BELFORD REGIS: OR SKETCHES OF A COUNTRY TOWN. BY MARY RUSSELL MITFORD, AUTHORESS OF RIENZI,' IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA: CAREY, LEA & BLANCHARD, 1835, PREFACE. In an Article on the last Volume of " Our Village," the courteous critic recommended, since I had taken leave of rural life, that I should engage lodgings in the next country town, and commence a series of sketches of the inhabitants; a class of the community which, whilst it forms so large a portion of our population, occupies so small a space in our literature, and amongst whom, more perhaps than amongst any other order of English society, may be traced the peculiarities, the prejudices, and the excellences of the national character. "Upon this hint I wrote;" and the present work would have been called simply "Our Market Town," had not an ingenious contemporary, by forestalling my intended title, compelled me to give to "my airy nothings, a local habitation and a name."* It would not quite do to have two “ Simon Pures" in the field, each asserting his identity and jostling for precedence; although I am so far from accusing Mr. Peregrine Reedpen (as the Frenchman did the ancients) of having stolen my best thoughts, that I am firmly of opinion, that were twenty writers to sit -down at once to compose a book upon this theme, there would not be the slightest danger of their interfering with each other. Every separate work would bear the stamp of the author's mind, of his peculiar * "Our Town; or, Rough Sketches of Character, Manners, &c. By Peregrine Reedpen." 2 vols. London, 1834. 45 X 929 train of thought, and habits of observation. The subject is as inexhaustible as nature herself. One favour, the necessity of which has been pressed upon me by painful experience, I have to entreat most earnestly at the hands of my readers,-a favour the very reverse of that which story-tellers by profession are wont to implore! It is that they will do me the justice not to believe one word of these sketches from beginning to end. General truth of delineation I hope there is; but of individual portrait painting, I most seriously assert that none has been intended, and none, I firmly trust, can be found. From this declaration I except, of course, the notes which consist professedly of illustrative anecdotes, and the paper on the Greek plays, which contains a feeble attempt to perpetuate one of the happiest recollections of my youth. Belford itself too, may, perhaps, be identified: for I do not deny having occasionally stolen some touches of local scenery from the beautiful town that comes so frequently before my eyes. But the inhabitants of Belford, the Stephen Lanes, the Peter Jenkinses and the King Harwoods, exist only in these pages; and if there should be any persons who, after this protest, should obstinately persist in mistaking for fact that which the Author herself declares to be fiction, I can only compare them to the sagacious gentleman mentioned in "The Spectator," who upon reading over "The Whole Duty of Man," wrote the names of different people in the village where he lived, at the side of every sin mentioned by the author, and with half-a-dozen strokes of his pen, turned the whole of that devout and pious treatise into a libel. Be more merciful to these slight volumes, gentle reader, and farewell! Three Mile Cross, Feb. 25, 1835. |