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.

446 WAVE RLEY NOVELS.
to the interests of the little privileged community, that civic honours were
conferred on him as rapidly as the Set of the Royalty- could legally admit.
To have the right of walking to church on holy-days, preceded by a phalanx of halberdiers, in habiliments fashioned as in former times, seems, in
the eyes of many a guild brother, to be a very enviable pitch of worldly
grandeur. Few persons were ever more proud of civic honours than the
Thane of Fife, but he knew well how to turn his political influence to the
best account. The council, court, and other business of the burgh, occupied
much of his time, which caused him to intrust the management of his
manufactory to a near relation, whose name was D*******, a young man
of dissolute habits; but the Thane, seeing at last, that by continuing that
extravagant person in that charge, his affairs would, in all probability, fall
into a state of bankruptcy, applied to the member of Parliament for that
district to obtain a situation for his relation in the civil department of the
state. The knight, whom it is here unnecessary to name, knowing how
effectually the Thane ruled the little burgh, applied in the proper quarter,
and actually obtained an appointment for D-***-"** in the civil service of
the East India Company.
A respectable surgeon, whose residence was in a neighbouring village,
had a beautiful daughter nanied Emma, who had long been courted by
D**x***-**. Immediately before his departure to India, as a mark of mutual
affection, they exchanged miniatures, taken by an eminent artist in Fife,
and each set in a locket, for the purpose of having the object of affection
always in view.
The eyes of the old Thane were now turned towards Hindostan with much
anxiety; but his relation had not long arrived in that distant quarter of the
globe before he had the satisfaction of receiving a letter, conveying the
welcome intelligence of his having taken possession of his new station in a
large frontier town of the Company's dominions, and that great emoluments
were attached to the situation; which was confirmed by several subsequent
communications of the most gratifying description to the old Thane, who
took great pleasure in spreading the news of the reformed habits and singular good fortune of his intended heir. None of all his former acquaintances
heard with such joy the favourable report of the successful adventurer in
the East, as did the fair and accomplished daughter of the village surgeon
but his previous character caused her to keep her own correspondence
with him secret from her parents, to whom even the circumstance of her
being acquainted with D** —*** was wholly unknown, till her father received a letter fiom him, in which he assured him of his attachment to
Emma long before his departure from Fife; that having been so happy as
to gain her affections, he would have made her his wife before leaving his
native country, had he then had the means of supporting her in a suitable
rank through life; and that, having it now in his power to do so, he only
waited the consent of her parents to fulfil the vow he had formerly made.
The Doctor having a large family, with a very limited income to support
them, and understanding that D"-**x-* had at last become a person of
sober and industrious habits, he gave his consent, in which Emma's mother
fully concurred.
Aware of the straitened circumstances of the Doctor, D*r*"*-* remitted
a sum of money to complete at Edinburgh Emma's Oriental education, and
fit her out in her journey to India; she was to embark at Sheerness, on
board one of the Company's ships, for a port in India, at which place, he said,
he would wait her arrival, with a retinue suited to a person of his rank in
society.
Emima set out from her father's house just in time to secure a passage,
as proposed by her intended husband, accompanied by her only brother, who,
T The Constitution of the Borough.