arithmetic, like the chances of gaming. But extraordinary events
and wonderful runs of luck defy the calculations of mankind and
throw impenetrable darkness on future contingencies.

To the above anecdote, another, still more recent, may be here
added. The author was lately honoured with a letter from a
gentleman deeply skilled in these mysteries, who kindly undertook
to calculate the nativity of the writer of Guy Mannering, who
might be supposed to be friendly to the divine art which he
professed. But it was impossible to supply data for the
construction of a horoscope, had the native been otherwise
desirous of it, since all those who could supply the minutiae of
day, hour, and minute have been long removed from the mortal
sphere.

Having thus given some account of the first idea, or rude sketch,
of the story, which was soon departed from, the Author, in
following out the plan of the present edition, has to mention the
prototypes of the principal characters in Guy Mannering.

Some circumstances of local situation gave the Author in his youth
an opportunity of seeing a little, and hearing a great deal, about
that degraded class who are called gipsies; who are in most cases
a mixed race between the ancient Egyptians who arrived in Europe
about the beginning of the fifteenth century and vagrants of
European descent.

The individual gipsy upon whom the character of Meg Merrilies was
founded was well known about the middle of the last century by the
name of Jean Gordon, an inhabitant of the village of Kirk Yetholm,