real characters, they must feel, and speak, and act as they are described to have done in the faithful page of history, and the author is not at liberty to mould them as he pleases, to make them more interesting, and to give greater effect to his story. The same regard to the truth of history must be observed when fictitious personages are introduced, provided the reader is taught or induced to form a judgment from them of the parties to which they are represented as belonging. If it is permitted to make embellishments on the scene, with the view of giving greater interest to the piece, the utmost care ought to be taken that they do not violate the integrity of character; and they must be impartially distributed, and equally extended to all parties, and to the virtues and vices of each. This is a delicate task, but the undertaker imposes it upon himself, with all its responsibilities. Besides fidelity, impartiality, and judgment, it requires an extensive, and minute, and accurate acquaintance with the history of the period selected, including the history of opinions and habits, as well as of events. And we do not hesitate to say, that this is a species of intelligence which is not likely to be possessed by the person who holds in sovereign contempt the opinions which were then deemed of the utmost moment, and turns with disgust from the very exterior manners of the men whose inmost habits he affects to disclose. Nor will the multifarious reading of the dabbler in everything, from the highest affairs of church and state down to the economy of the kitchen, and the management of the stable, keep him from blundering here at every step.

Such, in our opinion, are the laws of the kind of writing under consideration; and we are not aware that their justice will be disputed, or that our statement of them is open to objection. The work before us

we consider as chargeable with offences against these laws, which are neither few nor slight.

The guides of public opinion cannot be too jealous in guarding against the encroachments of the writers of fiction upon the province of true history, nor too faithful in pointing out every transgression, however small it may appear, of the sacred fences by which it is protected. Such writers have it in their power to do much mischief, from the engaging form in which they convey their sentiments to a numerous, and, in general, unsuspecting class of readers. When the scene is laid in a remote and fabulous period, or when the merits and conduct of the men who are made to figure in it do not affect the great cause of truth and of public good, the writer may be allowed to exercise his ingenuity, and to amuse his readers, without our narrowly inquiring whether his representations are historically correct or not. But when he speaks of those men who were engaged in the great struggle for national and individual rights, civil and religious, which took place in this country previous to the Revolution, and of all the cruelties of the oppressors, and all the sufferings of the oppressed, he is not to be tolerated in giving a false and distorted view of men and measures, whether this proceed from ignorance

or from prejudice. Nor should his misrepresentations be allowed to pass without severe reprehension, when their native tendency is to shade the atrocities of persecution, to diminish the horror with which the conduct of a tyrannical and unprincipled government has been so long and so justly regarded, and to traduce and vilify the characters of those men, who, while they were made to feel all the weight of its severity, continued to resist, until they succeeded in emancipating themselves, and securing their posterity from the galling yoke. On this supposition, it is not sufficient to atone for such faults, that the work in which they are found displays great talents; that it contains scenes which are described with exquisite propriety and truth; that the leading facts in the history of those times are brought forward; that the author has condemned the severities of the government; that he is often in a mirthful and facetious mood; and that some allowances must be made for a desire to amuse his readers, and to impart greater interest to a story, which, after all, is for the most part fictitious. With every disposition to make all reasonable allowances, we are constrained to set aside such apologies. It is not upon sentiments transiently expressed, but upon the impression which the whole piece is calculated to make, that our judgment must be formed. We cannot agree to sacrifice the interests of truth, either to the humour of an author, or to the amusement of his readers. We respect talents as much as any can do, and can admire them, even when we are obliged to reprobate the bad purposes to which they are applied; but we must not suffer our imaginations to be dazzled by the splendour of talent; we cannot consent to be tricked and laughed out of our principles; nor will we passively allow men who deserve other treatment, and to whose firmness and intrepidity we are indebted for the transmission of so many blessings, to be run down, and abused with profane wit or low buffoonery.

