The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

WOODSTOCK. 225
thou too just emblem of the state, to which war, and defeat, and despair,
have reduced many a gallant gentleman."
During the rest of the day, there occurred nothing peculiarly deserving
of notice. Alice sedulously avoided showing towards the disguised Prince
any degree of estrangement or shyness, which could be discovered by her
father, or by any one else. To all appearance, the two young persons continued on the same footing in every respect. Yet she made the gallant himself sensible, that this apparent intimacy was assumed merely to save
appearances, and in no way designed as retracting from the severity with
which she had rejected his suit. The sense that this was the case, joined
to his injured self-love, and his enmity against a successful rival, induced
Charles early to withdraw himself to a solitary walk in the wilderness,
where, like Hercules in the Emblem of Cebes, divided betwixt the personifications of Virtue and of Pleasure, he listened alternately to the voice of
Wisdom and of passionate Folly.
Prudence urged to him the importance of his own life to the future prosecution of the great object in which he had for the present miscarriedthe restoration of monarchy in England, the rebuilding of the throne, the
regaining the crown of his father, the avenging his death, and restoring to
their fortunes and their country the numerous exiles, who were suffering
poverty and banishment on account of their attachment to his cause. Pride
too, or rather a just and natural sense of dignity, displayed the unworthiness of a Prince descending to actual personal conflict with a subject of any
degree, and the ridicule which would be thrown on his memory, should he
lose his life for an obscure intrigue by the hand of a private gentleman.
What would his sage counsellors, Nicholas and Hyde-what would his
kind and wise governor, the Marquis of Hertford, say to such an act of
rashness and folly? Would it not be likely to shake the allegiance of the
staid and prudent persons of the royalist party, since wherefore should
they expose their lives and estates to raise to the government of a kingdom
a young man who could not command his own temper? To this was to be
added, the consideration that even his success would add double difficulties
to his escape, which already seemed sufficiently precarious. If, stopping
short of death, he merely had the better of his antagonist, how did he know
that he might not seek revenge by delivering up to government the malignant Louis Kerneguy, whose real character could not in that case fail to be
discovered?
These considerations strongly recommended to Charles that he should
clear himself of the challenge without fighting; and the reservation under
which he had accepted it, afforded him some opportunity of doing so.
But Passion also had her arguments, which she addressed to a temper
rendered irritable by recent distress and mortification. In the first place,
if he was a prince, he was also a gentleman, entitled to resent as such, and
obliged to give or claim the satisfaction expected on occasion of differences
among gentlemen. With Englishmen, she urged, he could never lose interest by showing himself ready, instead of sheltering himself under his
royal birth and pretensions, to come frankly forward and maintain what he
had done or said on his own responsibility. In a free nation, it seemed as
if he would rather gain than lose in the public estimation by a conduct
which could not but seem gallant and generous. Then a character for
courage was far more necessary to support his pretensions than any other
kind of reputation; and the lying under a challenge, without replying to
it, might bring his spirit into question. What would Villiers and Wilmot
say of an intrigue, in which he had allowed himself to be shamefully
baffled by a country girl, and had failed to revenge himself on his rival?
The pasquinades which they would compose, the witty sarcasms which
they would circulate on the occasion, would be harder to endure than the
grave rebukes of Hertford, Hyde, and Nicholas. This reflection, added to
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