select the dearest friend I had in the world as the subject of a
dedication, I have not overstepped the limits of prudence; nor, in
connecting your honored name with this trifling production, involved you
in a failure which, had it occurred, would have given you infinitely
more concern than myself. After a lapse of three years, during which my
little bark, fanned by pleasant and prosperous breezes, has sailed, more
than once, securely into port, I again commit it to the waters, with
more confidence than heretofore, and with a firmer reliance that, if it
should be found "after many days," it may prove a slight memorial of the
warmest filial regard.

Exposed to trials of no ordinary difficulty, and visited by domestic
affliction of no common severity, you, my dear Mother, have borne up
against the ills of life with a fortitude and resignation which those
who know you best can best appreciate, but which none can so well
understand, or so thoroughly appreciate, as myself. Suffering is the lot
of all. Submission under the dispensation is permitted to few. And it is
my fervent hope that my own children may emulate your virtues, if they
are happily spared your sorrows.

_PREFACE_

During a visit to Chesterfield, in the autumn of the year 1831, I first
conceived the notion of writing this story. Wishing to describe,
somewhat minutely, the trim gardens, the picturesque domains, the
rook-haunted groves, the gloomy chambers, and gloomier galleries, of an
ancient Hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved to attempt a story
in the bygone style of Mrs. Radcliffe,--which had always inexpressible
charms for me,--substituting an old English squire, an old English
manorial residence, and an old English highwayman, for the Italian
marchese, the castle, and the brigand of the great mistress of Romance.

While revolving this subject, I happened, one evening, to enter the
spacious cemetery attached to the church with the queer, twisted
steeple, which, like the uplifted tail of the renowned Dragon of
Wantley, to whom "houses and churches were as capons and turkeys," seems
to menace the good town of Chesterfield with destruction. Here an
incident occurred, on the opening of a vault, which it is needless to
relate, but which supplied me with a hint for the commencement of my
romance, as well as for the ballad entitled "The Coffin." Upon this hint
I immediately acted; and the earlier chapters of the book, together with
the descri