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THE

MONASTERY;

A ROMANCE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY, &c.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

NEW-YORK:

PRINTED BY CLAYTON & KINGSLAND,

84 Maiden-lane, and 64 Pine-strect.

1820.

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ALTHOUGH I do not pretend to the pleasure of your personal acquaintance, like many who I believe to be equally strangers to you, I am nevertheless interested in your publications, and desire their continuance; not that I pretend to much taste in fictitious composition, or that I am apt to be interested in your grave scenes, or amused by those which are meant to be lively. I will not disguise from you, that I have yawned over the last interview of Mac Ivor and his sister, and fell fairly asleep while the schoolmaster was reading the humours of Dandie Dinmont. You see, sir, that I scorn to solicit your favour in a way to which you are no stranger. If the papers I enclose you are worth nothing, I will not endeayour to recommend them by personal flattery, as

a bad cook pours rancid butter upon stale fisli. No, sir! What I respect in you, is the light you have occasionally thrown on national antiquities, a study which I have commenced rather late in life, but to which I am attached with the devotion of a first love, because it is the only study I ever cared a farthing for.

You shall have my history, sir, (it will not reach to three volumes,) before that of my manuscript; and as you usually throw out a few lines of verse (by way of skirmishers, I suppose,) at the head of each division of prose, I have had the luck to light upon a stanza in the schoolmaster's copy of Burns, which describes me exactly. I love it the better, because it was originally designed for Captain Grose, an excellent antiquary, though, like yourself, somewhat too apt to treat with levity his own pursuits :

'Tis said he was a soldier bred,

And one wad rather fa'an than fled;
But now he has quit the spurtle blade,
And dog-skin wallet,

And ta'en the antiquarian trade,

I think they call it.

I never could conceive what influenced me, when a boy, in the choice of a profession. Military zeal and ardour it was not, which made me stand out for a commission in the Scots Fuzileers, when my tutors and curators wished to bind me apprentice to old David Stiles, Clerk to his majesty's Signet. I say, military zeal it was not; for I was no fighting boy in my own person, and cared not a penny to read the history of the heroes who turned the world upside down in former ages. As for courage, I had, as I have since dis

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