The object of the whole publication is to throw some light on the manners of Scotland as they were, and to contrast them occasionally with those of the present day.

My own opinions are in favour of our own times in many respects, but not in so far as affords means for exercising the imagination or exciting the interest which attaches to other times.

I am glad to be a writer or a reader in 1826, but I would be most interested in reading or relating what happened from half a century to a century before.

We have the best of it.

Scenes in which our ancestors thought deeply, acted fiercely, and died desperately, are to us tales to divert the tedium of a winter's evening, when we are engaged to no party, or beguile a summer's morning, when it is too scorching to ride or walk.
Yet I do not mean that my essays and narratives should be limited to Scotland.