as partial to the involved
intrigues of private life, or at farthest to so much only of the
supernatural as is conferred by the agency of an Eastern genie or a
beneficent fairy. YOU would have loved to shape your course of life over
the broad ocean, with its dead calms and howling tempests, its tornadoes,
and its billows mountain-high; whereas I should like to trim my little
pinnace to a brisk breeze in some inland lake or tranquil bay, where
there was just difficulty of navigation sufficient to give interest and
to require skill without any sensible degree of danger. So that, upon the
whole, Matilda, I think you should have had my father, with his pride of
arms and of ancestry, his chivalrous point of honour, his high talents,
and his abstruse and mystic studies. You should have had Lucy Bertram too
for your friend, whose fathers, with names which alike defy memory and
orthography, ruled over this romantic country, and whose birth took
place, as I have been indistinctly informed, under circumstances of deep
and peculiar interest. You should have had, too, our Scottish residence,
surrounded by mountains, and our lonely walks to haunted ruins. And I
should have had, in exchange, the lawns and shrubs, and green-houses and
conservatories, of Pine Park, with your good, quiet, indulgent aunt, her
chapel in the morning, her nap after dinner, her hand at whist in the
evening, not forgetting her fat coach-horses and fatter coachman. Take
notice, however, that Brown is not included in this proposed barter of
mine; his good-humour, lively conversation, and open gallantry suit my
plan of life as well as his athletic form, handsome features, and high
spirit would accord with a character of chivalry. So, as we cannot change
altogether out and out, I think we must e'en abide as we are.'

END OF VOLUME I

GUY MANNERING

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

VOLUME II

GUY MANNERING

OR

THE ASTROLOGER

CHAPTER I
I renounce your defiance; if you parley so roughly I'll
barricade my gates against you. Do you see yon bay window?
Storm, I care not, serving the good Duke of Norfolk

Merry Devil of Edmonton.

JULIA MANNERING to MATILDA MARCHMONT

'I rise from a sick-bed, my dearest Matilda, to communicate the strange
and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to
jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some
flippant remarks on your