. Clippurse was therefore summoned to Waverley-Honour, under
better auspices than at the commencement of our story. But Mr. Clippurse
came not alone; for, being now stricken in years, he had associated with
him a nephew, a younger vulture (as our English Juvenal, who tells
the tale of Swallow the attorney, might have called him), and they
now carried on business as Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem. These worthy
gentlemen had directions to make the necessary settlements on the most
splendid scale of liberality, as if Edward were to wed a peeress in her
own right, with her paternal estate tacked to the fringe of her ermine.

But before entering upon a subject of proverbial delay, I must remind my
reader of the progress of a stone rolled down hill by an idle truant boy
(a pastime at which I was myself expert in my more juvenile years):
it moves at first slowly, avoiding by inflection every obstacle of the
least importance; but when it has attained its full impulse, and draws
near the conclusion of its career, it smokes and thunders down, taking
a rood at every spring, clearing hedge and ditch like a Yorkshire
huntsman, and becoming most furiously rapid in its course when it is
nearest to being consigned to rest for ever. Even such is the course
of a narrative like that which you are perusing. The earlier events are
studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to
the character rather by narrative, than by the duller medium of direct
description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over
the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have
forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things which it would be
abusing your patience to relate at length.

We are, therefore, so far from attempting to trace the dull progress of
Messrs. Clippurse and Hookem, or that of their worthy official brethren,
who had the charge of suing out the pardons of Edward Waverley and
his intended father-in-law, that we can but touch upon matters more
attractive. The mutual epistles, for example, which were exchanged
between Sir Everard and the Baron upon this occasion, though matchless
specimens of eloquence in their way, must be consigned to merciless
oblivion. Nor can I tell you at length, how worthy Aunt Rachel, not
without a delicate and affectionate allusion to the circumstances which
had transferred Rose's maternal diamonds to the hands of Donald Bean
Lean, stocked her casket with a set of jewels th