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.

CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE.
G(ljptrr tpt firat.
MR. CHRYSTAL CROFTANGRY'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.
SIC ITUR AD ASTRA.
THIS is the path to heaven. Such is the ancient motto attached to the
armorial bearings of the Canongate, and which is inscribed, with greater
or less propriety, upon all the public buildings, from the church to the pillory, in the ancient quarter of Edinburgh, which bears, or rather once bore,
the same relation to the Good Town that Westminster does to London, being
still possessed of the palace of the sovereign, as it formerly was dignified
by the residence of the principal nobility and gentry. I may, therefore,
with some propriety put the same motto at the head of the literary undertaking by which I hope to illustrate the hitherto undistinguished name of
Chrystal Croftangry.
The public may desire to know something of an author who pitches at
such height his ambitious expectations. The gentle reader, therefore-for
I am much of Captain Bobadil's humour, and could to no other extend myself so far-the gentle reader then, will be pleased to understand, that I am
a Scottish gentleman of the old school, with a fortune, temper, and person,
rather the worse for wear. I have known the world for these forty years,
having written myself man nearly since that period -and I do not think
it is much mended. But this is an opinion which I keep to myself when I
am among younger folk, for I recollect, in my youth, quizzing the Sexagenarians who carried back their ideas of a perfect state of society to the
days of laced coats and triple ruffles, and some of them to the blood and
blows of the Forty-five: therefore I am cautious in exercising the right of
censorship, which is supposed to be acquired by men arrived at, or approaching, the mysterious period of life, when the numbers of seven and
nine multiplied into each other, form what sages have termed the Grand
Climacteric.
Of the earlier part of my life it is only necessary to say, that I swept the
boards of the Parliament-House with the skirts of my gown for the usual
number of years during which young Lairds were in my time expected to
keep term-got no fees-laughed, and made others laugh-drank claret at
Bayle's, Fortune's, and Walker's,-and eat oysters in the Covenant Close.
Becoming my own master, I flung my gown at the bar-keeper, and commenced gay man on my own account. In Edinburgh, I ran into all the
expensive society which the place then afforded. When I went to my house
in the shire of Lanark, I emulated to the utmost the expenses of men of
large fortune, and had my hunters, my first-rate pointers, my game-cocks,
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