I have not yet said half we felt in reading the work. The characters are not only finely drawn as separate figures, but they are grouped with great skill, and contrasted so artfully, and yet so naturally as to produce the happiest dramatic effect, and at the same time to relieve the feelings and attention in the most agreeable manner. The novelty of the Highland world which is discovered to our view powerfully excites curiosity and interest: but though it is all new to us it does not embarrass or perplex, or strain the attention. We never are harassed by doubts of the probability of any of these modes of life: though we did not know them, we are quite certain they did exist exactly as they are represented. We are sensible that there is a peculiar merit in the work which is in a measure lost upon us, the _dialects_ of the Highlanders, and the Lowlanders, etc. But there is another and a higher merit with which we are as much struck and as much delighted as any true-born Scotchman could be: the various gradations of Scotch feudal character, from the high-born chieftain and the military baron, to the noble-minded lieutenant Evan Dhu, the robber Bean Lean, and the savage Callum Beg. The _Pre_--the Chevalier, is beautifully drawn-- A prince: ay, every inch a prince! 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 favourite 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 other 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_, and his bear and bootjack, and all the raillery of M'Ivor. M'Ivor's unexpected "bear and bootjack" made us laugh heartily. But to return to the dear good baron: though 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 humour, 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. His exclamation of "Oh! my son! my son!" and the yielding of the fictitious character of the baron to the natural feelings of the father is beautiful. (Evan Dhu's fear that his father-in-law should die quietly in his bed made us laugh almost as much as the bear and bootjack.) 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.