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.

472 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
taries, that the real transaction, mysterious and odd as it certainly was, sunk
into tameness before the Nurse's edition, like humble prose contrasted with
the boldest flights of poetry.
To hear all this did Richard seriously incline, and still more was he interested with the idea of his valiant father coming for him unexpectedly at
the head of a gallant regiment, with music playing and colours flying, and
carrying his son away on the most beautiful pony eyes ever beheld:'Or his
mother, bright as the day, might suddenly appear in her coach-and-six, to
reclaim her beloved child; or his repentant grandfather, with his pockets
stuffed out with bank-notes, would come to atone for his past cruelty, by
heaping his neglected grandchild with unexpected wealth. Sure was Nurse
Jamieson, " that it wanted but a blink of her bairn's bonny ee to turn their
hearts, as Scripture sayeth; and as strange things had been, as they should
come a'thegither to the town at the same time, and make such a day as had
never been seen in Middlemas; and then her bairn would never be called
by that Lowland name of Middlemas any more, which sounded as if it had
been gathered out of the town gutter; but would be called Galatian,* or
Sir William Wallace,. or Robin Hood, or after some other of the great
princes named in story-books."
Nurse Jamieson's history of the past, and prospects of the future, were
too flattering not to excite the most ambitious visions in the mind of a boy,
who naturally felt a strong desire of rising in the world, and was conscious
of possessing the powers necessary to his advancement. The incidents of
his birth resembled those he found commemorated in the tales which he read
or listened to; and there seemed no reason why his own adventures should
not have a termination corresponding to those of such veracious histories.
In a word, while good Doctor Gray imagined that his pupil was dwelling in
utter ignorance of his origin, Richard was meditating upon nothing else
than the time and means by which he anticipated his being extricated from
the obscurity of his present condition, and enabled to assume the rank, to
which, in his own opinion, he was entitled by birth.
So stood the feelings of the young man, when, one day after dinner, the
Doctor snuffing the candle, and taking from his pouch the great leathern
pocketbook in which he deposited particular papers, with a small supply of
the most necessary and active medicines, he took from it Mr. Moncada's
letter, and requested Richard Middlemas's serious attention, while he told
him some circumstances concerning himself, which it greatly imported him
to know. Richard's dark eyes flashed fire-the blood flushed his broad and
well-formed forehead -the hour of explanation was at length come. He
listened to the narrative of Gideon Gray, which, the reader may believe,
being altogether divested of the gilding which Nurse Jamieson's imagination had bestowed upon it, and reduced to what mercantile men termed the
needful, exhibited little more than the tale of a child of shame, deserted by
its father and mother, and brought up on the reluctant charity of a more
distant relation, who regarded him as the living though unconscious evidence of the disgrace of his family, and would more willingly have paid fol
the expenses of his funeral, than that of the food which was grudgingly
provided for him. " Temple and tower," a hundred flattering edifices of
Richard's childish imagination, went to the ground at once, and the pain
which attended their demolition was rendered the more acute, by a sense
of shame that he should have nursed such reveries. He remained while
Gideon continued his explanation, in a dejected posture, his eyes fixed on
the ground, and the veins of his forehead swoln with contending passions.
"And now, my dear Richard," said the good surgeon, "you must think
what you can do for yourself, since your grandfather leaves you the choice
of three honouratble professions, by any of which, well and wisely prose* Ialatian is a name of a person famous in Christmas gambols.