Before proceeding to a particular examination of the characters which the author gives of the two parties, we beg leave to mention one or two instances, which go to show that he is not to be trusted as to the accuracy of the statements upon which his judgments are pronounced. Lest we should be suspected of having hunted for these, we shall take them from the two first paragraphs of his story. One charge which he frequently brings against the strict Presbyterians, is that of a morose and gloomy bigotry, displayed by their censuring of all innocent recreations. This he endeavours to impress on the imagination of his reader in the very first scene, by representing them as refusing, from such scruples, to attend the weaponschaws appointed by government. "The rigour of the strict Calvinists," says he, "increased in proportion to the wishes of the government that it should be relaxed. A supercilious condemnation of all manly pastimes and harmless recreations distinguished those who professed a more than ordinary share of sanctity." Now, with respect to all that kind of information which the antiquary possesses, we will most cheerfully acknowledge the superiority of our

a

author; and we can assure him, that we listened to him with "judaical" credulity, and with as devout gravity as any of his readers could listen to the sermons of the zealous Mause, or of Habakkuk Mucklewraith,— while he described, to our great edification, the popinjay or parrot, being the figure of a bird so called, with party-coloured feathers, suspended on a pole or mast, having a yard extended across it as a mark, at which the competitors discharged their fusees and carabines, with the precise number of paces at which they stood from the mark, the exact number of rounds which they fired, and the identical manner in which the order of their rotation was settled. Also the ducal carriage, being an enormous leathern vehicle like to Noah's ark, or at least the vulgar picture of it; the eight Flanders mares, with their long tails, by which it was dragged; the eight insides, with their designations and rank, and the places which they occupied on the lateral recess, or the projection at the door, or the boot, and on the opposite ensconce; and the six outsides, being six lacqueys, armed up to the teeth, who stood, or rather hung, in triple file, on the foot-board, and eke, besides a coachman, three postilions (the author has omitted to mention on which lateral horse they sat, or stood, or hung), with their short swords, and tie-wigs with three tails, and blunderbusses and pistols. Truly, if the rigid features of the Puritans did not relax into something of a more gentle aspect than " sort of malignant and sarcastic sneer" at the sight of this moving mansion-house, we must grant that they were as morose and gloomy as the author represents them to have been. With respect to all information of this kind, which the author takes every opportunity of imparting to his readers with infinite particularity, and with such evident self-satisfaction as to banish the suspicion that he intended to set the rhapsodical jargon of modern writers over against that of the old Whigs, or to show, that, though the cant of hypocrisy is the worst, the cant of antiquarianism is the most childish and tormenting;—of the accuracy, we say, of all such information, we never presumed to hesitate for a moment; we are satisfied, upon his testimony, that in the seventeenth century it was customary for gentlemen of property to sit at the same table with the lowest of their menial servants, though we did not before know that this mode of promiscuous feasting ascended higher in the grade of society than the families of farmers; and we now believe, upon same authority, though it cost us, we confess, some pain to swallow it, that clocks or timepieces were then a common article of furniture in a moorland farmhouse. But we must acknowledge that we are not disposed to pay the same deference to the author's opinion, in what relates to the religious sentiments and moral habits of those times; we presume to think that we understand these fully as well as he does; and with regard to the scruple which he imputes to the Presbyterians respecting the lawfulness of assemblies for a show of arms, military exercises, and manly pastimes, whether he received his information from pedlars, weavers, and tailors, or from the descendants of honourable

the

families, right reverend non-juring bishops, lairds, or their hereditary gamekeepers, we can assure him, that they have imposed on his credulity and good-nature (which, if he had had his usual wits about him, he might have suspected from the "shrug of the shoulder" with which they could not help accompanying it), much in the same way that the "travelling packman" imposed upon Oldbuck the antiquary about "the bodle." The fact is, that from the Reformation down to the period in which the scene of this tale is laid, such exercises and pastimes were quite common throughout Scotland; children were carefully trained to them when at school; professors in universities attended and joined in them, as well as their students; and the Presbyterian ministers, having practised them at school and at college, instead of condemning them as unlawful, did not scruple to countenance them with their presence. There were some of these precise preachers, for whom, we suspect, our author (with all his intimate knowledge of such sports) might not have been quite a match in shooting at the popinjay; and in playing with them at the rapier or small-sword, or in wrestling a fall, we are afraid he might have come off as badly as Sergeant Bothwell did from the brawny arms of John Balfour of Burley.

