thus restored
to him, when matured by more intercourse with the world, he could
venture to hope for increase of honour and generations of happier days
to the ancient house of Walladmor.

FOOTNOTES TO "CHAPTER XXI.":

[Footnote 1: It is not well to move a sleeping lion. Yet, if either
hereabouts or elsewhere in the novel, any disagreeable reader should
find out something or other not quite in the spirit of our manners--or
rather inartificial in the conduct of the story,--let him understand
that it is due to the German author. But might it not have been altered
and adapted to our notions? Let him be assured that all possible
experiments in that way have been used in the treatment of Walladmor.
It is always satisfactory to know that the patient has had every
advantage which humanity guided by skill could suggest. No attention
has been omitted even in this chapter which the nature of the case
allowed. But there _are_ incidents which cannot be altered; as they
would draw after them other alterations; and compel the artist, who had
simply undertaken to "clean the works" of the watch, absolutely to put
in a new "mainspring."--_English Translator_.]

[Footnote 2: A sentiment which has been expressed by Mr. Foster in his
ingenious essays; and most affectingly expressed by a great poet of
this age in the "Excursion."]

POSTSCRIPT.

'_E quovis ligno non fit Mercurius._' This Roman proverb, Courteous
Reader! is adequately rendered by a homely one of our own--"_You cannot
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear._" Certainly it is difficult to do
so; and none can speak to _that_ more feelingly than myself; but not
impossible, as I would hope that _my_ Walladmor will show when compared
with the original. In saying this I disclaim all vanity; for, waiving
other and more positive services to the German Walladmor, I here found
my claim to the production of a "silk purse" simply on the negative
merits of omission and compression. This is a point which on another
account demands a word or two of explanation; as the reader will else
find it difficult to understand upon what principle of translation
_three_ 'thick set' German volumes can have shrunk into _two_ English
ones of somewhat meagre proportions.

The German hoaxer was aware that no book could have a chance of passing
for Sir Walter Scott's[1] which was not in three volumes octavo. A
Scotch novel from Mr. Constable's press, and _not_ in th