Such was the hero whom Mr. Thomas Scott proposed to carry to Canada and involve in adventures with the natives and colonists of that country. Perhaps the youthful generosity of the lad will not seem so great in the eyes of others as to those whom it was the means of screening from severe rebuke and punishment. But it seemed, to those concerned, to argue a nobleness of sentiment far beyond the pitch of most minds; and however obscurely the lad, who showed such a frame of noble spirit, may have lived or died, I cannot help being of opinion, that if fortune had placed him in circumstances calling for gallantry or generosity, the man would have fulfilled the promises of the boy. Long afterwards, when the story was told to my father, he censured us severely for not telling the truth at the time, that he might have attempted to be of use to the young man in entering on life. But our alarms for the consequences of the drawn sword, and the wound inflicted with such a weapon, were far too predominant at the time for such a pitch of generosity. Perhaps I ought not to have inserted this schoolboy tale; but besides the strong impression made by the incident at the time, the whole accompaniments of the story are matters to me of solemn and sad recollection. Of all the little band who were concerned in those juvenile sports or brawls, I can scarce recollect a single survivor. Some left the ranks of mimic war to die in the active service of their country. Many sought distant lands, to return no more. Others, dispersed in different paths of life, “my dim eyes now seek for in vain.” Of five brothers, all healthy and promising in a degree far beyond one whose infancy was visited by personal infirmity, and whose health after this period seemed long very precarious, I am, nevertheless, the only survivor. The best loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had destined this incident to be the foundation of literary composition, died “before his day,” in a distant and foreign land; and trifles assume an importance not their own, when connected with those who have been loved and lost. WAVERLEY; OR, ’T IS SIXTY YEARS SINCE. “Under which King, Bezonian? Speak, or die!” Henry IV., Part II. EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION TO WAVERLEY. “What is the value of a reputation that probably will not last above one or two generations?” Sir Walter Scott once asked Ballantyne. Two generations, according to the usual reckoning, have passed; “’T is Sixty Years since” the “wondrous Potentate” of Wordsworth’s sonnet died, yet the reputation on which he set so little store survives. A constant tide of new editions of his novels flows from the press; his plots give materials for operas and plays; he has been criticised, praised, condemned: but his romances endure amid the changes of taste, remaining the delight of mankind, while new schools and little masters of fiction come and go.