His polished manners, his exquisite address, politeness, and generosity, interest the reader irresistibly, and he pleases the more from the contrast between him and those who surround him. I think he is my favorite character; the Baron Bradwardine is my father's. He thinks it required more genius to invent, and more ability uniformly to sustain, this character than any one of the masterly characters with which the book abounds. There is indeed uncommon art in the manner in which his dignity is preserved by his courage and magnanimity, in spite of all his pedantry and his _ridicules_.... I acknowledge that I am not as good a judge as my father and brothers are of his recondite learning and his law Latin, yet I feel the humor, and was touched to the quick by the strokes of generosity, gentleness, and pathos in this old man, who is, by the bye, all in good time worked up into a very dignified father-in-law for the hero.... Jinker, in the battle, pleading the cause of the mare he had sold to Balmawhapple, and which had thrown him for want of the proper bit, is truly comic; my father says that this and some other passages respecting horsemanship could not have been written by any one who was not master both of the great and little horse. I tell you without order the great and little strokes of humor and pathos just as I recollect, or am reminded of them at this moment by my companions.... Judging by our own feeling as authors, we guess that he would rather know our genuine first thoughts, than wait for cool second thoughts, or have a regular eulogium or criticism put in the most lucid manner, and given in the finest sentences that ever were rounded. Is it possible that I have got thus far without having named Flora or Vich Ian Vohr--the last Vich Ian Vohr! Yet our minds were full of them the moment before I began this letter; and could you have seen the tears forced from us by their fate, you would have been satisfied that the pathos went to our hearts. Ian Vohr from the first moment he appears, till the last, is an admirably drawn and finely sustained character--new, perfectly new to the English reader--often entertaining--always heroic--sometimes sublime. The gray spirit, the Bodach Glas, thrills us with horror. _Us!_ What effect must it have upon those under the influence of the superstitions of the Highlands?... Flora we could wish was never called Miss MacIvor, because in this country there are tribes of vulgar Miss Macs, and this association is unfavorable to the sublime and beautiful of your Flora--she is a true heroine.... There is one thing more we could wish changed or omitted in Flora's character.... In the first visit to her, where she is to sing certain verses, there is a walk, in which the description of the place is beautiful, but too long, and we did not like the preparation for a scene--the appearance of Flora and her harp was too like a common heroine; she should be far above all stage effect or novelist's trick.