romances, and of romances so well written as hardly to be distinguished from memoirs.  The splendid pages of Froissart, with his heart-stirring and eye-dazzling descriptions of war and of tournaments, were among his chief favourites; and from those of Brantome and de la Noue he learned to compare the wild and loose yet superstitious character of the nobles of the League, with the stern, rigid, and sometimes turbulent disposition of the Huguenot party.  The Spanish had contributed to his stock of chivalrous and romantic lore.  The earlier literature of the northern nations did not escape the study of one who read rather to awaken the imagination than to benefit the understanding.  And yet, knowing much that is known but to few, Edward Waverley might justly be considered as ignorant, since he knew little of what adds dignify to man, and qualifies him to support and adorn an elevated situation in society.

The occasional attention of his parents might indeed have been of service, to prevent the dissipation of mind incidental to such a desultory course of reading.  But his mother died in the seventh year after the reconciliation between the brothers, and Richard Waverley himself, who, after this event, resided more constantly in London, was too much interested in his own plans of wealth and ambition, to notice more respecting Edward, than that he was of a very bookish turn, and probably destined to be a bishop.  If he could have discovered and analysed his son’s waking dreams, he would have formed a very different conclusion.

CHAPTER IV

CASTLE-BUILDING

I have already hinted, that the dainty, squeamish, and fastidious taste acquired by a surfeit of idle reading, had not only rendered our hero unfit for serious and sober study, it had even disgusted him in some degree with that in which he had hitherto indulged.

He was in his sixteenth year, when his habits of abstraction and love of solitude became so much marked, as to excite Sir Everard’s affectionate apprehension.  He tried to counterbalance these propensities, by engaging his nephew in field sports, which had been the chief pleasure of his own youthful days.  But although Edward eagerly carried the gun for one season, yet when practice had given him some dexterity, the pastime ceased to afford him amusement.

In the succeeding spring, the perusal of old Isaac Walton’s fascinating volume determined Edward to become ‘a brother of the angle.’  But of all diversions which ingenuity ever devised for the relief of idleness, fishing is the worst qualified to amuse a man who is at once indolent and impatient; and our hero’s rod was speedily flung aside.  Society and example, which, more than any other motives, master and sway the natural bent of our passions, might have had their usual effect upon the youthful visionary:  but the neighbourhood was thinly inhabited, and the homebred young squires whom it afforded, were not of a class fit to form Edward’s usual companions, far less to excite him to emulation in the practice of those pastimes which composed the serious business of their lives.