COLLECTION OF ANCIENT AND MODERN BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES. VOL. XLVI. NOTICES AND ANECDOTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT'S NOVELS. SOLD ALSO BY THEOPHILE BARROIS, JUN., RUE RICHELIEU; TRUCHY, BOULEVARD 1833. PREFACE. No other part of the civilised world furnishes objects more calculated to invite poetic, romantic, or picturesque description, than the "Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, and although these have met with some share of attention, local and general manners and customs have been too neglected, or too commingled with the caricature of romance itself, to convey a just impression or knowledge of their past and present state. The changes in the manners of Scotland that have taken place, from time to time, since the era of William the Conqueror, have been so little noticed, that what knowledge we had of them until the appearance of the Waverley Novels, we owe more to essay writers than to any of the Scottish historians; and it must be allowed, that the tendency so lately manifested to pourtray the peculiarities in Scottish manners, has gone a great way in filling up the chasm in the literature of the country. The methods of instruction in Scotland have been on the increase since the rebellion, in the year 1745; and the advances in literature keep pace, at least, with their corresponding attainments in the arts and sciences. Metaphysical speculation begins, perceptibly, to yield to the more seductive fascinations of national romance. At one period, however, and that, too, in what has been called the golden age of British literature, the early part of the last century, our novels contained only the most depraved pictures of human life, and our romances were generally too wild or too amatory, to be read without im |
