 mix them
with amusement, - a task not quite so easy in this critical generation as it was
»Sixty Years since.«
 

                                Chapter Second.

                        Waverley-Honour. - A Retrospect.

It is, then, sixty years since4 Edward Waverley, the hero of the following
pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment of dragoons in which he
had lately obtained a commission. It was a melancholy day at Waverley-Honour
when the young officer parted with Sir Everard, the affectionate old uncle to
whose title and estate he was presumptive heir.
    A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet from his
younger brother Richard Waverley, the father of our hero. Sir Everard had
inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory or High-Church predilections
and prejudices, which had distinguished the house of Waverley since the Great
Civil War. Richard, on the contrary, who was ten years younger, beheld himself
born to the fortune of a second brother, and anticipated neither dignity nor
entertainment in sustaining the character of Will Wimble. He saw early, that, to
succeed in the race of life, it was necessary he should carry as little weight
as possible. Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the existence of
compound passions in the same features at the same moment: it would be no less
difficult for the moralist to analyze the mixed motives which unite to form the
impulse of our actions. Richard Waverley read and satisfied himself, from
history and sound argument, that, in the words of the old song,
 
Passive obedience was a jest,
And pshaw! was non-resistance;
 
yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove hereditary
prejudice, could Richard have anticipated that his elder brother, Sir Everard,
taking to heart an early disappointment, would have remained a bachelor at
seventy-two. The prospect of succession, however remote, might in that case have
led him to endure dragging through the greater part of his life as »Master
Richard at the Hall, the baronet's brother,« in the hope that ere its conclusion
he should be distinguished as Sir Richard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, successor
to a princely estate, and to extended political connections as head of the
county interest in the shire where it lay. But this was a consummation of things
not to be expected at Richard's outset, when Sir Everard was in the prime of
life, and certain to be an acceptable suitor in almost any family, whether
wealth or beauty should be the object of his pursuit, and when, indeed, his
speedy marriage was a report which regularly amused
