o the service of his king and country, without
feeling any pride in knowing the theory of his art with the Baron, or its
practical minutiae with the Major, or in applying his science to his own
particular plans of ambition, like the Chieftain of Glennaquoich. Added
to this, he was a man of extended knowledge and cultivated taste,
although strongly tinged, as we have already observed, with those
prejudices which are peculiarly English.

The character of Colonel Talbot dawned upon Edward by degrees; for the
delay of the Highlanders in the fruitless siege of Edinburgh Castle
occupied several weeks, during which Waverley had little to do excepting
to seek such amusement as society afforded. He would willingly have
persuaded his new friend to become acquainted with some of his former
intimates. But the Colonel, after one or two visits, shook his head, and
declined farther experiment. Indeed he went farther, and characterised
the Baron as the most intolerable formal pedant he had ever had the
misfortune to meet with, and the Chief of Glennaquoich as a Frenchified
Scotchman, possessing all the cunning and plausibility of the nation
where he was educated, with the proud, vindictive, and turbulent humour
of that of his birth. 'If the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent
expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, I do not
think he could find a better than such a fellow as this, whose temper
seems equally active, supple, and mischievous, and who is followed, and
implicitly obeyed, by a gang of such cut-throats as those whom you are
pleased to admire so much.'

The ladies of the party did not escape his censure. He allowed that Flora
Mac-Ivor was a fine woman, and Rose Bradwardine a pretty girl. But he
alleged that the former destroyed the effect of her beauty by an
affectation of the grand airs which she had probably seen practised in
the mock court of St. Germains. As for Rose Bradwardine, he said it was
impossible for any mortal to admire such a little uninformed thing, whose
small portion of education was as ill adapted to her sex or youth as if
she had appeared with one of her father's old campaign-coats upon her
person for her sole garment. Now much of this was mere spleen and
prejudice in the excellent Colonel, with whom the white cockade on the
breast, the white rose in the hair, and the Mac at the beginning of a
name would have made a devil out of an angel; and indeed he himself
jocularly allowed