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 further experiment. Indeed he went further, and
characterized 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 at
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, that he could not have endured Venus herself, if she
had been announced in a drawing-room by the name of Miss Mac-Jupiter.

W