;
It lighted not on little western flower,
But on bold yeoman, flower of all the west,
Hight Jonas Culbertfield, the steward's son.

Craving pardon for my heroics (which I am unable in certain cases to
resist giving way to), it is a melancholy fact, that my history must here
take leave of the fair Cecilia, who, like many a daughter of Eve, after
the departure of Edward, and the dissipation of certain idle visions
which she had adopted, quietly contented herself with a pisaller, and
gave her hand, at the distance of six months, to the aforesaid Jonas, son
of the Baronet's steward, and heir (no unfertile prospect) to a steward's
fortune, besides the snug probability of succeeding to his father's
office. All these advantages moved Squire Stubbs, as much as the ruddy
brown and manly form of the suitor influenced his daughter, to abate
somewhat in the article of their gentry; and so the match was concluded.
None seemed more gratified than Aunt Rachel, who had hitherto looked
rather askance upon the presumptuous damsel (as much so, peradventure, as
her nature would permit), but who, on the first appearance of the
new-married pair at church, honoured the bride with a smile and a
profound curtsy, in presence of the rector, the curate, the clerk, and
the whole congregation of the united parishes of Waverley cum Beverley.

I beg pardon, once and for all, of those readers who take up novels
merely for amusement, for plaguing them so long with old-fashioned
politics, and Whig and Tory, and Hanoverians and Jacobites. The truth is,
I cannot promise them that this story shall be intelligible, not to say
probable, without it. My plan requires that I should explain the motives
on which its action proceeded; and these motives nece