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.

ROB ROY. 57
I was about to speak -" Silence, if you please," he continued. " Supposing this to be the case, you will instantly set out for the North of England, to pay your uncle a visit, and see the state of his family.. I have
chosen from among his sons (he has six, I believe) one who, I understand,
is most worthy to fill the place I intended for you in the counting-house.
But some farther arrangements may be necessary, and for these your presence may be requisite. You shall have farther instructions at Osbaldistone
Hall, where you will please to remain until you hear from me. Everything
will be ready for your departure to-morrow morning."
With these words my father left the apartment.
" What does all this mean, Mr. Owen?" said I to my sympathetic friend,
whose countenance wore a cast of the deepest dejection.
"You have ruined yourself, Mr. Frank, that's all. When your father
talks in that quiet determined:manner, there will be no more change in
him than in a fitted account."
And so it proved; for the next morning, at five o'clock, I found myself
on the road to York, mounted on a reasonably good horse, and with fifty
guineas in my pocket; travelling, as it would seem, for the purpose of
assisting in the adoption of a successor to myself in my father's house and
favour, and, for aught I knew, eventually in his fortune also.
The slack sail shifts from side to side,
The boat, untrimmed, admits the tide,
Borne down, adrift, at random tost,
The oar breaks short, the rudder's lost.
GAY's FABLES.
I HAVE tagged with rhyme and blank verse the subdivisions of this important narrative, in order to seduce your continued attention by powers
of composition of stronger attraction than my own. The preceding lines
refer to an unfortunate navigator, who daringly unloosed from its moorings
a boat, which he was unable to manage, and thrust it off into the full tide
of a navigable river. No schoolboy, who, betwixt frolic and defiance, has
executed a similar rash attempt, could feel himself, when adrift in a strong
current, in a situation more awkward than mine, when I found myself
driving, without a compass, on the ocean of human life. There had been
such unexpected ease in the manner in which my father slipt a knot, usually
esteemed the strongest which binds society together, and suffered me to
depart as a sort of outcast from his family, that it strangely lessened the
confidence in my own personal accomplishments, which had hitherto sustained me. Prince Prettyman, now a prince; and now a fisher's son, had
not a more awkward sense of his degradation. We are so apt, in our engrossing egotism, to consider all those accessories which are drawn around
us by prosperity, as pertaining and belonging to our own persons, that the
discovery of our unimportance, when left to our own proper resources,
becomes inexpressibly mortifying. As the hum of London died away on
my ear, the distant peal of her steeples more than once sounded to my ears
the admonitory "' Turn again," erst heard by her future Lord Mayor; and
when I looked back from Highgate on her dusky magnificence, I felt as if I
were leaving behind me comfort, opulence, the charms of society, and all the
pleasures of cultivated life.