run?
then I die content. Stop. Wo! Quo me rapis? My Pegasus is galloping off,
goodness knows where, like his Majesty's charger at Dettingen.

How do these rich historical and personal reminiscences come out of the
subject at present in hand? What IS that subject, by the way? My dear
friend, if you look at the last essaykin (though you may leave it alone,
and I shall not be in the least surprised or offended), if you look at
the last paper, where the writer imagines Athos and Porthos, Dalgetty
and Ivanhoe, Amelia and Sir Charles Grandison, Don Quixote and Sir
Roger, walking in at the garden-window, you will at once perceive
that NOVELS and their heroes and heroines are our present subject of
discourse, into which we will presently plunge. Are you one of us, dear
sir, and do you love novel-reading? To be reminded of your first novel
will surely be a pleasure to you. Hush! I never read quite to the end
of my first, the "Scottish Chiefs." I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed
furtive manner at some of the closing pages. Miss Porter, like a kind
dear tender-hearted creature, would not have Wallace's head chopped off
at the end of Vol. V. She made him die in prison,* and if I remember
right (protesting I have not read the book for forty-two or three
years), Robert Bruce made a speech to his soldiers, in which he said,
"And Bannockburn shall equal Cambuskenneth."** But I repeat I could
not read the end of the fifth volume of that dear delightful book for
crying. Good heavens! It was as sad, as sad as going back to school.

* I find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died
on the scaffold, not in prison. His last words were, "'My
prayer is heard. Life's cord is cut by heaven. Helen!
Helen! May heaven preserve my country, and--' He stopped.
He fell. And with that mighty shock the scaffold shook to
its foundations."

** The remark of Bruce (which I protest I had not read for
forty-two years), I find to be as follows:--"When this was
uttered by the English heralds, Bruce turned to Ruthven,
with an heroic smile, 'Let him come, my brave barons! and he
shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambuskenneth!'"
In the same amiable author's famous novel of "Thaddeus of
Warsaw," there is more crying than in any novel I ever
remember to have read. See, for example, the last page. . . .
"Incapable of speaking, Thaddeus led his wife back to her