"Born of loyal and honest parents, whose means were just sufficient to give a common education to their children, I have neither to boast of pedigree nor of learning; yet they bequeathed to me a better inheritance--a stout constitution, a peaceable disposition, and a proper sense of what is due to my superiors and equals; for such an inheritance I am grateful to God, and to them." In the story he is married to a woman of his own rank, and she embarks with him for Jamaica, but they are shipwrecked on an island near Lat. 14 deg. 30 min. N. and Long. 81 deg. W. They find bags of money hidden on the island, some negroes come to them, and a schooner is driven to their haven. Edward sees in this a purpose which afterward is fulfilled. He says to his wife: "I should be the most ungrateful of men, to the good God who has bestowed all this on me, if I did not feel that this money, so wonderfully delivered into my hands, was for some special purpose of stewardship. The providential arrival of the poor castaway negroes, and then of the schooner,--all--all working together to give us the means of providing every comfort, towards planting a colony of refuge in that blessed haven of our own preservation,--seem to me, in solemn truth, as so many signs from the Divine Will, that it is our duty to fulfil a task allotted to us, in that long unknown island." This island becomes inhabited by a happy people, and Seaward is knighted by George the Second. Everybody read the book. A second edition was called for within the year. Old naval officers got out their charts, and hunted up the probable locality of the places mentioned. Nobody at first doubted its veracity. The _Quarterly_, however, decided that no such man had ever existed and that the whole story was a fiction. It hunted for a schooner mentioned and the names of the naval officers. The latter had never served in his Majesty's navy and the former had not timed her voyages according to the story. The uniform of a naval officer described in the narrative was not worn until thirteen years after these adventures had taken place, and no man by the name of Seaward had been knighted during this time, nor was there any village in England having the name of the village which he gave as his birthplace. Supposing the editor had changed names and dates, the _Quarterly_ criticism becomes valueless. Although the magazine declared it a work of fiction, it gave both the story and the style high praise, and declared it far superior to her romances. When Miss Porter was asked about it, she declined to answer, but said that Scott had his great secret and she might be permitted to have her little one.