Yet, like the driver who has received his full hire,
I still linger near you, and make, with becoming diffidence, a trifling
additional claim upon your bounty and good nature. You are as free,
however, to shut the volume of the one petitioner, as to close your door
in the face of the other.
This should have been a prefatory chapter, but for two reasons:--First,
that most novel readers, as my own conscience reminds me, are apt to
be guilty of the sin of omission respecting that same matter of
prefaces;--secondly, that it is a general custom with that class of
students, to begin with the last chapter of a work; so that, after
all, these remarks, being introduced last in order, have still the best
chance to be read in their proper place.
There is no European nation, which, within the course of half a century,
or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this kingdom of
Scotland. The effects of the insurrection of 1745,--the destruction
of the patriarchal power of the Highland chiefs,--the abolition of the
heritable jurisdictions of the Lowland nobility and barons,--the total
eradication of the Jacobite party, which, averse to intermingle with the
English, or adopt their customs, long continued to pride themselves
upon maintaining ancient Scottish manners and customs,--commenced this
innovation.
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