 the neighbourhood once
a-year. His younger brother saw no practicable road to independence save that of
relying upon his own exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant
both to reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir Everard in
High-Church and in the house of Stewart. He therefore read his recantation at
the beginning of his career, and entered life as an avowed Whig, and friend of
the Hanover succession.
    The ministry of George the First's time were prudently anxious to diminish
the phalanx of opposition. The Tory nobility, depending for their reflected
lustre upon the sunshine of a court, had for some time been gradually
reconciling themselves to the new dynasty. But the wealthy country gentlemen of
England, a rank which retained, with much of ancient manners and primitive
integrity, a great proportion of obstinate and unyielding prejudice, stood aloof
in haughty and sullen opposition, and cast many a look of mingled regret and
hope to Bois le Duc, Avignon, and Italy.5 The accession of the near relation of
one of those steady and inflexible opponents was considered as a means of
bringing over more converts, and therefore Richard Waverley met with a share of
ministerial favour, more than proportioned to his talents or his political
importance. It was, however, discovered that he had respectable talents for
public business, and the first admittance to the minister's levee being
negotiated, his success became rapid. Sir Everard learned from the public
News-Letter, - first, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, was returned for the
ministerial borough of Barterfaith; next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had
taken a distinguished part in the debate upon the Excise bill in the support of
government; and, lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been honoured with
a seat at one of those boards, where the pleasure of serving the country is
combined with other important gratifications, which, to render them the more
acceptable, occur regularly once a quarter.
    Although these events followed each other so closely that the sagacity of
the editor of a modern newspaper would have presaged the last two even while he
announced the first, yet they came upon Sir Everard gradually, and drop by drop,
as it were, distilled through the cool and procrastinating alembic of Dyer's
Weekly Letter.6 For it may be observed in passing, that instead of those
mail-coaches, by means of which every mechanic at his sixpenny club may nightly
learn from twenty contradictory channels the yesterday's news of the capital, a
weekly post brought, in those days, to Waverley-Honour, a Weekly Intelligencer
