first and most eager friends of 'The Battle of the Strong'
was Mrs. Langtry, now Lady de Bathe, who, born in Jersey, and come of
an old Jersey family, was well able to judge of the fidelity of the life
and scene which it depicted. She greatly desired the novel to be turned
into a play, and so it was. The adaptation, however, was lacking in
much, and though Miss Marie Burroughs and Maurice Barrymore played in
it, success did not attend its dramatic life.

'The Battle of the Strong' was called an historical novel by many
critics, but the disclaimer which I made in the first edition I make
again. 'The Seats of the Mighty' came nearer to what might properly
be called an historical novel than any other book which I have written
save, perhaps, 'A Ladder of Swords'. 'The Battle of the Strong' is not
without faithful historical elements, but the book is essentially a
romance, in which character was not meant to be submerged by incident;
and I do not think that in this particular the book falls short of the
design of its author. There was this enormous difference between life
in the Island of Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey,
tradition is heaped upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon
precept, until every citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords
of a code from which he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and
that it is an island is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this
case, a life which has real power and force. The life in French Canada
was also traditional, and custom was also somewhat tyrannous, but it
was part of a great continent in which the expansion of the man and of
a people was inevitable. Tradition gets somewhat battered in a new land,
and even where, as in French Canada, the priest and the Church have such
supervision, and can bring such pressure to bear that every man must
feel its influence; yet there is a happiness, a blitheness, and an
exhilaration even in the most obscure quarter of French Canada which
cannot be observed in the Island of Jersey. In Jersey the custom of five
hundred years ago still reaches out and binds; and so small is the place
that every square foot of it almost--even where the potato sprouts,
and the potato is Jersey's greatest friend--is identified with some
odd incident, some naive circumstance, some big, vivid, and striking
historical fact. Behind its rugged coasts a little people proudly hold
by their own and to their own, and even a Jer