If he had not been eager to fix a stigma upon the Covenanters, he could not have been at a loss to account fully for their absence from the weaponschaws, without having recourse to this religious scruple. In the first place, the troops then kept up by the government in a time of peace were intended to harass the Covenanters, and were wholly employed in discovering and dispersing their conventicles. As one great design of the reviews was to allure young men to enter into this army, we need not wonder that the Covenanters refrained from them, and inculcated this upon all who were under their influence. They refused to enlist, and they refused or scrupled to pay the cess which was appropriated to the support of troops raised for the express purpose of suppressing their religious assemblies. The author, according to his mode of writing and reasoning, should therefore have represented them as of the principle of those fanatics who denied the lawfulness of bearing arms, and of paying taxes for the common purposes of government. If it were necessary to assign any other reason, we might add that the Presbyterians had a religious scruple, but one of a very different complexion from that which is assumed by our author. These reviews, with their attendant sports, were then ordinarily held on Sabbath-days. "Under the reign of the last Stuarts (to avail ourselves in part of the language of our author, in the pretty exordium with which he opens his tale), there was an anxious wish, on the part of government, to counteract, by every means in their power, the strict or puritanical spirit." For this purpose, "frequent musters and assemblies of the people, both for military exercise and for sports and pastimes, were appointed by authority" to be held on the Sabbath. This did not commence after "the republican government." It was the English Solomon who, in his

wisdom, first discovered this project for promoting the happiness of his good subjects. It was revived and pressed with greater zeal in the reign of his son, the pious martyr, Charles I., and again resorted to by his most sacred and immaculate Majesty Charles II. To have stated this circumstance broadly, would have tended to weaken the impression which the author wished to make on the minds of his readers, as to the moroseness and rigidity of the Presbyterians; and therefore he keeps it back, or rather dexterously veils it. That he was aware of the fact is evident, not only from his charging the Covenanters, in this place, with a judaical observance of the Sabbath," but also from his telling us, that, if present, they could not avoid "listening to the prayers read in the churches on these occasions."

With what indignation must he have read a late proclamation of the magistrates of this city, enforcing "a judaical observance of the Sabbath!" With what horror must he have viewed the hydra form of Puritanism, which was cut down at Bothwell Bridge in 1679, rearing its deformed head in 1816, and stalking the streets of the capital of Scotland in the shape of its Lord Provost and Magistrates! And, after this, how soothing to his perturbed spirits must have been the spectacle exhibited, so recently and so opportunely on a Sunday, in one of the most public streets of the same city! If he was in the place, and not taking to himself a little innocent pastime in the country, our author doubtless must have been present on that occasion, dancing for joy promiscuously with the rabble assembled, and tripping it to the sound of "the pipe and tabor, or the bagpipe." His good friend, the memorialist of Lord Viscount Dundee, tells us that his politic, as well as valorous hero, found that "his dragoons were the only medicines to be apply'd to their distempers," meaning the old fanatics; and there was no doubt something peculiarly pleasing in the resemblance (all danger being completely out of the question) between this and the recent incident. This is not the first time that Scotland has been indebted to her faithful and old ally, Russia, for assistance against a gloomy and unsocial fanaticism. General Dalziel was formerly brought from the wilds of Muscovy, as a falcon of the true breed, and trained on the proper ground, to hunt down the flying Puritans, and to drive these impure and loathsome bats into their native dens and caves. And why should not our gallant officers have taken advantage of the presence of a Russian duke, to revive the Sunday weaponschaws of former days, to teach our magistrates good manners, and to convince them that gentlemen in red coats are not bound to be subject to those rigid and puritanical restrictions which may be imposed on the vulgar? We do not know what our author means, and we are not sure that he has himself any distinct idea of what is meant by a judaical observance of the Sabbath. We know of no peculiar strictness on this head exacted by our Presbyterian forefathers, above what is practised by the sober and religious part of the inhabitants of Scotland to this day. And whatever he may be pleased