
boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an
excellent effect in fictitious description. Much may also be gained by a lively
display of a modern fête, such as we have daily recorded in that part of a
newspaper entitled the Mirror of Fashion, if we contrast these, or either of
them, with the splendid formality of an entertainment given Sixty Years since;
and thus it will be readily seen how much the painter of antique or of
fashionable manners gains over him who delineates those of the last generation.
    Considering the disadvantages inseparable from this part of my subject, I
must be understood to have resolved to avoid them as much as possible, by
throwing the force of my narrative upon the characters and passions of the
actors; - those passions common to men in all stages of society, and which have
alike agitated the human heart, whether it throbbed under the steel corslet of
the fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the eighteenth, or the blue frock
and white dimity waistcoat of the present day.3 Upon these passions it is no
doubt true that the state of manners and laws casts a necessary colouring; but
the bearings, to use the language of heraldry, remain the same, though the
tincture may be not only different, but opposed in strong contradistinction. The
wrath of our ancestors, for example, was coloured gules; it broke forth in acts
of open and sanguinary violence against the objects of its fury. Our malignant
feelings, which must seek gratification through more indirect channels, and
undermine the obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be rather said
to be tinctured sable. But the deep-ruling impulse is the same in both cases;
and the proud peer who can now only ruin his neighbour according to law, by
protracted suits, is the genuine descendant of the baron who wrapped the castle
of his competitor in flames, and knocked him on the head as he endeavoured to
escape from the conflagration. It is from the great book of Nature, the same
through a thousand editions, whether of black-letter, or wire-wove and
hot-pressed, that I have venturously essayed to read a chapter to the public.
Some favourable opportunities of contrast have been afforded me, by the state of
society in the northern part of the island at the period of my history, and may
serve at once to vary and to illustrate the moral lessons, which I would
willingly consider as the most important part of my plan; although I am sensible
how short these will fall of their aim, if I shall be found unable to
