The
experienced reader may have already remarked, that the last chapter
was employed in sweeping out of the way all the unnecessary and less
interesting characters, that I might clear the floor for a blithe
bridal.
In truth, it would be unpardonable to pass over slightly what so
deeply interested our principal personage, King James. That learned
and good-humoured monarch made no great figure in the politics of
Europe; but then, to make amends, he was prodigiously busy, when he
could find a fair opportunity of intermeddling with the private
affairs of his loving subjects, and the approaching marriage of Lord
Glenvarloch was matter of great interest to him. He had been much
struck (that is, for him, who was not very accessible to such
emotions) with the beauty and embarrassment of the pretty Peg-a-
Ramsay, as he called her, when he first saw her, and he glorified
himself greatly on the acuteness which he had displayed in detecting
her disguise, and in carrying through the whole inquiry which took
place in consequence of it.
He laboured for several weeks, while the courtship was in progress,
with his own royal eyes, so as wellnigh to wear out, he declared, a
pair of her father's best barnacles, in searching through old books
and documents, for the purpose of establishing the bride's pretensions
to a noble, though remote descent, and thereby remove the only
objection which envy might conceive against the match.
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