THE WAVERLEY NOVELS.
THE new edition is selling at a prodigious rate ; and Sir WALTER SCOTT is reaping, or rather, those for whom, with a noble elevation of principle, he continues to labour, will reap the fruits of his good judg- ment in submitting to the public a cheap edition of these now standard portions of English literature. The idea of illustrating them has in some instances been happily followed up by the artists ; though it strikes us that in other cases sufficient pains have not been bestowed by the designers on the subject under their graphic consideration. For the sake of those, however, which are worthy of the matter to be illus- jrated, we will pass over the faulty in silence,—and with the more good humour as we understand that those which. are still in embryo are of a much higher promise than some of those already before the public. Those that are forthcoming are most of them, we believe, to be the de- signs of Scotch artists ; and it will not be matter of much surprise should it appear by their productions that they better understand, and are better able to express Scotch points of humour, than those gentle- men of the brush and pallet who have had the luck to be born on this side of the Tweed. WILKIE, we hear, is to supply one design, or per- haps more; and with what feeling of cordiality, may be inferred from the fact, that he has positively refused all remuneration for this supply from the storehouse of his genius. Among the illustrations already published, the most successful are LESLIE'S Dominie Sampson, and E. LANDSEER'S Davie Gellatly ;—the former of which is full of that strong spirit which the artist has always evinced towards a peculiar style of bemour, which he has pretty well by this time made exclusively his own : the latter, admitting of the in- troduction of a pair of the true old Scottish hounds, has afforded our ultra- Snyders a fine opportunity of displaying the strength of his
duiwing ; and he has well placed within the small space of a vignette all the life, action, and fondness for man, so natural to the animal which he appears to have taken under his special protection.
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