 proper, I cannot call you into
Exchequer if you do not think proper to read my narrative. Let me therefore
consider. It is true that the annals and documents in my hands say but little of
this Highland chase; but then I can find copious materials for description
elsewhere. There is old Lindsay of Pitscottie ready at my elbow, with his Athole
hunting, and his »lofted and joisted palace of green timber; with all kind of
drink to be had in burgh and land, as ale, beer, wine, muscadel, malvaise,
hippocras, and aquavitæ; with wheat-bread, main-bread, ginge-bread, beef,
mutton, lamb, veal, venison, goose, grice, capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge,
plover, duck, drake, brissel-cock, pawnies, black- muir-fowl, and
capercailzies;« not forgetting the »costly bedding, vaiselle, and napry,« and
least of all, the »excelling stewards, cunning baxters, excellent cooks and
pottingars, with confections and drugs for the desserts.« Besides the
particulars which may be thence gleaned for this Highland feast (the splendour
of which induced the Pope's legate to dissent from an opinion which he had
hitherto held, that Scotland, namely, was the - the - the latter end of the
world) - besides these, might I not illuminate my pages with Taylor the Water
Poet's hunting in the braes of Mar, where,
 
Through heather, mosse, 'mong frogs, and bogs, and fogs,
'Mongst craggy cliffs and thunder-battered hills,
Hares, hinds, bucks, roes, are chased by men and dogs,
Where two hours' hunting fourscore fat deer kills.
Lowland, your sports are low as is your seat;
The Highland games and minds are high and great.
 
But without farther tyranny over my readers, or display of the extent of my own
reading, I shall content myself with borrowing a single incident from the
memorable hunting at Lude, commemorated in the ingenious Mr. Gunn's Essay on the
Caledonian Harp, and so proceed in my story with all the brevity that my natural
style of composition, partaking of what scholars call the periphrastic and
ambagitory, and the vulgar the circumbendibus, will permit me.
    The solemn hunting was delayed, from various causes, for about three weeks.
The interval was spent by Waverley with great satisfaction at Glennaquoich; for
the impression which Flora had made on his mind at their first meeting grew
daily stronger. She was precisely the character to fascinate a youth of romantic
imagination
