is words and his kindness
penetrated the heart of our hero, and easily outweighed all prudential
motives. To be thus personally solicited for assistance by a prince whose
form and manners, as well as the spirit which he displayed in this
singular enterprise, answered his ideas of a hero of romance; to be
courted by him in the ancient halls of his paternal palace, recovered by
the sword which he was already bending towards other conquests, gave
Edward, in his own eyes, the dignity and importance which he had ceased
to consider as his attributes. Rejected, slandered, and threatened upon
the one side, he was irresistibly attracted to the cause which the
prejudices of education and the political principles of his family had
already recommended as the most just. These thoughts rushed through his
mind like a torrent, sweeping before them every consideration of an
opposite tendency,--the time, besides, admitted of no deliberation,--and
Waverley, kneeling to Charles Edward, devoted his heart and sword to the
vindication of his rights!

The Prince (for, although unfortunate in the faults and follies of his
forefathers, we shall here and elsewhere give him the title due to his
birth) raised Waverley from the ground and embraced him with an
expression of thanks too warm not to be genuine. He also thanked Fergus
Mac-Ivor repeatedly for having brought him such an adherent, and
presented Waverley to the various noblemen, chieftains, and officers who
were about his person as a young gentleman of the highest hopes and
prospects, in whose bold and enthusiastic avowal of his cause they might
see an evidence of the sentiments of the English families of rank at this
important crisis. [Footnote: See Note 29.] Indeed, this was a point much
doubted among the adherents of the house of Stuart; and as a well-founded
disbelief in the cooperation of the English Jacobites kept many Scottish
men of rank from his standard, and diminished the courage of those who
had joined it, nothing could be more seasonable for the Chevalier than
the open declaration in his favour of the representative of the house of
Waverley-Honour, so long known as Cavaliers and Royalists. This Fergus
had foreseen from the beginning. He really loved Waverley, because their
feelings and projects never thwarted each other; he hoped to see him
united with Flora, and he rejoiced that they were effectually engaged in
the same cause. But, as we before hinted, he also exulted as a polit